Hampton Court and Blankenburg were also coconut plantations.Along with saw-milling, rice-milling, and timber businesses in and around McDoom Village, these agricultural holdings were significant assets in the family's now considerable portfolio.Family members were appointed to run the various operations within this mini-empire.Caramat also met with success in the political sphere.He was nominated to Guyana's Legislative Council and became President of the Rice Producers' Association as well as a member of the Rice Marketing Board's Executive Committee.These were influential positions.However, as with all empires, this one experienced a rise and decline.Divisions within the family persuaded Caramat's eldest son and the new pater familias, Mohamed Ali McDoom, to make a settlement and sell the landholdings after his father's death.By this time much of the family had already moved away from McDoom Village for various reasons.[1]But the sell-off of the estates, coupled with an unfavourable political and economic climate following independence in 1966, prompted much of the remainder to seek new opportunities overseas.


With the passage of time the family has of course expanded but it has also diversified.Whilst still mainly Muslim and of Indian extraction, it is now a kaleidoscope of other cultures, faiths, and ethnicities.British, Canadian, and American cultures have particularly impressed themselves upon the family.From the standpoint of religion, Islam remains pre-eminent but Hinduism and to a lesser extent Christianity has each now also become part of the family's complex weave.However, the family has become most diverse ethnically.There is no simple way to capture this heterogeneity.But by way of example in my own immediate family we are happy to count individuals of Japanese and Arab ethnic origin.This diversity is of course a strength.It is also reflected in the myriad of names within the family.Thus, although the story begins with Haji McDoom, we as a family are far from being only McDooms.Indeed, as you will see from the statistics section, the McDooms are in fact in a minority.[2]

For those of you who are reading this and who belong to the generation that, like me, was born outside of Guyana, you may not feel the same ties to your extended family as the generation that grew up together.You may perhaps have only a superficial interest in knowing this history and in this tree.This is probably the inevitable consequence of social mobility.Just as our common ancestor Haji McDoom left India to seek a better life for himself, so too have many of us emigrated in search of better opportunities. The family has in short fragmented.It may be then that you feel closer to a different blood line in your family:your mother's relatives instead of your father's, or indeed the contrary.Having spent most of my childhood and adolescence in London, England, I too belong to this


[1] By way of example, Caramat himself moved to Brickdam, Georgetown, to live with his second wife, Khairool Abdul, leaving his house in McDoom Village to his eldest son, Mohamed Ali McDoom.Sultan, Caramat's brother, moved his family's residence to Church Street in the capital Georgetown after his home in McDoom Village burned down in 1944.The family first lived with Caramat whilst looking for a new home.Altaf Husain, Haji's third son, went to India in 1930 where he studied Islam to return to Guyana twenty-one years later (when he learned of his brother Caramat's passing) as a 'Hafiz' (an individual who has memorized the Quran in its entirety).Rojan Saban, Haji's eldest daughter, married at the age of 15 and moved to Vreed-en-hoop, on the West Coast of Guyana, with her husband.An Kulsum, Haji's youngest daughter married in McDoom Village and then moved to Farm, further up the East Bank of the Demerara river.

[2] A little less than 15% of the people named in this book carried and continue to carry the last name McDoom.