I have not seen anyone I would like to have sex with..

The woman with the PhD walking next to me across the beautiful courtyard and looked around and said crikey, no cute people here, "I dont see anyone I would like to have sex with.", this from a woman who a few days earlier had closed up my shirt buttons, and I feeling rejected because I thought that the burial ground blossoms on my chest was distracting her from her intellectual pursuits at the Caribbean Studies Association conference.

So while no one to have sex with, they definitely had plenty people to talk with though I felt very out of place since I can't talk the academic language very well and I can't understand it.

The sugar mill

"Set on 32 acres of Barbados' Platinum coast, this former sugar plantation epitomizes everything that is Caribbean. Lush tropical foliage, with a venerable Sugar Mill, stretching over one mile of powdery white sand beach. Almond Beach Village offers the entire family a quality Caribbean holiday vacation" is how they describe the epitome of everything Caribbean - you know, ignoring how Haiti cannot come to Barbados and Guyanese nervous about going Barbados, and the madness in Jamaica and so on and so on.

The sugar mill had some wedding thing in it and people were muttering about it, I thought was only me. Tourists like to have their photos taken there while getting married. People were silent and I reading Audre Lorde's essay on Transforming Silence into Action and I now feel shame that I did not say let us do something about that weirdness. I mean, do people go to Auschwitz to get married? A woman from Curacao when we were leaving said she could not sleep well, she did not know if it was the ghosts of the slaves which kept her awake.


Selling Guyana

The Professor of English from Canada told me he teaches Caribbean literature and I asked him if he teaches Guyana. He was good enough to look surprised and then asked me for Guyanese authors - and I feel like a Miss Guyana and say am Ruel Johnson and Rhyann Shah, and then my mind went blank, I remember Suspended Sentences.. and then Pauline Melville, David Dabydeen and Wilson Harris and he said yes.. he forgot they were Guyanese.

A young woman studying Indo Guyanese literature.. she and her husband there from Guyanese parentage, she cant get funding to come Guyana so she studying it remotely. They went to see Walter Rodney film to get a sense of Guyana. Another young woman coming back to work after her parents and everybody left.. but she smart, she done hook up with a senior government official and so on. Another woman tells me she cannot come to grips with returning to Guyana. Another man has bitter memories of being kicked out of UG while others from Guyana tell me that they have not been there for awhile.
A woman from Jamaica asked me, she say all the Guyanese she know in Jamaica are intellectual and bright and she want to come Guyana. Other people ask me if I think CSA would ever be held in Guyana and what is life like in Guyana. I love the look on their faces when I tell them about the sixth gay and lesbian film festival coming up next week.
This conference has three people who live and work in Guyana who there. The rest are 'from Guyana' in many different ways.


"Longitudinal studies"
I felt out of place, the academic language is high and I know that last year people noted that many presentations were not high quality for various reasons. The girl at the registration look at me and asked if I was a student registering, so I guess I had that kind of look of nervousness and enquiry or it might have been the tee shirt. When I look surprised, she say no no , they have students of all ages.

I explained to the professor of English about my presentation on beating children and he looked surprised, I guess that it was an issue here in the Caribbean. He asked me about longitudinal research work and in my head I thought shoots, what the hell is longitudinal research. He was kind enough to explain a lot of other things though and I hope he gets to do more on Guyana.

I gaff with the Bajan staff at the hotel. I asked the three women who worked as attendants at the Enid's Restaurant who were listening in keenly to the gender workshop from their place in the Kitchen, why they dont join the workshop. They said no no and smiled.

Rum and violence

The waitress look at me as though I did a bad thing when I told her I dont want rum punch. She says what, how come, take one.. .

Somebody ask me why I not going to take a drink and I explain I dont drink alchohol and got another one of those looks. One of the nice women from UWI said yes, she knew first nation people in Canada who did not go to events with alcohol . A few other people look at me kindly, like how those of us who nice does look at mad people who we know cannot bother us.

There were no presentations at this conference about everyday experience with violence, about rum and violence in the Caribbean. Maybe because the academics live in places where there are no problems with alcohol and violence and hush hush.. we staying at an all inclusive which serves alcohol. I hear an Indian/Sindhi Bajan man on the LIAT flight telling the flight attendant how come there is no Caribbean rum.. as he bought his johnny walker.

Cheers!