Ip phoo ke na, ip phoo ke na pagee ko,
Ip phoo ke na, ip phoo ke na pagge ko,
Ip phoo ke na, ip phoo ke na.”
These Indians seemed the most restless people on earth. Before I fell asleep I watched them in the big communal hut which was within twenty feet of me. I learned afterwards that when going on a long trip they sit up most of the night and stuff themselves with food. They seemed to be eating all night here, and drinking that pink cassiri. They would wander about inside their shelter, sit in a hammock eating, walk over to the calabash and drink the cassiri and back to the hammock again.
“If that’s the life of a British Guiana Indian, then I’m glad that I am not one of them. None of this free and untrammeled child-of-nature life for me,” I told Lewis afterward.
“Wonder what they would say if they saw so many of our people back home sitting up until nearly daylight having banquets, dancing the fox-trot and one-step and hesitation and opening wine and smoking and having a regular night of it,” was his quiet comment.
It was good food for thought. The more I figured it out, the more I wondered just where the line between “civilization” and “barbarity” was drawn. I am sure that they did not injure their health as much with their cassava cakes and fruits, eaten during the night, as so many of our so-called “sports” do with their all night dancing and drinking and smoking and eating of lobster a la king and other fancy and expensive foods.
Some of them were drinking a black liquid from a gourd. This was “piwarree.”
“Don’t drink it,” warned Lewis.