ALLEN...when a man was interested in a woman, he would carry a bundle of wood on his head, tobacco or a flask of white rum to the father of the expected bride in order to win his favour.

NOT only has Jamaica come a long way since 1962 when she gained her independence, but so has a woman's rights, liberation, socialisation and her overall existence. Things many of us women take for granted today were 45 years ago, barely or non-existent.

Seventy-two-year-old Verdie Allen, who celebrated her 27th birthday only two days before the first Independence Day, shares with all woman what it was like before independence and some of the changes women have gone through since.

"Forty-five years ago, things weren't as they are today. Women's dress was different. No one dressed with parts of their body exposed. Women wore big heel boots and ankle wrap, 'bellfoot' pants and flair(ed) dress. We wore starched crinoline beneath our skirts which made the skirts stiff and wide," she laughed. "We had to walk and swing the waist with our hands hanging away from the body."

This she reminisced was the main gear worn to dances - a complete contrast to the 'brassiere and panty' sensation that has today hit the dancehall. The cassava starch was the stiffening agent used on the crinoline and it was prepared from scratch by hand.

"Because of the stiffness of the clothes, when you walk your waist just rock from side to side," Allen explained.
While women nowadays have the convenience of sanitary napkins and tampons, Allen recalls the white calico folded like a baby's nappy that existed before the convenience of brands like Stayfree.

"Everyone knew when you were having your period as you had to wash the cloth white like chalk and hang it on the line to dry for reuse," she said.

While today women like Yvonne Dawn Ridguard have created history by becoming the first female president of the 65 year old Jamaica Co-operative Credit Union League and others like Scotiabank's Anya Schnoor have been steadily climbing the previously male-dominated corporate ladder, Allen said back then, they would probably have had to do what most women did - cultivate the land, work in factories or be stay home moms.

Allen lived in Ashton District in Westmoreland as a youngster, and she was just like one of the men, tilling the field and taking the produce to Savanna-la-Mar or Montego Bay to sell.

Though there were cane mills, horses were used in the extraction of juice from canes. The juice was then boiled to make wet sugar, the popular and most sought-after sweetening ingredient at that time. Though sugar as we know it today was in existence, it was less popular as people believed it was too weak.

Courtship
When a man was interested in a woman, he would carry a bundle of wood on his head, tobacco or a flask of white rum to the father of the expected bride in order to win hisfavour.
"You wouldn't see any man stand up on the roadside with women like now," Allen said. "The man had to go to her house and ask the parents for her. If he pleased the father then everything was OK. If not, dog eat him supper, as he couldn't have anything else to do with her."

Entertainment
The main entertainment back then and especially in rural communities, Allen noted, were street dances and picnics. The dances saw women doing the quadrille, maypole and the rumba. Quadrille was a dance done by four couples in a four-sided figure. Maypole was a ceremonial folk dance performed around a tall pole garlanded with greenery or flowers and often hung with ribbons that were woven into complex patterns by the dancers, and Rumba was when both partners would gyrate up and down on each other.

Picnics were a big session. They played the rumba box and guitar and people would gather to dance and have fun.
Only a few people back then had radio and television. And these were mainly the ones considered rich, Allen noted.

Childbirth
"Hospitals were few and far apart. Women hardly went to the hospital to have their babies. Instead we used to call midwives to deliver us at home," Allen said.

And midwives, she said, were untrained elderly women who assisted in delivery. "Even if the baby died, government didn't business with that. If the baby died it just died. The facilities that exist now with special wards and treatment for mothers didn't exist back then.

"I remember with one of my deliveries, my baby father was the one who cut the navel string after I instructed him what to do," Allen said. She laughingly recalls the incident so many years ago when she was ready to give birth. When she sent for the midwife, she was found drunk, so it was left up to the baby's father to help in the process. It turned out that she safely had the child at home with the father's help.

"I wasn't fretting at all. It was the norm in those days," she said. "There just weren't a lot of hospitals or government policies around. We have surely come a long way."

Technology has increased now in such a way that every pregnant woman can book into a hospital and give birth with trained doctors and midwives. It is against the law to give birth at home or an institution without the presence of a trained midwife or without taking the newborn to a hospital. Mothers even have the option of avoiding the long hours of labour pain with the introduction of epidurals that make delivery more comfortable.

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