Thoughts of a minibus traveller

The National Library's yellowed copy of EM Forester's Mauric e is the book I am reading to close 2009 and open 2010. I renewed my National Library membership in 2009   Maurice   would have come in 1972 just after it was published in 1971. I am trying to imagine what the librarian who did the cataloguing must have thought when reading the introduction notes.. this book about homosexual love. The fly leaf has a note in pen from one of the borrowers 'if you are gay or bi call me on x... , (2008) " and then there is another  librarian note which says 'pen scratches in book '.. Since renewing my membership, I borrowed and read The Outsider by Camus, and The Bamboo Sword and Other Samurai Tales by Shuhei Fujisawa. I long for the day when the National Library would have up to date books to lend, and that books could be ordered like how it used to be. As I try to keep on and also encourage others to read, I have to mourn how our library does not even have recent or...

The elderly lady, Mrs M, rode up on her bicycle and took out the tin and the packet of sweets from a bag. She  opened the biscuit tin and asked me to open the packet of sweets.  And then she went down the line, and gave us two biscuits and a few sweets..  to each and every one of us .. no passing of the tin down the line or anything like that.  She also gave the police in the car , one or two did not take from her. She comes to join the picket sometimes, she has a grandson and she is concerned about child abuse and the cases which never get to completion. A woman said  what was on all our minds.. Mrs M reminds us of grannies, our grandmothers. My naanee (maternal grandmother) was like that, always finding something sweet to give us, regardless of what my mother said. Gooseberry stew was her favourite, or biscuits or fudge.. everything a treat from some bottle or old tin. My great aunt was like that too, one time we went by her .. we were on punishment and ...

"..In short, everything - all the mobility, all the aliveness , all the pregnant vigour, of this array of symbols that shimmers in my awareness - is, in relaity, death. Death in the guise of movement and sunshine, death in the guise of green leaves, and a pattern of sounds, death in the guise of human figures loving and fearing and fretting over the making of money..." This excerpt from "My bones and my flute" is one of the many examples of the amazing writing of  Edgar Mittelholzer. December 2009 marks his 100th Birth anniversary  .  There was a lot more excitement about gaza and gully this year than about one of the most prolific Guyanese authors. There are many scholarly reviews of Mittelholzer's work. I like the idea of a man writing from the place where he lives and creating stories and characters out of people we could know. Guyana seems to become more irrelevant in literature as the years go by. we hear that Mittelholzer's first book was publish...

Palymra The joys of travelling in public transportation to Berbice, waiting for the car/bus to full. A cheerful man is in the car, glad to see me so we could gaff. We do the usual where you come from where you going. The chip man throw four pack plaintain chip and one pack cassava chip in the car and tell me $300. Something about Berbice breeze, I start on the plaintain chip. The front seat man say he dont want any, is okay. He going on a medical appointment, kidney stones. We start comparing our kidney stones, remedies, doctors, treatments. Well he do most of the talking because I move on to the next plaintain chip and then the cassave chips so I can't talk. The front seat man say I should go back to Corriverton and walk and he willing to host me after the holidays. He say he is a batchie though so you only cook when you hungry. Nice thing about many Guyanese, very open , hospitable. He say the medical apointment will cost $200,000. He is holding on to his bag close, and I thin...

Nuff death these last few weeks and then today the bookclub talked about Anthony Winkler's The Duppy and The Fortean Times book of Strange Deaths. With all the wonderful literature around, how does the book club end 2009 on the subjects, of death dying and duppies.. well it was our comedy month, the light month and well , yep the suggested books were these two.. about death so yes, the book club members are laughing at death.. The Duppy is funny in the beginning, Taddeus Augustus Baps gets a heart attack, turns into a duppy and has to join a minibus to get to heaven.. a journey he not prepared for.. book gets boring towards the end. Strange Deaths chronicles reports of , yep, strange deaths from newspaper clippings around the world.. Can we choose how we die? Some of us pondered if we could , can we die in a weird and wonderful way.. memorable, not a boring heart attack or of some incurable disease. Two doctors apparently died of viagra overdoses.. well that might have been a s...

RED THREAD PRESS STATEMENT, MONDAY NOVEMBER 30, 2009 A plague on all their Houses - The state’s, for rampant lawlessness and shrill dismissal of constructive criticism The Joint Opposition Political Parties’, for craven inaction on personal violence even as they address public violence We have called this press conference for two main purposes: One , after many weeks of picketing by Red Thread, Grassroots Women across Race and Help & Shelter to demand the speedy passage of the promised sexual offences legislation, to express our disgust with the failure of Parliament to give violence in personal relationships the same priority they give (although with different perspectives on the two sides of the House) to public violence .  Our support for the call by the Joint Opposition Political Parties for an International Enquiry into all the public violence of recent years does not lessen this disgust. To remind the media and public of just one example of the...

I have had some fantastic, not so fantastic and bad encounters with men the last few weeks, mostly young men. International Men's Day is how some men designated 19 November, but it was not observed. An amazing guy I know has a friend who mourns the lapse in their friendship. This guy took a break from life it seems, and if I am lucky I meet him on the seawall and we can gaff about books and philosophy. I never get to tell him that his friend misses him for fear that I might misrepresent the feelings. Another guy asks me what I do when I am depressed. He feels useless.. and I want to tell him how much I hold him in high esteem for the work he has done and the cuss up he has taken bravely. But that might just freak him out, so I encourage him to go exercise and get moving. Fortunately he does, and I dont think I have to tell him that he is one my heroes... one day when I am drunk I probably will. Another man called me, deeply concerned about his friend in another country who is ...

U a coolie? asked one of the persons commenting on this blog, and it is a question I have been considering for some time, since I was called a stupid coolie fool in High School. Growing up in Guyana, I am conscious of two things.. since my ancestors (or most of them) came from Inda and my family and I are Hindu, then we could fit into a nice 'East Indian' box. All of that went out the window though when I went to Birmingham , UK to study and I realised that I was completely out of sync with the 'Asian' population - could not speak the language, did not have the hangups, and did not feel the need to party or to take time out from the boxed identities.. which ended up with me being Vice President of the African and Caribbean Students Society. I was called Paki a few times there, even as a lot of people told me I sounded ' black'. In 2002 at the height of the mayhem against "Indian" people, there was a lot of assertion about coolie and Indian identi...