Nonpareil, Guyana

Nonpareil (from the French and meaning matchless, inimitable) was the name of a sugarcane plantation, and later a village, on the east coast Demerara Region of Guyana that operated until the mid 20th century. Although the factory and village were torn down and disassembled in the 1940s, its population survived and formed the majority of the population of Enterprise, a modern village located one mile away from the site of old Nonpareil.

In 1838, the first group of East Indians arrived in Guyana as indentured servants to fill the huge employment gap created on the plantations after slavery was abolished four years previously. These new workers built their first homes in the area surrounding the plantations and from the small group that lived and worked at the Nonpareil Estate arose a village whose residents called it Nonpareil.

Life in Nonpareil was poor though habitable and the community grew in time. New immigrants came and others paid their way back to India after meeting contractual obligations. By the end of the 19th century a small school and a hospital were erected, and other incentives like land ownership were offered to encourage workers to stay with the estate. The village flourished for the first few generations and life on the plantation included field work for everyone above the age of 11 at a decent wage. The children were offered a primary school education but most elected to work the fields, baling the sugarcane punts and clearing the canals.

This somewhat prosperous time did not last very long in the growing village. In fact, by 1910 living condition across the entire country were showing large signs of deterioration from lack of care and maintenance. After slavery - and the free labor that came with it - was abolished, sugar became less profitable across the West Indies and over a period of 20 years more than half of the country's factories closed, sold their machinery and their owners booked passage back to England.

By the 1940s, the handful of plantations still operating in the country were a consolidation of those that could not prosper alone. Even together, these small groups of estates still had trouble earning a substantial profit and the entire village bore the burden of economic slow down. Its people struggled to maintain their basic standards of living. This industrial down turn also brought poor wages to the already impoverished people. Before long the already degraded living conditions worsened and many villagers, especially the young, contracted diseases which in most cases took their lives - dysentery was the most widespread and the largest killer during this period.

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