Rita Francis has operated a booth at the August Emancipation Festival for 42 years, and she has won the event’s Peas and Rice Competition five times. This year, the festival village is named in her honour. During the opening ceremony on Monday, Ms. Francis’ family gathered in front of the stage to support the cook.
Growing up
I was born in Road Town on Jan. 2, 1939. I am 77 years old. They say I don’t look that old, but the eyes and the knees will tell you better.
I went to the Methodist School, then the Virgin Islands Secondary School. School was very interesting. Up until now I still have that respect that I had for my teachers.
After school
As I said, my mother was in the cooking field and had a cook shop. I had to be with her all the time, and that’s where I learned everything that I know.
On an ordinary day, I had to help my mother fix the meals, wash the dishes and help her prepare things for the next day. In those days it was very hard. Because there was no ground beef to make the patty, we had to get the beef and grind it in the mill.
We had a very special flour at that time: It was 99 cents for a bag of flour. We didn’t have paper towels: We washed the dishes and dried them with towels. We didn’t cook on stoves in those days. We cooked on coal, and if we had to cook a lot of food we put three rocks on the ground with those big pots and wood under.
Cooking
I won the Peas and Rice Competition at the village five time, until I was asked not to compete anymore because the other booth owners were not winning. If you want the recipe for the peas and rice, you have to go to the library, because the Festival Committee inducted the recipe into the library. There’s a secret ingredient I don’t give out.
In the Peas and Rice Competition, all the rice grains had to be whole and all the peas had to be intact. No broken peas and no rice that you can’t count every grain. You have to learn the technique: You boil the peas to a certain extent where you know the peas and the rice would finish cooking together.
The peas and rice competition was a big thing in the past. They had judges from all about to judge on stage, where you had to prepare your dish. You had to decorate your dish with sweet pepper or lettuce or whatever.
I would say the younger folks need to keep in touch more with the older folks to learn how to cook. These days they are cooking from cookbooks and this and that. We cooked from old-time days.
The people like BVI food. We cook conch, whelks, muttons, dove pork, stewed fish and patties of all kinds. If you eat one patty, you have to eat two.
The famous conch soup that people have now, it was mother who created that. One day she said, “Rita, you could cook pumpkin soup, pea soup, meat soup: All you have to do is put the conchs in the ingredients and see how it comes out.” We did it that year and it was a hit from then till now.
Family
In those days, you had to be close by your mother and father. Back then, if you get in a relationship with somebody, it wasn’t as flirty as now. I met my husband — Walford Hodge — right by my mother’s cook shop. We just went out together. He was a businessman himself. We started business first before a relationship. He was a contractor and he had a lot of ideas. He would always give suggestions for things to do, and — thank God — it was always successful. I was 18 when we got married. I have five children: four boys and one girl.
Celebrating
Festival was great in those days. There was more togetherness. Everybody did things together — not like these days. Everyone would come about and have a good time.
The queen show used to be at the village and everybody would dress up and come. The torchlight procession was a big thing in those days. It used to start by government hill, and we would march from there up to the hill. Most people went out to have fun and mingle.
As it’s Festival time now, go out and have clean fun. Enjoy yourself. Stop the violence: It doesn’t make sense. This thing about people making others afraid to go out — in our days, you could go to St. Thomas and leave your house unlocked and there was no problem. Even when you go to the supermarket now, you have to be looking around.
But this Festival time, go out have fun and behave yourself. Act like the days where it used to be Tortola, BVI. Go back to the old-time days when everybody looked out for everybody. Love everybody.
Interview conducted, condensed and edited by Ngovou Gyang.
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