Murder, mosquitoes, dark chocolate, thriving in Guyana

A beloved friend gave me one of these Ghiradelli Chocolate squares.. 72% Cacao it says.. and an hour or so my manic thoughts moved from the 23 murders in two months; the mosquitoes from the stagnant drains created by the large concrete structures going up in the prosperous land creating swamps; to thoughts of  thriving in Guyana


Thriving without surviving
Some of us are lucky.. we have work, we have homes, we have health, we have things. Others do not have these things or only some of them. Many people pay different prices for these things. One of the prices is silence. After voting in November 2011, many people will remain silent, or be selective in where they air their voices and concerns. These silences, to quote Audre Lorde.. immobilize us , the fear of speaking out and identifying on working on the things which will make us Thrive. Guyana has a lot of opportunities for us to overcome our fear f silence. Thriving in Guyana means accepting that we were never meant to survive.

Celebrating differences
In any society, it is easy to be boxed into identities - race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion. In Guyana , it is easy to avoid differences, or to silence talk of differences. Some people say we should 'tolerate' our differences. In Guyana, I have learnt that tolerance is not acceptance. One opportunity we have in Guyana is to talk through those differences. Some people do not want that to happen because their power comes from reinforcing the divisions without any attempts at bridging. There is sometimes a desire to suppress rather than celebrate because power could then come from sameness.
I do not accept all differences.  What has been good in Guyana is that some people are finding ways of discussing the differences.. it is not always easy. So I like the blogs by Alex De Freitas and Iana Seales  .  There are Facebook Status updates and facebook notes which are made seemingly in some security of privacy but revealing none the less but open up discussion.

I like my book club even though I cannot read half of the books because of all the side conversations and the opportunities presented to read and learn. There is this challenge.. I am reading with difficulty, Ficciones by Borges.. but there is a madness in facing that challenge which is perhaps facing the challenges of living in Guyana.

Creating where nothing exists..
Guyana does not have many things. A lot of us have tied our destinies to the political parties in power.. subservient to that politics rather than make that politics work for us. Some of us choose to work outside of politics. Thriving for me in Guyana has meant doing things.. working on things to fix what might seem cannot fix. So.. there are things like the SASOD Film Festival now going into its eighth year.  This film festival is uniquely Guyanese in its organisation, in how it is managed and how it is received.

Others have created businesses, experimented with ideas, managed groups. It is not easy.. things are not perfect, but thriving in Guyana means doing things, not just talking about doing them.. and learning by doing. We can find ourselves in places where we never imagined - including jails or police lock ups... Some of us might have to leave Guyana for awhile and then come back - sometimes not for long. The lil Ramayana Gole we have is good for exercising the vocal chords and for being part of a cultural tradition and we have sustained ourselves now for over 20 years.

The Georgetown Chamber Chorus is an example of how people overcome the nothingness.

Garbage
Many of the people who thrive and survive in Guyana have learnt to generate garbage and leave it - just deh. The garbage pileup in Guyana is symptomatic of how a lot of us who live here that Guyanese means bad somehow. It might be jokey... but somehow in the criticisms that nothing better can be expected. One of the things about thriving in Guyana, is refusing to let others think that we live here because we cannot do better, or that we get away with things here we cannot get away with elsewhere. Some of us want to blame leaders for the rubbish.. the leaders which we want to march for and put our faith in. I think that Thriving in Guyana requires us to accept responsibility for our own well being , being active in pursuing that well being and realising that we will never be well when others cannot be.

I have some more chocolate in the fridge for later.