Jasoda works at the Estate as part of the weeding gang. She is my cover girl and symbolises the backbreaking labour that many of my female ancestors and their fellow ‘jahajin’ or voyage mates, as well as their neighbours of other races, were obliged to do to make ends meet. Not all were blessed with good husbands and very often, a Friday pay packet went straight to the rum shop. Jasoda and her neighbours, like so many women their kind in Guyana, clawed an existence out of the ground, sometimes quite literally. They slowly, surely and quietly provided the basis for succeeding generations to have a better life.