My Great Grand Mother

Directly across the street and about a mile away and also on the very peak of an even higher hill lived Aunt’s mother, my great grand mother (Gran Mumma, I think is what we called her). I remembered very little about her and it's only recently that I re-connected the lineage and realized that she was my Great Grand Mother. She was pretty old, frail and very much inside most of the time so I did not see much of her. She must have been pretty old by time I was born and I saw so little of her so nothing significant stands out and now I can't put a picture of her back in my brain as much as I would like to.

The house I remembered though. In the back, that was the side facing the road, we played cricket, with bats made out of coconut bough and a ball from anything you can device. On the other side of the house was the front door. Next to it was a great big wooden barrel or steel drum for catching the run-off rain water from the roof. One time this drum got infected with mosquitoes laying their eggs so a thin layer of kerosene oil was poured on the surface of the water to kill the mosquitoes (it prevents them from breathing). So in order to get to the water below the this film of Kerosene oil you were suppose to dip your container below the surface and full it before bringing it back to the surface. That way you would not get the kerosene oil on the surface in your container. Try as I might, I could never do it right so every drink I took I would get the taste of kerosene oil. That taste have stayed with me all these years and that is what stands out now in my memory when I think of my Great Grand Mother.

You see, at Lucky Hill water was a precious commodity. For everyone in the district, my grand mother and great grand mother included, water had to be carried from a river on your head. So you treasured it. To get water from the river you would take a container (one that would be fitting for your age and size) and you would go down to this river (it must have been more than a mile away) and you would fill it up and get it on your head and trudge all the way back. Heaven help you if you spilled it for you had go all the way back and do it all over again. I remember a particular part of the trail where the soil was a very red clay (much like my now beloved North Carolina soil) which became very slippery when wet. Invariably, someone would loose a load and that made it slippery and before you know you had a domino effect. It was especially treaterous when it rained for then it was not unusual then for several of us kids to loose two or more loads before successfully negotiating all the way home. That was just some of the hardships of Lucky Hill but I have to come back to that later as I am sort of getting ahead of myself.