Thoughts of a minibus traveller

Extracts from Left Morning on the River by Cosmata Lindie; right top - Toco Toucan: Psychosis Series by Roberto Teekah; Right bottom Golden Sun by Elodie Cage Smith Komorebi (木漏れ日) Rickeisha Perreira stands on dry bamboo leaves in front of blue butterflies and reads her poem Komorebi.  She explains that Komorebi is a Japanese word meaning 'sunlight leaking through the trees'.   The room is bright,  but the work around features different amounts of sunlight related to the jungle. We are at Immersion:Into the Jungle  ,   the jungle represented by 35 different artists.   The jungle imagined with jaguars, different birds, not too many people, rivers, waterfalls , plants , snakes, underwater, above ground , dark, light, flowers. And the experience of looking at Morning on the River and standing up and imagining what it would be like coming down the river watching the deer watching the people. The painting kind of draws you in,  but I woul...

    Katahar seed "I have breadnut seed, you want? the man asked me.  Sun cooling down, Kumaka Santa Rosa on Friday afternoon. Some stalls setting up for the Saturday market.  Last place I expected to hear breadnut seed and thinking that I never really hear anybody in Guyana call katahar.. breadnut. I had come over to check out the oranges. A whole set of oranges spread over the stall. And some other packs of small vials - 'thing for pain.. all kind of pain'. I had asked for one orange. He had peeled for me, one with a rough skin.  I was to make sure the outside of the rind did not come into contact with my mouth as I sucked out the juice. "Breadnut.. you mean katahar ?".. I asked him with orange juice at the side of my mouth and on my fingers .. 'is where you get katahar seed from.. how your katahar get to ripen, when everybody say it scarce." Katahar lil scarce and price gone up and so. People always asking where have, and peeling and frying and freezin...

Denisse Tramolao , CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons Red Shoes on the seawall  "You know this violence getting worse, this place getting more violent" the teacher told me as we ate ice cream on the seawall. There is a nice breeze, not too cool, and ice-cream was cooling. We were watching on a bit, far from the  The Women and Gender Equality Commission and Civil Society National Reference Group hosted a Red Shoe event on the Kingston Seawalls on 25 November, 2024 as part of activities to commemorate the 16 Days of activism against gender-based violence. In 2 009, Mexican artist Elina Chauvet   created an installation of red shoes- zapotos rojas- to remember Mexican women who were killed in Juárez, Mexico. Since then the event has been replicated in other countries as part of the activism against gender-based violence. In the minibus to the seawall, driver was playing music where DJ was talking about battyboy and how he not into violence but self defence (against battyb...

Watching India from far "Why don't you want to come to India. how can you not want to see India.. aren't you Indian"? the man asks and texts me after. 2am where he is in India as he is home for the wedding of a lover. He is tired and emotional  so I try to tell him.. look, I don't need to go to India, India comes to me.  Modern  India with its sophisticated foreign policies has been embedded in Guyana long after the first indentured immigrants came.  Modern India with Bollywood and other things pushing 'Indian clothes' and 'Indian culture' which means consumption of Indian goods and services , far away.. I don't need to apply for the visa to go. And even if there were no prominent political visits after Indira Gandhi, India has contributed education, technical assistance, cultural connections, money and many other things to Guyana. The man does not understand my not wanting to visit India.. His residence and income are in the Middle East, and h...

Mental health gaff organised by CAISO.   The facilitator is talking about compassion , and doing some visualisation work.  Evening at the end of a strange Guyana day which started with Baba Prezzy trying to show he is a big man and hauling people at dawn to cuss up about contract delays and so on. Other people use dawn to pray, meditate and to get ready for the day ahead. World though has all kind of different people and gathering. Activity is to imagine a being which would give you compassion. And I thought about trees.  In another connecting discussion on another evening, the facilitator reminds everyone about the connection with every thing in the Universe (including the people who struggling to show power and who taking money to do work that they cannot do and so on, and the plants and animals and so) There was no discussion about what kind of beings to connect with . I could have created some magical thing but then magic is already around us in many ways. So the tree...

  Dear Diya  There is no breeze and I like how your flame is nice and steady. There are bombs going off all over, made from fire too, and bombs which we don't hear killing children and adults in places where Diyas might not be lit. It is just one of you this year again, part of the tradition as the soul of another relative moves on.  I am glad the flame came up at the relevant point in the prayers. Do those people who  throw squibs, and those who allow them to make noise also say prayers , preferring bombs and squibs in their worship to the quiet light you give? There are a lot of diyas and lights being lit around the place without the prayers. It is like if there is a need to remove the sacred Hindu from you , make you secular , no puja and so, just food and decorations and lights. Hearing how Presidents who aint Hindu lighting up diyas in their houses and so on, and in USA playing aarti and so.  But dear Diya, scary how some of dem coolie people think that w...