BICHE
By Michael Anthony
Biche is surprising. This tiny village of Charuma Ward in County Nariva, a village which remained as if lost in the forest since its first settlement around 1874, is now the most vibrant and flourishing village on the Cunapo-Rio Claro Road.
The vague date “around 1874” was the date when the first couple settled in Biche – a hunter and his teen-aged wife. Her name was Maria Gomez, or something very like it. At Rio Claro, some time in 1980, the writer was approached and told: “There’s an old woman at Biche, who I think you’d want to see. On your way back to Port-of-Spain pass through Biche. You’d want to see her. She’s 118 years old.”
No attention was paid to the age given for of course it could not be. Nevertheless one passed through Biche. At Biche, in an elegant little house, there she was, the old woman lying on a bed. She looked very ill but she was very lucid. She said, “Of course I am 118 years old.”
The next comment was, “Since you have no birth certificate, can you tell me something to make me know you are 118 years old?”
She rambled on but then she said she could not think of anything.
“Who was the Governor at the time?”
“Don’t know. I wasn’t interested in those people.”
Then after some silence she said, ”One thing I remember. When I was about 18 me and me husband went to Arima to see me parents. There was a lot of noise, like the knocking of old iron. I asked what was that, and they told me the government was building a railway.”
That was enough. The Trinidad Government Railway to Arima, was established in 1876. If what she said was true she went home to Arima when she was 14! In that case she would have been 118 in 1980.
As suggested by the name “Biche,” a Patois term for wild beasts such as deer or lappe, it was an area for hunters. In that period hunters wandered to what would be considered today extremely far, but even so, to walk from Arima to Biche would have been unrealistic. One would not know what route the hunters took, nor from where they came, but it would seem the best way to get to Biche in those days was by using the Nariva River at the Cocal and getting across the northern Nariva Swamp.
Today, Biche lies by road on what was certainly one of the hunters’ tracks – at least from Sangre Grande. By the turn of the century it was the only recognized village in the “wilderness,” But in a government big road-making programme of 1928-1929 the Cunapo-Biche Road was extended to Rio Claro, bringing the light of day to tiny settlements like Cushe and Charuma.
However, even as late as 1950 Biche was a straggling little roadside village, with the never-failing Chinese shop, and a few dwelling houses. Then it was almost unknown to the rest of Trinidad but by the next decade it shot into prominence by the most unlikely means – a horror story. The villain of that story was Mano Benjamin, who carried out a crime that shook the nation by its ghastliness and cruelty. Mano, who earned the title “the Beast of Biche”, spent several years in prison for his crime. He died in 1998.
Biche has recovered, and has grown enormously between then and now, and is quaint and prosperous-looking. Strange prosperity, because, looking around, one confesses there is no visible sign of where the good times have come from. Agriculture? Maybe. What one can see is that this straggling village of yesterday is now a vibrant, even picturesque, little place, an “oasis” on the Cunapo-Rio Claro Road. It became prominent enough to have a modern Junior Secondary School by the turn of this century – the 21st – but the school has been condemned and is locked in controversy.
There are attractive shops for garment as well as groceries, a few well laid out streets, and a lot of people. The population in 1950 was around 400. Now in 2007 it’s population is around 4,000.
