Free Olga - A Daughter's Tale by Marie-Therese Browne (Marie Campbell)

below with baskets can gather up the small branches, pick the berries and put them into our baskets. You have to be very careful not to damage the berries though.
    At the end of the day the baskets are all brought to the barbecues, so the berries can be dried and prepared for market, and each person’s basket is weighed. Aunt Lucy enters the weight of each basket into the barbecue book and then pays us depending how much pimento is in our basket.
    The barbecue is a large paved area divided into ‘beds’ so that recently picked pimentos are not mixed with previously picked ones. When enough have been thrown on to a ‘bed’ they are spread out and exposed to the sun, and a man with a wooden rake keeps turning them so they dry evenly. You know when the berries are thoroughly dry because if you take some in your hand and rattle them near your ear, you should hear a sharp, dry, rattling sound.
    We’d all been working for a couple of hours when Dolly noticed Maurice wasn’t moving. He’d climbed much higher than the other boys who were helping out.
    “ He’s frightened, he can’t go on” Dolly said.
    I called out to him to come down.
    “ I can’t move”
    “ Yes. you can Maurice. Aunt Lucy’s made some lemonade. Come down and have a drink”.
    “ Olga, go and get him down” Mammie said.
    So up the tree I go to help him down. Poor Maurice, by the time I got to him he was so frightened he couldn’t stop crying. Gently I coaxed him down the tree and the nearer we got to the ground the more his confidence returned until he’s on the ground and I’m sitting having a little rest on a thick branch when, my heart leaps because in the distance I can see Boysie’s best friend, Roy McKenzie, walking down the hill towards “Mon Repose”.
    As I go to jump on to the ground my knickers get caught on the branch, tear and leave me dangling four foot off the ground, unable to free myself, my backside exposed to all the young boys still up the tree, the old man raking the barbecue, my sisters and worse still, I can see Roy McKenzie getting closer and heading straight for “Mon Repose”.
    Dolly and Ruby were laughing themselves silly.
    “ Help me quickly, Roy McKenzie’s coming down the hill”.
    In a flash Dolly was beside me on the branch and while Mammie lifted me up a few inches, Dolly unhooked my knickers and, with only seconds to spare before Roy McKenzie arrives, I made it into the house all of them still laughing at me.

    ******

    Later : Roy decided to stay and visit and after a while, with my knickers repaired, I felt composed enough to join him and the rest of the family sitting on the steps of the veranda watching the peenie wallies, little fireflies. They’re about the size of a beetle and give off a brilliant light from two orbs just above their eyes and when you see millions of them fluttering among the trees on a dark night it is a spectacular sight.
    My Aunt Lucy is a great Anancy story teller.
    Anancy tales are famous in Jamaica and were brought here by the slaves. Anancy is a kind of folk hero because he is a survivor. He is a spider man, clever, intelligent, quick-witted and cunning who likes to trick people for his own benefit. As a special treat, and to make up for my embarrassed hurt feelings earlier today, Aunt Lucy’s promised to tell us a story, so Maurice and I collected lots of peenie wallies and put them into jars, with holes in the top so air gets in, and then we put the jars in a long row in front of the stone barbecue, so they look like footlights.
    Everyone sits cross-legged on the ground in front of the footlights breathing in the spicy fragrance of the pimentos in the evening breeze and Aunt Lucy sits behind the footlights and in front of the barbecue, comfortably settled in her chair, sucking on her white long handled pipe, which no doubt is full of ganja, and we all waited silently for her to start her story.
    To tell an Anancy story correctly you have to use the Jamaican dialect and