Transcript: Charles Challenger – part two

00:00

It was mainly after reflecting on that first conversation we had and looking back and then thought to myself, well, there was two stages that I actually got involved with the Americans, and I won't mention their surnames, but one guy who um was very interested was a guy called Ed, and there was another guy called Charlie dollar. He was, used to do, I think he left the Air Force for whatever reason, and he then married into the local community, yeah, which was, I think his first marriage was with an English woman, and then he then married another girl, um which I won't mention her name, but I do know of her.

00:59
And he then begin to mix more the Caribbean community. And so he's he mainly used to cut local, the local guys haircuts. And he was a bit of a a joker, and he was very much anti-white. Again, he came from down south. Now, how all that came about was being an entrepreneur, I purchased a second home, and I end up renting it in multi occupancy, and I mainly did that because the house was in the town centre. It had a basement, and the basement was as large as the upstairs. Now, one individual who I got in and built a relationship with, he decided to rent the rooms, and he had his other friends in the multi occupancy house, which made sense, because then they all got on. They then start using the basement for creating music. And Bopper, you know, Bopper, Bopper was one of those who was the musician. And Bopper used to use the basement to create his music, along with Ed and also a guy called Mac. His name his first they call him Mac as a pet name, but his name was Kevin. Now I have met Mac. He was very radical, because again, back then Mac, we didn't really have any event where we were doing poetry here in Ipswich. So what happened with, with Mac, very much into what they call spoken words, right? And he used which I didn't understand all that.

 

So I also was learning of the Rastafarian culture, if you want to call it that. At the same time they were also learning the Rastafarian culture and learning to mix with us as Caribbean people. So I literally had four guys, multi occupancy in the house. They I agreed, as long as there was no trouble, they could use the basement and create their poetry, their music and, and so on, so on. Now, Mac stroke Kevin was the key to a lot of the poetry, but a lot of his poetry was very radical towards whites, yeah, and that was when he linked up. I don't know if you know a chap called John Rowe? He's an English guy, he's always mixed with the Caribbean. He's also been part of Jah Warriors, John Rowe, who was a who wrote poetry, and John also taught in schools. So John met guys like Ed, he met Mac, and they all used to go out and do gigs, but they used to operate from the basement as a meeting point, yeah. 

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4:27
So that is when I begin to learn, because what I'm, what I did, in actual fact, to keep order, I included a cleaning service. So I used to go along on Sunday to collect the rent and make sure that the kitchen area and the bathroom area and the hallway was always kept clean, which they did a good job, so I didn't have much to do, but I used to then spend a little time with them, and they used to banter to me, Oh, you have to go home, you're, you're not a man of our type, so you were more constructive. But listening to some of the poetry that Mac used to throw out, which was very anti because he came from down south, so he was very angry with the way they were treated in the USA, and then come into terms in the relationship that we had here in the UK, because when people like John Rowe, he couldn't understand how we gel with John Rowe, how we there was another chapter called Pat Alexandra. Pat Alexandra, he used to operate a studio with a very good business friend of mine called Desmond, and he used to operate the first Fitness Centre in in Saint Helen Street. It's now a housing estate. They've now built houses, but there was a large warehouse, and my friend Desmond took it over from one of the landlords and converted into like a fitness centre.

 

So he, he connected with guys like Mick Blackwell. Again, Mick was English, he was into karate, and a lot of the Black guys you was went to his school, so they trained together. So all these different individuals that came in to the community, into our community, and then that's where the music, the sports, like karate, and the competitions that they used to have at Bond Street, because Mick had owned Bond Street, so Desmond then got Mick to invest into they used to call it mint condition. And that was where you went for physical exercise, aerobic classes, and upstairs was a wine bar. And we used to have like um upstairs, we used to have like Friday night um gathering, just like a wine bar would. So looking back then, with Desmond, with Mac, the poetry from down south, with, with Ed, another poetry person along with John Rowe, and John Rowe is still around.

 

Pat Alexandra is still around, and they all have these links with Jah Warriors, which you again may have known of, know Jah Warriors along with people like Bopper. So the conversations around their surprise these three ex service personnel that left and married into the community, they struggled a while to understand how we as Caribbean was able to gel and mix and work with a white man. In the end, Ed and Mac being the personality that they had, they soon was able to, to merge into the community, merge in with the Rastafarian understanding the culture even much better. And, yeah, it kind of worked. So that was mainly my second connection from a, you know, local men, young men. I mean, my plan was just to rent the house, but they came up with the ideas and I felt, I think some of that came from my second cousin Buster, plus I was part of the Ipswich Caribbean Association and finding space for these guys to go on the ground in the basement, they're going to make as much noise as they wanted with their music, and no one would hear about it. Yeah, so that's where I'm coming from with that relationship. 

 

08:55
What happened out of that situation? Like I said, I had four Caribbean guys living there, one chap called Benji. He was, he admired what I was doing, and he felt that he could do the same. So about a year after, he saw the opportunity where he could step out get a mortgage, because the thing is, with Benji, he was always a conscious worker, always a conscious person, and was always employed. In actual fact, he used to work for BT, so he was very technically minded. But the other side to him, he was a Rastafarian, he liked the culture life, but he also had ambition. So when he used, I mean, in some conversations, he will say to me, oh, I want to be like you one day coming to collect the rent. You see, so a year or so down the line, he bought his own place, and then I understand he bought a second place, and he became a landlord like I did. So I just see that as inspiring him to progress. And eventually he sort of a broke away from that core, the other, one of the other young man, he ended up working for me, and today he also run his own haulage business or removal business. So that is a success.

 

10:22
And Bopper, who's always been the music guy, they're all, I mean, Boppers family was from Saint Kitts. He was born here. And Mr. P, as I call him, was from Saint Kitts. And Benji, who was from Montserrat. And myself being an Antiguan, the landlord, and there was Mikey, who was of mixed heritage, and he loved the Caribbean culture. So that was the four, as I described them as, and how we all moved into different directions, along with the American servicemen couldn't understand how we were mixing with all these John Rowe.

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11:07
I mean, John Rowe, go back with me some years before, because there was a woman called Myra Anderson, she was a drama teacher at Getacre road. Getacre road is located at the bottom of Bramford road by the traffic light, it used to be a drama. Um so normally I used to go there when I thought I wanted to be an actor. So on a Tuesday I would go to drama. So I engaged with Myra, and then Myra then introduced us to your where were St Mary-le-Tower churches? Right, on the other side there was a theatre. Yeah. So, so again, Myra used to arrange, like, small drama classes, and I used to attend those drama, so basically, Myra, John Rowe, Pat, Alexandra as English, they were all part and parcel of us growing and developing, and then individuals took different directions. Yeah, yeah, yeah, do ask Bopper about it, because I know Bopper, go back a long way with Bopper. We even went one year on holiday to Antigua. That was me, Bopper and Mr. P because Bopper hadn't been back to St Kitts. So the whole plan was, was to reintroduce, to introduce him to the Caribbean and what it was all about. And then we went over to Montserrat.

 

We spent, I think, two days in Montserrat, and there was a um, there was a there was a earthquake. The property that we stayed in, it shook just seconds, and um we went to the volcano that was that actually erupted. So he has all those experience, and that was through, basically him being a tenant and us engaging them teaching me and getting me to understand the Rastafarian culture what reggae was all about. Because, like I said in that film last night, it reminded me of some of the encouragement that my parents used to give us, but it was a different experience. They encouraged us to stay at home, or if we leave home, we must go out there and own our own homes, rather than paying rent to somebody else. So those are the things that I've learned from and was able to identify coming out of the film. My parents always encourage us, when you leave school, don't become idle. And we all tend to have gone off and did things. And then when I met those young men, I thought it was just be good, yeah, I run the risk of renting to them, knowing of the culture that they had adopted, but we were able to work with it, and obviously there was a level of respect and understanding, and that worked very, very well. As I said, Benji went on to own two three houses himself. Mr. P today owns his own business and employ his his son and grandson. And Bopper today is holding his own.