Caribbean Beat — March/April 2019 (#156)

cookup
As children, Mark Forgenie and
his brother would play in the
“coffin” under his grandparents’
home. This eight-foot-long chest
was actually a rice box, where
his uncles would store the rice
farmed on the many acres of land his family worked
in Moruga, deep in south Trinidad.
At Christmas time, this large box would be filled
with rice, and it would fall to Mark and his brother
to scoop it out and process it for older relatives to
cook. “We’d put it in the mortar and pound it for
a good forty-five minutes to shell it out, then we’d
throw it up and fan it until it was clean,” Forgenie
recalls. “That would always break up the rice, but
you’d get nice red rice that way.
“The tradition was, from the start of December
through January we would eat rice on a Sunday.
On Saturdays, we would pound the rice and the
men would cook the ‘Creole rice’ in different
ways. A lot of times with coconut milk. Sometimes
they would parch it with bene [sesame seeds] and
sometimes with bird peppers.”
This rice Forgenie grew up eating is African
Oryza glaberrima, known locally as Moruga hill
rice. It was introduced to Trinidad by the Merikins,
a group of African-American soldiers who fought
for the British in the War of 1812. Forgenie himself
is a descendant of the Merikins. The soldiers were
each given several acres of land in Trinidad as their
reward for fighting for the Crown. The rice — native
to West Africa — had previously been grown in the
Carolinas and the state of Georgia, where many
of these soldiers were born. It was grown by the
Merikins because of its hardiness and long shelflife.
This red rice has never been a mainstream
product in Trinidad, as it’s grown and consumed
mainly in Moruga and surrounding areas. For
years, hill rice production and consumption was in
decline — something Forgenie realised only when
his father suffered a health crisis in 2009.
“My father had a small stroke, he had a clot on
his brain,” Forgenie says. “The neurosurgeon, who
is from Moruga, told my Dad he had to change his
lifestyle — my Dad loved to eat bacon, pudding,
and ham every morning, so his cholesterol was too
high.” As part of his recovery, the doctor mandated
that the elder Forgenie drink porridge made from
hill rice twice a day.
At the time, Forgenie was living in north
Trinidad. He dropped everything to head to
Moruga to his uncle’s home. When he got there,
he expected the rice box to be full — but, to his
dismay, there were just five pounds of rice.
Resurrection
For generations, communities in
south Trinidad have grown a special
variety of hill rice brought from Africa,
with a unique flavour and health
benefits. When entrepreneur Mark
Forgenie learned that the Moruga
hill rice he grew up eating was about
to disappear, he saw an opportunity.
Franka Philip investigates
Illustration by Shalini Seereeram
rice
“I grew up knowing these boxes to have four
hundred pounds of rice, so I was shocked. I asked
him what was wrong, why was there no rice.” Forgenie
recalls. “He told me ‘none of your cousins are
interested, everybody is either working offshore,
driving maxi taxi — nobody wants to work the
land, nobody is interested in the rice.’”
Forgenie thought this situation was unique to
his family, but he soon discovered the lack of interest
in farming the rice was widespread in Moruga.
He had not known this tradition, this “unique
thing” he had grown up with, was dying.
And how could he know? At the age of eighteen,
Forgenie left Trinidad and headed to Britain,
46 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM