Thoughts of a minibus traveller

(First written in 2010 and updated with images from 2013)  I first  made ratatouille was in 1993 and I have been wondering how to do it since then.. courgettes have a different flavour from squash. So I made this after consulting with local experts and also eating a delicious one at Oasis Cafe. This should be made the day before needed. Ingredients 3 baigan - peeled cut up into cubes 1 small squash 2 Butternut squash if you can get them cheap.. peeled and cut up into cubes. 6 or more of the small sweet peppers - or 1 or 2 big bell peppers if they cheap 2 carrots - sliced 3,4 onions - chopped 4 cloves garlic- chopped 1 or 2 wiri wiri or madiwiri pepper. chopped I have also put in pumpkin My mother said Nenwa would also be good to add. Tomatoes.. depending on price. I put about a 1/4 pound, but if they were cheaper, i would put more - chopped into nice chunks. Keep the seeds and juice. Tomato paste, a small tin. Salt - if you need it. Some oil to chun...

Comrades, first of all thank you for coming here today to this place built by the same people who built the ultramodern sugar factory. I have a busy schedule this Christmas and I could not come to your individual places to bring you the good news that I will save your Christmases. Comrades, first of all, it is a lie that this government is not concerned about sugar. The Ministry of Health has embarked on an ambitious diabetes programme because there is just too much sugar in the population, and we have taken a national policy to reduce the glucose levels in the population. Furthermore, we are interested in sugar because my friends in the drugs.. I mean pharmaceutical industry will sell lots of sugar tablets and insulin and so on to us in Government and elsewhere. Comrades, you know that i never fail to take an opportunity to cuss back those who want to cuss me. To all those sour old men who still want to talk about struggle and working class and sugar workers.. i tell them, go to ...

The minibus driver asked a lady if she would move from the jump seat near the door because she was slowing up the flow of passengers. The lady said no, she has rights and she comfortable where she sit down. The driver start grumbling and there was back and forth. A little later on, another passenger ask him if he still vex, and the driver say no, no use crying over spoil milk , that he done wid duh. Sunday night on CBS, they had a 60 minutes interview with people who had the Gift of Endless Memory . One of the woman, Louise Owen, said that while it could be a blessing, this memory means that all the bad things could also be remembered. "When asked if her extreme memory is a good thing and if she's glad she has it, Owen said, "I am. I mean, sure, there are times when it's difficult. But I feel like it makes me live my life with so much more intention and so much more joy." Asked what she means by "more intention," Owen said, "Because I kno...

The book club is reading A Christmas Carol by  Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens was a prolific writer and turned to writing Christmas stories so as to make some money. It turns out that A Christmas Carol is one of the favourites.. with things like Scrooge and Bah Humbug now being enshrined in common legends. Charles Dickens we learn was able to write about London poverty in ways which other authors did not and apparently was able to bring out some changes through the writing. The book was apparently a catalyst for new Christmas traditions. What was fascinating was that Dickens wrote a lot about the food and merriment.. and very little about the religious aspects. Scrooge did not get his inspiration and goodwill from going to Church and hearing inspirational hymns - but rather from people - in his youth, and the Cratchitt family and his nephew Fred with the plump girls and so on.. just how Guyanese will be inspired by Mavado and Kartel and so on this Christmas, no more Christ he...

The book club had done this book - some people liked it, some did not. Yasmina Khadra is the pen name of a former Algerian army officer Mohammed Moulessehoul. Dr Jafari is an Arab-Israeli (like how we have Indo Guyanese and Afro-Guyanese and Oversease based Guyanese) surgeon who enjoying nice middle class life in Israel, until he gets the shock out of his life when his wife becomes a suicide bomber - not for the cause of the middle class Arab Israelis, but for the Palestinians. The man becomes a suspect.. he thought that he and his wife were separate from all of that. He then tries to go look for answers as to how and when his wife decided that she would kill herself. He has to go back to where he and his wife came from and the journey is not pretty.  He has his Israeli friends and so on who are trying to get things back to what they were. It is a novel story, not an easy one but one could imagine when in some families where people do things like kill themselves, they ask w...

Civil Society We had been told that we were not going to be sitting at the same table as the Ambassadors and moderator. I was surprised and a bit put off  when I realised that that we were actually going to sit with the 'audience'.. and be speaking as though from the floor to the 'head table 'rather than from the head table to the floor - to add to the wonderful experiences in my life, I was going to be speaking to people who were sitting behind me. Our plaques said 'civil society' .. last year, thankfully, the plaques of Vivek Divan, Viktor Mukasa, Kapya Kaoma, Indyra Mendoza and Sass Rogando Sasot had their names. We heard someone say something like "this is civil society"..  . just 'civil society'. So we shook hands with, but were not introduced to the UN Secretary General. Justus Eisfeld who read Buse Kilickaya's statement, Linda Baumann and me It is not sometimes human rights... UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon addres...