Imagination, resilience and living in Guyana

This bush near my yard.. as a child I would have looked at it and imagined it was a magical forest with all kinds of possibilities.

As an adult though, it is an eyesore which needs clearing into a nice orderly thing which might not inspire exploration.

So as we live in Guyana, we have to find back that imagination of the absurd if only to overcome the unimaginable absurdities which already exist - whether in the police denying that they torture Chaka James (would they have admitted to it?) or in the silencing of the young middle class professionals who receive messages that 'the Government does not have confidence in them' so their clients have to find alternatives.

Therapy is expensive in Guyana - the quotations I received start at 50US an hour, and the other more experienced person said US175 for an initial diagnosis and then US100 on average for follow up sessions.

It is therefore cheaper to be mad.. and to look at the bush and see a forest.. and probably look at plastic bottles in trenches and see the permanent souls of reincarnated fish. (Some of us believe that the soul, like the plastic bottles in the trenches, are indestructible)

Resilience is how we manage to rebound from crises.. international crises, national crises or personal crises - the death of Michael Jackson, the results of the National Elections of 2011 or our latest break up or broken finger nail.  And survival demands some imagination in how we adapt and learn from these crises and our reactions to them.


Minibuses are a gamble.. so you have to steel yourself for all kinds of things. One evening, on my way to mandir, bus with loud music and red lights pulls up. Conductor comes out, pants below waist, singlet, shades on the locks on his head. As we approach the destination, I shout to the conductor I want the temple. Conductor shouts back at me.. arite.. de mandir. I jump.. not too many black people use that word.. man probably realises I surprised and then when we reach he open the door and shout back at me, big man, de mandir. Next night, the Indian lady conductor in the bus did not know what I meant by mandir.

On the picket line, the police inspector come up to me and ask 'You is Kissoon?'  We shake hands and he tells me that I am a smart guy and that dem tings I write about (letter about Indian arrival and sodomy laws?) have history.

So in the way that that we contemplate the police brutality and the minibus conductor rudeness, we could probably fantasize that it is possible that there is shared humanity with the police who might not be brutal and the minibus conductor who might not be rude and who want to connect, and therefore find ways to strengthen those connections with those who might be 'others' and not us.

But those ties though, could also bind us in ways which could cause further conflicts in the ways in which our principles become compromised.  Like when the Indian men who think rape of women is a joke are prominent at a lecture on women and Indian indenture - resilience is in finding other ways to condemn that joking and imagining that while those men were joking, others were being made aware and were inspired by what was being said. 

And so we can imagine that there might be ways to go through the ugly forest of the governance impasse, and the ugliness of the silencing and the injustices and the ways in which 'economic prosperity' is inverse to the development of our humanity and identify not only the monsters and slay them, but see where there are things to be treasured and brought to light.

But all of this of course is not what adults do.