Kakabelly curry and other fishy t'ings.
Sept. 18.22.
M’dear! I am ashamed to tell you! I was looking up names of fish in Guyana and discovered that we have 900 species of fish. Who knew? Not moi. I only know the names of the popular ones.
There’s the arapaima, one of the largest fresh-water fish.
There is:
banga mary
butter basha
queriman
hassar
houri
packu
patwa
cuirass
kassi
snapper
trout
lukanani
piranha
catfish
four-eye (splashes up with the ocean waves on to the flat stone and concrete base that protects against erosion, and stays in little puddles, wiggling and waiting for the waves to wash it back into the sea).
Then there’s that fish that smokes cigrit. And there’s that fish with the name so rude, so wrong and vulgar, I refuse to whisper it. (I’ve eaten it though, and it is delicious.)
Ooops! I mustn’t forget the capybara! Those Guyanese who eat it love to curry it.
The capybara is a rodent, four feet (about 121 cm) long, and two feet (60 cm) tall. Yes, I know. I said “rodent”. But y’ see, in Venezuela…which likes to think it is a part of Guyana…the capybara is transformed into a fish during Lent. Well, that’s the way the story goes. Why? Hello! We are South America where normal things become magical at some point, and ludicrous most of the time.
Anyway, back to fish names. One of my favourite names is kakabelli, also known as kakabelly.
Kakabelly is the size of a small finger, about two to three inches long (5 to 6 cm and a tad more, yes?). As we would say, kakabelly is wan li’l-li’l, fine-fine…a small, skinny…fish. Auntie Fareeda, before she migrated, used to cook a kakabelly curry out of this world. It was a dry curry, you can’t cook it with liquid, and even the fine-fine…thread-like…bones were a part of the goodness. She would also squish the fish together, deep-frying it with spices, so it made crunchy fishcakes. (That foreign fried chicken has nothing on this, yeah.)
For all that, kakabelly is a humble fish, the countryside people’s dish. Never thought that it would end up in the headlines.
Kakabelli sent out to rescue Shark.
It happened in 2013, one afternoon on the river. According to the Maritime Administration, MARAD, Shark was heading towards Port Kaituma in the North West District with cargo. When it got far down river, an operator on Shark telephoned the Georgetown Lighthouse. Shark was taking in lots of water. The crew abandoned Shark; some of the cargo did too, apparently - it fell overboard.
This is where the boat with the humble name went into action. MARAD said that there was no vessel in the vicinity, so they dispatched the Pilot Launch Kakabelli.
Shark was found. I don’t know if it was by Kakabelli. I’m only interested in this: what are the odds of a launch with the name of a tiny fish going out to rescue a vessel called Shark? I like to think that the MARAD people will be retelling this story all the way into their ancient years, talking in their sleep and calling for kakabelly curry.
Hmm, I’m not sure if they will have any kakabelly in future times though. I’ve heard that there’s a shortage of kakabelly in the Berbice River these days. Berbice citizens have grumbled that the Overseas Guyanese, when they visit back home, buy up the kakabelly, and they fry-up and curry-up the kakabelly to take with them when they return to their Big Foreign Lands.
I sincerely hope I’m wrong and that there’s no need to quake with fright, and the quake, the fisherman’s basket, doesn’t end up empty from overfishing. I hope the folk running things in my lovely native land take steps to monitor the way we fish. Give the po’ fish time to breathe…breed. (Saw what I did there? Eh? Eh? You saw? In Creolese we don’t pronounce de ‘th’. Breathe is derefore pronounced breed.)
Time for me to skip away to do odder…other…writing t’ings. Have a lovely two weeks until my next email. Eat well and take care of you. Plenty lurve, neena.