Beni Persaud

Beni Persaud

My name is Beni Persaud and I want to greet you guys with peace and love because those are two strong ingredients that you have to have in your life. You have peace…I try to explain. When you have peace, you can think clearly. When you have love is like a…like, like, like you got something a stick in the ground. Love’s been called glue that hold things together. So these two ingredients, I wanted to greet you. Greet you with peace and love.

I was born in South America, Guyana, British Guyana, South America. My great-grandparents came from India. When the British have the colony, they moved six races of people to work the country. You had the European, the African, Portuguese, Chinese, and East Indian. And they had the native people. They are called Arawaki-Mataka and Connuku. They live more in the jungle. The women go naked. They don’t have nothing on.

When the missionary come in there, they just stop people from going in the jungle area because they try to exploit them, take advantage of the female. They bring the African-American people (who) become slaves in the country and they put them to work on the sugar plantation. They used to pull the plant of the sugar cane. You cut the sugar cane, they used to pull the plant. And they’d bring the Portuguese and it wasn’t too industrialized.

They bring the Chinese and they have much more of a different agriculture. When the Indian come, they bring India as immigrants. They settle in the sugar plantation. Sugar was important so they raised sugar cane.

My grandfather came with the British, as soldiers and they settle…the British keep them as soldiers in South America. My great-grandfather, he served three years and then he/they decided to settle in the country. They bring family and they bring their children.

My great-grandmother was part-Jewish. My grandfather finish his service in the military and they bought some land. They started to do farming. To work the farm, they need a lot of children. So my great-grandma make five kids. Three boys and two girls. And from that, my grandfather come from.

He get married and he started his family, too. He raised…he farmed rice. So he had to make a lot of mud to get the right stuff to grow. So he used bull to plow the land. My father was the youngest of the children. That’s my father’s side now I’ll go to my mother’s side.

My mother’s parents, they come a couple generations. They came and they settle in the sugar industry, sugar plantation. My mother was ah…three kids. She had one small sister and two brother.

She didn’t have any kind of schooling. So she had to babysit these brother and sisters. At the age of nine, she got married. The kind of marriage (that) is arranged marriage. And when she married, they have a tradition that when you get married, you go back to your home and then the second week, you come back to the home that you married to.
Mother never went back. She says she ain’t going back. She didn’t like the people. So she stay with her dad. At the age of twelve, she married my dad and she get five kids. Three boys…four boys and two girls. One boy died at age of one year old.

They said most of the time, in five kids, three would die and two would survive. So your three brothers and two sisters. At age of nine [when Beni Persaud was nine], my father get a cold and he died of pneumonia.

I live with my mother and five kids. She was only 32 years old and she had no skills. Her name could slap her in the face and she wouldn’t know. So she had to go work in the sugar industry to take care of the five kids.

She said one thing that I remember all the time. Say, I’ll keep my kids together and when they grow up, they’ll know that they’re brothers and sisters. When my uncle wanted to take us, she said, No.

They’ve got Hinduism (which is) the culture from India. And the African had their (religion) and then you had Christianity. And the native, they had their own. So I grew up as a Hindu. But the schools were church school.

My education field is…growing up, I go to church school. I got…two sisters, Cornelia and Ida, so they put them together, Cornelia-Ida School. And most of it people who were like nuns were running these schools and they were very strict. Every morning you got to put your hands out and see if your nails are dirty. They take a ruler and hit the edge of your hand. And if you’re late, you get flogged by the cane. You put your hand out like that and they lash it with a cane. And if you pull your hand, you get a next one. If you can’t get your hand there, they put you over a bench and hit you on the buttocks.

My education field, you talk about bully here? I see bully when I was growing up. When I was growing up, I skipped one class and go to the other class so I was a small kid into bigger kids. And they used to bully me around. They’d move the bench and when you’d go sit down, you’d fall flat. And your lunch you’d take to school, they’d take away my lunch and beat me up and I run home. I go home and cry and hide under the bed.

My father come and take the belt at me and put couple lashes at me and say, “You got to stand up because the people who bully you are cowards.” He say, “You gotta fight. You gotta fight. You see the guy got the biggest mouth? That is a coward. He use other people to do his bullying for him or her.”He say, “If you come back tomorrow and cry, I’m gonna whump you.” So I was forced to stand up and fight.

When I go to school, they said they’re gonna beat me up. They say, “Watch for the boy who got the biggest mouth.” He said, “That’s the coward.” That’s who I’m gonna beat up.

So I would go late to school and I hit that one and I run home. And the parents came with a whole set of people to fight to beat me up. And I wasn’t big. I was a little kid. Little scrawny kid. My father come home from work. He see the other family there, they want to….and my father said, “Well…” He reached in and found me under the bed. When I came out, he said to the big kids family, “You mean this kid [Beni] beat this kid?” He say, “Yes.” “Well, then, put them to fight then and settle it right now.” The big kid said, “No, I don’t want to…he…he…he’s crazy.” So my father said, “You mean the small kid beat up the big kid? What this big kid doing to the small kid?” And they walk away. They looked upon my size and their kid’s size and they see he was a giant and I was just a little kid. So that end my bullying years at school.

But when my father died, like the war, the light all turned off. They change the curriculum. They started to do Latin and they started geometry and algebra in school. You had to get the book and my mother could not afford the books. So every week, I tell them, “Next week (I’ll buy the book).” So you kids got books and that be advantageful to read. I had to peep in, look at somebody else’s book and they pull their book away, so I have to memorize a lot of things from schooling.

I got one exercise book I go to school with and I do all my work in the one exercise book. You kids got shoes on. I didn’t have shoes until I was 16 years. I never wear a shoe. Always bare feet. My mom couldn’t afford much clothes. We have one pair of pants to go to church, keep that to go to church, and one pair to go to school and walk around with. When they get torn, she’d take off pieces of clothes and patch it. Kids used to make a lot of fun of us.

I asked my mother and she said, “We can’t afford it. She got five kids she gotta feed. I tried to get a library card and they tell me you gotta get your father to sign this paper. I say, “My father died.” They say, “You can’t get no card, no library card.” So I used to pick up paper people would throw away, like newspapers. I read from that. So you’re lucky you got books to read; take advantage of it.

My father, he always tell me, he said, “You must be honest and truthful and don’t take anything from nobody. You must own it.” So I keep that with me. I can (still) hear his voice speaking to me [voice trembles].

When I was 14 years, my elder brother get married and his wife have two sisters, two small sisters. And she used to buy things and keep them in her room and she won’t even share it with him. At the age of 14, I left school to work in the sugar industry. So I can help them. So I…[crying]…

One day, one of the supervisors tells me, he always asks me to do the bookwork for him. He said, “Yeah, you should go back to school.” But I said, “I can’t go back to school, I can’t afford it to go to school.”

So I ask the guy, who used to repair tractors, if I can learn from him. So he give me a toolbox and I put on my shoes and walk another couple miles to the backland, so he can repair the tractors. He got me mostly washing parts. So I start to observe. Let my eyes start to learn from looking at the parts and see how he takes care of the tractors. I’m observing how he take em (apart) and go to put them back together.

After six month, one day, he was sick and he had to get an engine together because the rice season was coming and he had to get those rice out of the field. So the next day I come and I assist him. So when he come, the tractor was finished and put together. And he say, “How you guys do that? I say, “I help you.” And he said, “I didn’t know. I never teach you any of this.” I say, “I was looking at you. So I learned.”

At the age of 16, I try to go to garage and I get a job and I work at the garage. At the same time, I set my eye to go into the Army. I joined the British Army at the age of 18. When I ready, they send for me, my mom was crying, said, “You go and you gonna leave and you won’t come back.” So I tear the application up and say, “Okay, I’m not going in the Army.” A year after that, my mom remarry and I decide to go in the Army a year after. I spend three and a half years in the British Army.

After my military training finished, they want me to go to different section you want. So they got different section by service. I’m good in mechanical so I go serve in the engineering section. And they application people put it up, but I wasn’t qualified because I didn’t finish high school.

So my dream was, I’m gonna finish high school. I’m gonna study engineering. And this draw me to the United States and Canada. When I come in this country, after I pay everything, I only had twenty dollars in my pocket. I buy pancake mix and for three months, I eat pancakes. When I get a job, I see they got egg dumpling. I like to eat some of that. I bought some and I tried to eat. I eat quick and my stomach locks up after three months eating pancake.
So the strength is always within you. The Almighty is within you.

I look back in my experience and I’m sixty-six years old. I wash dishes, I wash pots and pans and I work at factory. So any work that you do, you earn money and get dignity as long as you can do the best you can.

My wife was pregnant at that time and I want to get a job to work at night. I apply at the railroad. They say they got job as a laborer. I say, “Yes, I’m gonna take it.” If it’s midnight, I can take care of the kids in the day.

So I start at the railroad as a laborer for three months. Then I told them of my mechanical experience I have in the military and they give me an apprenticeship.

I went to Dunwoody. I took all this schooling. The railroad give to me and a four-year apprenticeship. I develop special skills that it take people a long time to learn, like work in the brake-system, troubleshoot; and rebuild engines. And then I work and I learn. I turn the wheels of the train. When it gets a flat spot I make it round again.

I worked 31 years on the railroad and they were downsizing people. They say if you got 30 years on the railroad and you reach 60, you can get early retirement. I take early retirement at the age of 60. That’s six years ago.

When I was 64, I had a heart attack and a stroke. After the heart attack, I get a stroke. And they didn’t think I would recover, but by the grace of the Almighty, things work out.

When they tell me that you couldn’t do this, I say, I didn’t believe that. I believe there’s never you can’t do anything. I believe you can do anything, all things are possible.

So when you’re down and people tell you you can’t do it, don’t believe them. There’s a strength in you that the Almighty put in you. You can do anything. As long as you can think about it, you will have the will to do it.
These are my three kids. I’ve got three daughters and one son.