The Cost of Sugar by Cynthia McLeod

Author:Cynthia McLeod [Cynthia McLeod]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781908446015
Publisher: HopeRoad
Published: 2011-03-03T16:00:00+00:00

ELZA

It was really fine to be back home again, thought Elza, and the first day she went through the whole house to see all the familiar things again. She also went in the grounds to the slaves’ huts to see Amimba’s little son, who was a chubby, sturdy baby, and she gave Amimba some of Gideon’s cast-off blouses. Maisa, Afanaisa and Alex had their hands full these early days recounting everything. The others wanted to know everything, and Elza often saw them all at the threshold of Alex’s or Amimba’s room, sitting in a circle around the narrators. The favourite topic to be recounted was how in Holland the whites actually did manual labour.

The others had not believed this at first. Maisa and Afanaisa were trying to take them for a ride! Even when Alex confirmed it, they could not believe it, and Misi Elza had to intervene and confirm that it really was the case: in Holland the whites worked. And the slaves rolled around laughing, roaring their heads off with tears in their eyes. Really true?

Did the whites actually know how to work with their hands? And time and time again Afanaisa and Maisa had to imitate the kitchen maid peeling the potatoes, the housemaid with broom and pail and how the coachman kept the stalls and the animals clean in the stables. And everyone laughed. Oh, that was a really priceless joke! Whites working with their hands. They never tired of this story, and from then on in this household whenever anyone came with a tall story, the reaction was, “Next you’ll be trying to tell me that whites work with their hands!”146

Elza’s second child, another son, was born on 17 January, just a week after his brother’s second birthday. He was called Jonathan. Just as on the first occasion, everything went fine. Elza fed the child herself and felt completely fit again after just a few days, but was kept in bed again by Maisa, who still insisted that getting up before the sixteenth day was fraught with danger. After that things got busy, for Mr and Mrs van Omhoog would leave Suriname on 27 February, and in the first week of March the Le Chasseur family would move from the Wagenwegstraat into the large mansion on the Gravenstraat.

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