The Creole museum was opened yesterday. Located at number 88 Albert Street it shows the years of hard work that went into Sharon Pitts Robateau's personal collection of "old-time" wears. Most of them form part of the Macobi collection and now they have found a permanent home. Pitts-Robateau says over the years the collection has been hosted at various displays but never has it been in one place where they can be viewed and put into context. She says that it was all made possible when the collection made its way to 88 Albert Street.
Sharon Pitts-Robateau,
"I call the items, the wood items, old time things and before time things, antiques if you will; the Macobi Collection. It was suggested to me that I should find a permanent home because I had exhibited at a couple schools like St. Joseph School. One Creole child started to sing Leela Vernon's song, 'who said Creole noh got no culture,' and that touched me. Then one lady sat in a chair and the eye water came and she said this thing brings back memories. So the items seem to have a powerful message in them, these physical items.
We have things that span different aspects of the Creole culture. We have implements of trade or tools from the Mahogany and Logwood Camps and Chiclero Camps. We have boat building tools. We have lanterns used on boats which would have been climbing the sea routes and river routes along the river bank where a lot of our villages are.
I think the collection shows our people's resilance. The very building is a testament to the craftsman ship of woodworkers.
We want it to be the type of museum you could go in and you could relate to it, you could interpret it, and you could explain it. You can correct we and help we. You could tell me that size machete is a cunko machete and that smaller one is a chinci machete. Things like that noh.
When you walk in through the gate and you go up the front step and you reach the porch and you look in the hall, you should get in there and feel that you went to your great grandmother or your granny's house. And Christmas time you will smell the new linoleum, you will smell the oilskin, we might have a lil turkey di bake. Downstairs we will have a little fire hearth.
In the kitchen area we will present the old time things which will show you what a cold pot looked like, it will show you what different waffle irons looked like back then, one or two. It will be a like a thing where you start to water that thirst and that flower will bloom and it will be a vine and it will grow and it will nourish our children. It will bring them back to our older people with respect and so because when you reconnect, and I won't say this will work wonders, but I am saying this is a little thing we will do which are already seeing having a bigger impact than we expected beyond our dreams."
During the September celebration the museum will be opened to school children free of cost. Thereafter a small fee will be collected to help maintain the exhibits. Robateau says they plan to have the museum become something like a hub for other Creole-related activities.
