Thoughts of a minibus traveller

Mexico. Violent drug cartels. Kidnapping. Illegal immigrants in the USA. Tequilla. Sombreros. American hedonistic vacation place. Frida, La Bamba. It is easy to dismiss a country and its people based on American western films or other media which portray a place as a kind of desert with a lot of despair. It is easy not to think that there is a history and other kinds of lives - it is a place far away. The Embassy of Mexico in Guyana had its sixth Movie week this week. These are films we would not ordinarily see. I am sorry I missed the first film - John Steinbeck's The Pearl which we had done in school for Literature. I saw  Flor Silvestre, Pueblerina  and Las Abandonadas.  The films were all black and white.  The cinematography was beautiful - a commentary somewhere said that the cinematographers had to focus on details due to the absence of colours. Flor Silvestre - complex story of landowner son who falls in love with a poor girl - her grandfathers 'Wild fl

Ever so often , people ask where is a good place to eat. I do not do fine dining. This is my mucking around with Google Maps. View My favourite eating places in Georgetown in a larger map

Nothing warms a cynic's heart like a collection of love stories which are well about love. The stories are sad and depressing and so on , but there are witty and true phrases. E.J. Levy's collection is meant to "take readers through the surprisingly erotic terrain of the intellect, offering a smart and modern take on the age-old theme of love - whether between a man and a woman, a man and a man, a woman and a woman, or a mother and a child - drawing readers into tales of passion, adultery and heartbreak"  The stories start with despair and end with despair but despair is funny. The love stories are delightfully absurd in which often a lot of people do not want to acknowledge love often is. In "The Best Way not to Freeze" a mid-thirties lecturer who ".. liked the ironic juxtaposition - a flyer on hypothermia tacked to her freezer door. As a scholar , it was her jobs to see things in relationship to other things; the only thing she could not see

The man said that the radio coverage was piss poor. The only person good was the one in the radio room. The other two he said did not know anything.  He had been listening to live coverage of the gun battle between a city businessman and others. The fear was in their voices he said and as far as he was concerned the radio people were supposed to keep the fear to themselves and just recount what was happening. We were at Moray House Trust for a Celebration of the Life of Jessica Huntley. I had been asked to read. Like a few others in the audience, we did not really know about Jessica Huntley until she was dead .We were here though because the people who knew her asked us to join in the tributes. Her obituary in th e UK Guardia n describes her as an activist and publisher who co-founded Bogle L'Ouverture Publications BLP.  She was a founding member of the WPO and of the PPP. In my middle age, I have stopped mourning and grieving for the dead. I tend to believe we should

Night Cap. It has been a long time. I look around and I see you inside behind the glass checking your phone. I glance away.  You had said in an email three months ago that you loved and respected me and that you would let me know when you wanted to meet. I walked across to the tables furthest away. I looked back and realised that you might have seen me. It is the seventh anniversary of the day you sent the first email which had started with an apology for not getting back to me. You had said you hoped to meet me to talk about work then. So I sit and talk. The phone rings. I see your number. It has been almost a year since I heard your voice on the phone. Like how I walked away, I cut off the phone. The Gita though is in my mind.. what kind of jackass am I, 43 years old.. and hanging up phone on people who I care about. I had rehearsed in my head many times.. what would I say or do if I ever I saw the number again on the phone. I call back. Try to put on smiley voice and

The man asked me if I liked poetry and if I was familiar with Langston Hughes. I said, yeah yeah and he gave me the libary discarded 1945 edition of The Big Sea. Langston Hughes starts his story with throwing his books into the sea as he sets out on his first journey. I thought of the book itself.. the journey from Alfred Knopf publishing it on not the best quality paper during war time, to the Stanley Library Ferrum College from where it was discarded into the hands of a traveller to Guyana who then gave me. No throwing into the sea here. I am not too big a fan of poetry nor of biographies.. but the grey covers and the yellowed paper drew me in. The language is sweet and light. He tells his story about being black in different parts - Europe, Mexico, Africa, West Indies, different parts of the USA - with all the contradictions without any kind of bitterness. There are many moments of joy and love and sadness and irony.   His poems comes at random moments. He writes

Different people ask.. what work do you do now? The question is becoming more and more difficult to answer really, difficult to explain.. that paid work and unpaid work, there is no difference really. Twenty years after graduation and I have no job with a guaranteed income. My work day today so far has been helping with some chores and cooking bhaji and chunks for the first time; some conversation with a woman about using films to stimulate some social justice movements and conversation with another woman who said she liked the way I wrote about my vacation which was last week and not today. So as I go to plan to do the work.. work which has to bring in money because some money is needed and this year I break with the middle class, middle forties coolie man in that I end the year with less money and assets than I started with.. assets I mean which are useful. I have to write to GRA to appeal for a reassessment of my taxes but I am doing nonsense like writing this blog rather

The cashier at the roti shop said she thought I was from India. I wished I knew enough Dutch to say that  we both were from India a long time ago in a kind of a way. There was a strange feeling being in Surinam.. connected through some shared histories but also disconnected through separate histories of colonization. Ferry crossing Travelling by bus and boat is long, but you get to hear so much stories. I am fas' and  I listen to conversations. I watched the woman smoking and tried to listen in on the French Kweyol. There was a Brazillian man, a musician, who spoke to me in Portanol. He was coming from  'Batchica (Bartica)' where he played for miners  and was on his way to another mining camp in French Guiana. His wife was also playing different places and they were going to meet up in Surinam. (yes, I know enough portuguese and spanish to get this). Then there was 56 yr old Baba.. the seaman heading to a fishing boat in French Guiana.. cigarette in mouth, cigaret