Too sweet!

by PHILLIPPE AIMEY

COUNTRY LIFE TOO SWEET. So sweet, it's addictive, says Cecilia Collymore and Priscilla Mascoll.

Don't doubt them because they've lived, endured and enjoyed the best Barbados' countryside has to offer for more than 100 years between them.

Collymore and Mascoll are sisters and neighbours from College Land, St John, and their ultimate joy is caring for livestock day in and day out. Why?

"Pigs and sheep in my blood . . . . It is the only thing my mother did own, not even a house or anything so, just the animals and I watched her feed us off them and the few yardfowls for years," Collymore said, sitting on her sister's front step.

What Collymore watched her mum do as a child, her daughter watched her do as well, but with some resistance.

"People don't like to deal with animals because of the smell, and even my daughter before she moved out used to hate them, but I had to remind her that the same pigs and fowls she hate, sent her to school and keep food in her belly, so fast enough she started to talk different," Collymore said.

Walking strong at 74, Collymore, and Mascoll, 77, both believe passionately in self-sufficiency, and it is that reason alone that Collymore manages the pigs and Mascoll deals with the chickens, not for sale but to simply "cut down the supermarket bill".

"We too old now to be running around selling, we just raise these animals and share them among the family to cut down the supermarket bill. Times change, so you can't buy everything. If people get up and go back to the old days - grow some food, raise the animals - they will never starve, but the young people these days want the fast food," the quieter sister, Mascoll, said.

Would they trade this country life?

"I've lived in the country, I'll die in the country because when I go in the heights I can't raise my pigs and every morning I look out, I have to see or hear them in the yard knocking the paling . . . . Country life is the sweetest," Collymore said.

She goes further.

"I remember when the banks first start looking to lend to the poor people and I was going to them for money, but at the time I had more pigs than these and a man come and pay me $1 100 for all of them . . . . That give me the chance to build my little house and manage the children good," Collymore said.