The only shop in the village, a half-mile or so below the hotel was Ma Nicko’s. Ma was short for Madam. It was about eight feet wide and eight feet deep and did not have a vast amount of things to sell. Her husband, Nicholas Mitchell, was the owner-driver of the only truck in the village; in fact, it was the only vehicle. Like almost all of the trucks on the island, it had a chassis, engine, and transmission system from England with a cab and body made locally of wood.
Nicko charged the villagers for “transport” to and from town. Saturdays were the big days when Nicko might make as many as three trips down the mountain. This was the day when the produce market was most active. Originally it was down town on the waterfront by the post office and later at the new market place by the Roseau River mouth. The loads were as much farm products as people and the return trips brought things that the villagers bought or traded for in town.
I noticed that Nicko seemed to bring bags of raw sugar up almost every week. The bags were huge. I was told they were the standard size for brown sugar and they weighed 212 pounds.
Nicko lifted them off the truck with ease and took them into his wife’s shop. He had been a woods sawyer, hand-sawing planks from felled trees in the forest. This sawing required one man on top and one on the bottom of huge logs, rolled onto a makeshift sling, each pulling a two man saw by the hour. He had muscles like a gym man.
I asked several times who used all that much sugar but never got an answer. I was only mildly curious and did not pursue it. However, one day I was sitting on the verandah side of the hotel dining room talking to Joe Christopher, our majordomo, when I saw a small wisp of smoke on the hill to the left.
“Joe, do you see that smoke up there? Does someone live up there? I thought I knew where everyone in the village lived.”
“No, that’s a still up there.”
I had an immediate picture of one I had seen on the other coast where bay oil is distilled. Dominica produced more of the cosmetic oil from Bay trees than any other place in the world.
“I didn’t know there was any bay growing over here.”
“That’s moonshine up there, not bay oil,” he smiled.
“Oh! …And I’ll bet they use “brown sugar”,” I smiled back.
“Yes, it’s that they use.” Joe said.
“Is it licensed?”
Joe looked at me, incredulity showing clearly in his face.
“But the license only cost $50. BeeWee (British West Indian Dollars about $15 US),” I said, defensive of my question. Francis Brown had told me that, and he runs Dominica Distilleries.
“They say they make it cheap,” Joe explained in a slightly exasperated tone, “so everyone will buy the license but all government wants to do is mess with them. They use old radiator grills and junk copper pipe, but they’re careful. It never hurt any of us. Government would shut them down, oui.”
He is right, I thought, but government is more right.
I agonized over it for a while but finally decided to keep out of it. Being a guest in the house is not always easy.