Thoughts of a minibus traveller

Leo Sampai has a dream of bringing the Rainforest to the residents of Paramaribo - through the Maroon inspired wood furniture and juices available at his shop at SMS Pier. I had the Açaí  ("podosiri" ) juice for the first time - apparently the palm fruit is very nutritious and Leo would like it to become popular in the city. The shop is in SMS Pier, and Leo has designed and worked all the wooden furniture and the counters . At first you might think you can only look at them, but Leo says no .. sit on the chairs. There are not many places in the Caribbean where the man blending the smoothies is the man who worked the furniture, and the man who has dreams that it would be possible to make money out of bringing the fruits of the rainforest to the city. Bench at Tembe Bad angle of a chair at Tembe Bowl carved by Leo The son of the President of Suriname plead guilty to charges of aiding Terrorism but Suriname is generally cleaner...

Corentyne River The man looked at the food (chicken fry rice) I was eating and made signs for the rest in the box and spoke in Dutch. Indian (Hindustani?) man, clean shaven, hair combed nicely, clothes neat but old. Sun is setting.  The man looks at me and says something about "Bharatdesh"  and I realise that he is asking me if I am from India . I say Guyana and he switches to English. His English is perfect. I am shocked. He tells me that I am not rough like the Guyanese he knows and I say like you never meet any rough people from Bharatdesh. He takes the box and spoon from me , takes out the pickled pepper and is eating slowly and looking at the water. I ask him about work and he says he is a carpenter but has not worked for a while as work is hard to get. He is waiting for the graduation ceremony for Anton de Kom at a nearby hall so he could park /watch the cars because 'the junkies will break them'. I ask him if he goes to any church and he says no ...

The lady in the ATM line at the bank said she was a teacher, she asked if we had more poems because she knew Martin Carter but did not have any of his books. She thought it was a good thing we were doing. Another teacher also stopped, she was very bright and glad to talk to us.. she said she has been a teacher for 21 years and a single mom for 14 years. She teaches in Mahaica and she said the parents are not interested in the children's education in many places and hence the children cannot do well. She thought it was a good idea. A lot of people passed and looked at us and looked away or said not now. The corner is a strange one, people are passing and not looking at anyone. The books are on the concrete wall but nobody is stopping.  We put them on the grass. Some people stop and look and pick up the magazines Lina is talking to a man with a book in her hand.  Amarydha has the basket of pink slips with the Martin Carter poem on them. I have the camera and...

Work thing was cancelled so day was supposed to be used for investment to make money but.. The email from the brilliant woman I was at school with whose personal crisis was exposed and who responded to my email in the most dignified perfect way which spoke to recovery and coping with that crisis and acknowledging my polite intrusion in a way which almost brought tears to my eyes; and the other woman who I was at school with dealing with another crisis which had nothing to do with the crises of school work which we used to talk about . Wondering wonder back to those days when we were all in school thinking of exams and careers and not family making and family breaking..and mourning the loss of how life turned out .. celebrating not the academic and professional successes, but that one woman (whose incisive intelligence and memory are amazing) is navigating her way through her family dysfunctions; another girl (who you used to compete with at school) left her abusive marriage; an...

From http://www.guyfolkfest.org The Blog was nominated for the the Godfrey Chin Prize for Heritage Journalism which is being managed by the Guyana Cultural Association of New York Inc and won Second Prize. The first Prize went to Gaiutra Bahadur for her amazing blog around her book Coolie Woman : The Odyssey of Indenture . The second prize was shared with Dmitri Allicock who authors Oh Beautiful Guyana . The third prize went to Ingrid Griffith for her one woman production Demerara Gold  A brilliant writer had told me a few weeks ago that he could not do a blog because he could not bear to write anything which people would not read. Most of the posts on this blog do not get 40 visits, and I am not sure how many of those are those spammers. I would never pretend to be call myself a journalist, but it seems that the definition of journalism is evolving in terms of story telling and writing about being in a place even if few people are interested. My head is swel...

So you decide to go and do the yoga routine, with the waist feeling stiff and the back feeling weak. After 10 minutes you still cannot get started and you find that your mind is wandering and you have not moved to the first pose and you want to get up. But something inside says, No, keep at it.. try. Yes the waist is hurting, and your head cannot reach your knees like it used to, but keep at it. And that is how shifting the dark heaviness is sometimes.. faint glimmers of things which say keep moving.  So some eucalyptus oil to help with the deep breathing because you do not feel like breathing deeply, in fact you do not feel like doing anything. And that is the time when you must do something. It is not a good time to study. Memory is no longer what it used to be and the Sanskrit words dance in and out of short term memory even if they have had the chance to go behind the dark clouds to stay in the mind.  It is easier to remember the high school French for some reason....

Gulliver called to ask if I was there already since Granny would be coming to collect the books. Granny also called when I was near there - High and Hadfield Streets. I choose to go near the Parliament buildings because the pavement was broader. The other grounder had texted earlier to say she was not coming so I had to rearrange and prepare to do this alone - new site, on my own and with performance different. Idea is to get people to read, think talk about love and revolution and Guyana in general. Please take one FREE!! I lay out the magazines and the sign on the black cloth . And the newspaper boxes which I had made. I had visions of sharing out the boxes with something in them but the pebbles were too light and the boxes kept blowing away. Performance requires good knowledge of stage and props and I laughed at the breeze blowing away all the visions I had of these quirky things. Granny took two magazines and left. So, me alone. I start asking people if they wa...

The sun is hot and the body is lethargic and the spirit also feels the same. The brief away from Guyana was good for the soul and the return has been wearying for the soul . A man who told me he loves me said  " Try to find joy no matter where you are friend." Meetings in which I see how foreigners treat Guyanese and Guyana as ignorant, (maybe we are so I should not be angry with the foreigners), young people who supposed to be forward thinking who having conference but everybody who goes must be in semi-formal dress to create the 'serious' atmosphere and the plane trip home was not long enough for you to remember how you are supposed to find joy and you have forgotten how to find joy. But food is good.. eating curry with dhal and wiri wiri pepper after two weeks away and oats and banana and fruits which actually have taste.. but the eating is also of other junk which I have heard also contributes to the feelings of heaviness and lethargy.. even though sw...

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In a large city with nuff people, when I cant read on the train so I mind people business and I watch the young white guy reading assata shakur's book and peeping into the phone of the black guy next to him.. phone held far because black guy like me and have eye problems. And I wonder if anybody watched me watch the boy watch the man phone. I did things like say morning and good evening to people I pass.. some look at me like I mad while others replied.  1. Red sutra Minding my business, walking in the mall and I feel someone hold my left hand and shake it while a little Peace gold card thing is being put in my right hand. A short Tibetan looking man is saying peace peace peace and then a red sutra, thread is on the right hand. I tell him it is okay he can keep the gold card and then he shows me donation sheet for shrine .. build build; he says.. and I see that there is a list of names and 20. I give 1 . I now imagine how my pocket could be picked  Thirty minutes...