Thoughts of a minibus traveller

By Joshua Bryant, Demerara - John Carter Brown Library, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8571926 Hey charlie,  I can't call you majesty and king and so on because majesty for me is elephants and tall trees; and macaws and scarlet ibis and so flying overhead ,  and king is about royalty which has expectations of subjugation from those of us who not king,  as we know kings and queens in your family had enabled the enslavement of millions of Africans and other people,  The Dutch Government apologised in December 2022 for slavery but you refuse to apologise and still come to be treated like "king." It is a shame you cannot do the right thing to start the process which understands justice as reparative and transformative and encouraging accountability. It is a shame that you are being feted by a Government which cannot provide reliable public services for its citizens even as the plantation systems allow extraction of oil for wealth for those...

Dear Toisha (d. 13 October 2026), Orlando (d. 14 Oct, 2026), Akeem (d. 18 Oct 2026), (Keron d. 19 Oct 2026) and children who have died by suicide ;   the other children who have died with adults in the MV Barima disaster ,  the children who have died in preventable deaths in the fastest growing economy in the world.  Om Sadgati.  Family  I do not know you but if I believe in Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam that the world is one family, then you are my children and I failed to protect you .  There is something sick about this country where people kill children in direct action and through neglect and in failing to address the violence which is flowing like oil through Guyana.  And that all of us in Guyana are responsible for all children, especially those whose families cannot care for them. Bhagavad Gita says that death is part of the journey and our souls move.  Gita though also talks about addressing the injustices and the values which create the ...

Ancestors  Ancestors on my mind as the last of my mausi (maternal aunts) has passed, and Pitri Paksh ends today.  Thinking of ancestors again as technician put me down as East Indian on the blood donor intake form and I told her nah, I mixed because I honour the non-blood ancestors that had to carve out space for me to be here.  Including trying to build up a kind of society in which connected by blood or unconnected by blood , we could thrive and that I, us could be in some 'better ' place. Thinking of ancestors as I sat with relatives to do pitri puja , and then practising the Ramayana singing with some of the youths as another kind of puja for the ancestors who found joy in singing this Ramayana with all its contradictions.   Mental Health Finding joy as I lamented the weird stresses, new stresses which are emerging, the increased tensions and energies in the environment; the removal of green spaces Development apparently not making this calmer or cooler, b...

  Students in the USA A woman filed a civil  lawsuit against 7 students of Cornell University .    The 7 students, all male, violated her in 2024 . The evidence includes messages in a group chat which included about fifty other men   who did nothing .  This suit has revived the revelations about the incidence of sexual violence on colleges and universities.  In India , hundreds of women marched in Delhi to protest rape and other forms of gender-based violence, some of them connected to life at University.   There is another story of two male students who held another man who was about to molest a woman. However, many people, including young men, have commented on the silence of the 50 men in the brotherhood which facilitated rape. Army man In Guyana, a youngish army man turned politician   allegedly assaulted his relatives. Charges were laid in 2023. His brotherhood in the PNC then in 2023 hoped he would do the right thing and...

Walk   Bright morning sun, lil breeze blowing and I set out to walk when I thought was not going to walk because I was afraid. Afraid because men on bicycles have robbed me in daylight and in twilight and in places where I did not think I would be robbed.   Afraid because men on motorcycles recently robbed two men I know in daylight walking in places where they did not think anyone would rob them and I have been thinking about that fairly empty stretch I would be walking Afraid because the journey was to the shraad rituals of someone my age and the sickness and death stories of men and others my age and younger got me afraid. I choose to walk though  Bougainvillea  I learn from listening to an online gaff with two white women in the morning that is good to imagine body as energy and exhaling good energies (or something like that). Did some breathing exercises.  Before that the Hindu woman born in Ghana from ancestors who had moved from India had led us in G...

Junction Bus drops me off at the junction. Agreement was for me to wait here.  Previous time which was my first time, I had to rush to get a car to move in  different direction. Kind of like life sometimes at cross roads when you just have to move. This time though, I can wait. There is no space really to wait. Heat and dust. Gas station. Minibus. Food place. Chinese stores.. the huge Chinese store with the smaller Chinese shops. Man sitting near a deep blue cart, coloured cloth covering some things. I think it must be food.  Move closer to him as there is nowhere else to go.  See the man hand moving steadily . Shaving ice.  I think to hell with sugar warnings and ask him for a small one. He points to the two customers waiting, one of them speaking in Spanish to the other. Both descended from Indian immigrants like me.  Hand moving quickly, smooth strokes over the block of ice nestled in a plastic bag.  Watch him open the shaver, put the trapezoid shap...