Monica and David Cowan on their wedding day 39 years ago.
Avia Ustanny, Freelance Writer
GINGER AND garlic tea, as soothing as a mother's touch. Monica Cowan's cup of tea is offered as an antidote to stomachs made sensitive after the twists and turns of the Portland road which leads to Faith Cottage here in Mahoe Bay, outside of Port Antonio.
The tea is a warm welcome to her Mediterranean style home walls a textured white, windows skirting pink. Faith Cottage is situated in a cool corner of the island. Today, on our first visit, we sit by the swimming pool, a square of rectangular blue reflecting the sky .
Courtesy of Monica and her husband, David, the villa is an unconventional experience, an opportunity to holiday in a true Jamaican home. Only half of the rooms are let to guests. In the very middle of the complex, set at the end of a walkway and behind hedges of hibiscus, plantains and poui trees, is the family home. When all 10 Cowan children, several of whom now live in the United Kingdom and the United States, come home for a break from their careers, this is home.
Head of the Cowan clan is Mama and Dada Cowan, who have been married now for 39 years and together for a bit longer.
The name of David Cowan itself, is a household word in Portland and beyond, a builder whose untutored genius has been solicited for major projects including the Half Moon Shopping Centre in Montego Bay and Trident Castle which is not a stone's throw away from where Faith Cottage is now located.
A good friend of the family is Josef Forstmayr, current president of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association, and a previous manager of Round Hill and Trident Castle in Portland itself.
Now that Papa Cowan can do little more than greet guests to Faith Cottage with a warm welcome and a tall tale (the man is a fabulous story teller too) he relies on his wife to run the family business.
For this reliance on his woman, unusual in the setting of Jamaican cultural machismo, Dada Cowan does not apologise. According to Mr. Cowan, his wife has rarely been wrong about anything. In fact he insists, his major mistakes have been things done against the advice of his wife.
The man who even his wife states, "has building in his blood" has pursued many private projects including Faith Cottage which today he says may never have been completed, but for Mama Cowan's farsightedness, restraint and
wisdom.
David was a young carpenter, when in 1957 he saw Monica walking with a friend on Prospect road in Port Antonio. He was smitten and watched her for weeks even finding her home and spying on her before he worked up the courage to talk to her. The decisive moment, he said, was when he told a friend that he liked this girl, but he had not said anything to her yet. The friend asked him if he was a fool. Knowing that he was not, he decided to meet her on the road and have a talk.
That first talk led to many others and walks into Port Antonio away from the watchful eyes of Monica's older relatives at home. The two worked out a system of whistles with which they arranged to meet. Soon, Monica paid a visit to David's home where she was taken into the family by his mother and his sister. "His mother really liked me," Mama Cowan now recalls. In fact, David's mother instructed him to marry Monica and stay away from other women.
David did not have the example of a good husband and father to follow. His own father "ran away" from his mother when he was aged four. It was when he was 14 that he took the train to Linstead in St. Catherine to get to know him. Life was very hard for the young boy because of his father's absence. It was a painful sight, he recalls, to see his mother carrying banana by the bunch on her head on the wharf to earn a few pennies a day. His father was no example to follow, but David must have determined in his mind to do the very opposite with his own family. He has proven to be an excellent provider for his family.
The couple, who tied the knot in 1963, made their home in Port Antonio. While David did carpentry, Monica turned to buying-and-selling as a way of increasing the family income. David recalls, "Whenever I gave her money, she would only spend 60 per cent on the family and use the other 40 per cent to turn over." Mrs. Cowan adds, "I threw a little 'pardner'. He did not know. I got 12 pounds (sterling) for the draw. I took that and started the buying-and-selling."
She would sell goods in Port Antonio at the hospital, and also in places where pay bills were made out to workers in the area.
Mrs. Cowan informs us that her husband was, even in the earliest days, a very talented carpenter. Dada Cowan comments, "I worked hard. I never told myself that I can't do it (anything). I had a strong determination. I set out to work where there was work available." He also took the initiative to learn how to read architectural plans and blueprints.
A change in fortunes came for the family when David Cowan's potential as a builder was discovered by one construction magnate. One day, this man, on a dare, challenged the young carpenter to build him a house in the Blue Lagoon area of the parish. David recalls that he was terrified, but, over a year, completed the very structure satisfactorily.
It was the beginning of a relationship which was to last over 30 years and which would take him all over the island, working as a construction supervisor on many major projects. It was Mrs. Cowan who decided the fate of the family when, at her husband's suggestion that they could now afford somewhere better to rent, she decided that they should instead build their own home.
The couple bought land on John's Town Road and proceed to construct a four-bedroom house for their large family. The structure amazed their neighbours, many of whom mocked and jeered at its size. But, David persisted with the project, buying material fortnightly as he got paid, taking his time to finish the house and do it well.
One advantage he had in the process, he told Outlook, was his good reputation in paying back loans. It reached the point where, for his building projects, material would be delivered without his even making a request for it.
Over the years David Cowan's character, no less than his talent in building, has been responsible for his fortune and his fame. Honesty was just one aspect of this. The other was respect. Not even the men for whom he worked would he allow to come on a building site and "disrespect" his workers. He also believed in giving people second chances and giving them opportunities to correct wrongs done.
Men who arrived on work site claiming that they were experts at this and that, but with no tools, were provided with tools bought out of his own pocket and paid professional salaries while they were taught the right way of doing things.
Years later in the construction of the family's shopping mall on West Street, Port Antonio, and in the building of Faith Cottage, men came and gave their service free to the man who had made them become what they were - true professionals.
David Cowan also believed in family unwaveringly. Though he frequently worked away from home, he would journey home as often as possible. His philosophy was that he could never be late arriving home and his wife would never turn him away if he knocked on the door at 2:00 am in the morning (which he frequently did when travelling from far).
Work was put on hold when the children travelled on school trips and other outings, as David Cowan had to be there with them. He became quite notorious at the several schools which they attended in Portland for this.
In their younger years, he carried the children to school and would turn up again at lunch time, "just in case" they needed him. Is it any wonder that, though his daughters are all resident in the United Kingdom today, rare is the day that passes that Mama and Dada do not receive a call from them? He also made their desks and chairs for school, when he was told that there were not enough of these at school to go around.
The couple's 10 children are Alicia, a law student in the UK; Greg, an engineer, residing in the United States; Sharon, a midwife in Bristol, England; Dalia, a nurse and medical researcher in the UK; Dave, a mason in Portland; Sheffield, a painter also in Portland; Elizabeth who is currently studying banking in the UK; Morlett, a qualified teacher and journalism student in New Jersey; Roosevelt, a graphic artist in Kingston; and Heather, an accounting student in the UK.
"They are a loving set of children," the father states. Recently, when the swimming pool pump went, Greg flew home to purchase and replace it himself.
No matter how old they become, the father said, or if they get married, they will always be considered his children and entitled to his assistance in whatever form it is required.
Son, Roosevelt, present during this interview, tells us that his mother was always the stern one while they were growing up. "Things had to be done no other way but the right way." His father was the one they could run to if their mother said no, but "you could not let her (Mama) know. If she found out and still said no, the game was over."
David Cowan confesses, "I am a sort of 'yes man'. I am a yes man for my wife." His children have been made furious by this attitude of his, but he told them, he said, that he will never change to please them. In one Sunday meeting, which they frequently had, he told them, "I will assist any one of you to fly if you want, but if you try to bend me, I will break."
The couple were also united in their spiritual focus. Roosevelt recalls, "Sunday morning, rain or shine, sickness or health it was prayer meeting time." This was followed by a Bible quiz, then it was time for Sunday School.
The children came to know their Bibles so well that some became Sunday School teachers. We asked David Cowan to tell us the things about his wife that had kept him by her side for more than 40 years and he replied, "She makes me laugh. Even when I am angry I have to burst out laughing. She always come up with something. The little things that she says make me feel good."
His wife also reads him to bed at nights as the last thing he hears is her voice reading the Bible. Roosevelt informs us, "She is always singing for him too."
In their advancing years, the couple say that they have changed their names. "Mama and Dada is what we are to each other now," said David Cowan.
Mrs. Cowan has her own version of what is required to keep a marriage together. "You can't just live for yourself. Those couples who leave each other after a few months do so over foolishness. No one is thinking about the children. Most of the things I put aside for the children. Children need to be bathed, to be given food and a clean bed at nights. You can't make a little thing cause you to break up a marriage and then let the children go astray."
Roosevelt Cowan is in love with his mother. Though he is now a bit past the age when other men have "settled down" he said he just cannot find a woman like his mother. Mama, he said, is the Proverbial virtuous woman. If his father were to die, he says, he might very well elope with her.
This is the son who has committed himself to going back home to help in running the family business. Mama Cowan, though you would never know it by just looking at her, is ill with a heart condition.
It is time to take care of the parents, in the same way in which they have committed their lives to the children.
