Thoughts of a minibus traveller

Vidyaratha Kissoon   “Help me hey, what dis mean” the man at the ATM asked. Pay day and it seemed that his wages had not been transferred to his account. He asked me to try again. He checked his balance –  $237. He looked uncertain. He had no way to call the employers to find out as it was after 4pm.  Man probably had bills to pay, things to buy and between the bank and the employers, the wages not there, and nobody to ask when the wages  would be there in his account. Taxi man earlier in the day said he not making his weekly payments to the base. Money not circulating. He working longer hours and not making it. Another taxi man had the placard he held last week outside the Minister Ramjattan’s office. He says he has been dealing with police harassment since 201 2 when his daughter was hit down on the road by a police officer. He has a documented set of incidents of the harassment. Woke up Friday morning and grateful that the Hyrdomet office was ...

Orchid at sunset The woman asked ' who owns a business here' and a few hands in the crowd went up slowly. It was like one of those evangelical self help thingy meetings and I was feeling a bit off. The woman asked again and I put up my hands. It was a kind of stupid thing to do , but at the same time, I wondered about moving from being 'self-employed' to being an entrepreneur marketing well.. myself. Of course for taxation and other purposes there is a difference between Vidyaratha Kissoon, Self Employed , and Vidyaratha Kissoon, Chief Executive Officer/Managing Director/General Manager/Executive Director of Vidyaratha Inc. or ChocLuva Enterprises? And when people hear 'sell yuhself', first thought might be sex work (and I was asked once, a long time ago.. how much I would charge... hypothetically I think but then again.. ). I know there are some one man/one woman corporations (just as how there are some one man/one woman NGOs and so ) but what if I ...

Pictures could tell a thousand words but then there are some pictures which need words to make them and I realised recently that there are times when I am stuck because I cannot decide on the composition of an image or what picture to take if there is some moment to catch, or whether to just try to record words.  Some discipline is required to decide. But here are some pictures which I  wish I had taken... Eating warm puri and fish cake in a bus in Linden on an early rainy morning  Marvelling at how a bus which was hot and humid while waiting to full in the rain then becomes so cool with breeze on the highway less than an hour away that most of the windows have to be closed The idea of cooking chunks with carrots and tomatoes and peppers and realising that it looked better than it tasted, though it aint taste bad, but it make a nice picture for this blog Seeing a man with locks and tatoo walk in the drizzle under a blue umbrella patterned with flowers which r...

by Vidyaratha Kissoon “The disturbances – I was ageable, I remember. The river was full of East Indian people. A man was trying to swim across, and he did not reach and he could not come back an’ he drown” The man had stopped to talk when he saw me taking pictures of the Hamilton Sawmill Boiler in Wismar, Linden.  There is something about the way the boiler ruins still stand up. The man and I marvelled at their strength. There was bush growing on the ruins.  I could hear birds singing inside – probably from a nest somewhere. The man spent most of his life in Wismar and said that the boiler was always there. There are not many places in Guyana which have memories of our ‘industrial revolution’ . The man and I talked about the 2012 protests.  The police had killed Ron Somerset, Shemroy Bouyea and Allan Lewis on 18 July 2012 at the Wismar Bridge. The man said, “Dem police did come fuh kill, was bullet,  no pellet”. The injuries included gunshot ...

The woman said that it was not easy, the separation. It had been 29 years of marriage, she had invested everything and worked at it, but it failed. She picked the last book - well I encouraged her to take it - a little  because I did not want to fetch home any books but more because I think she used to read and had stopped reading and had not talked about reading for a long time. We gaffed a bit about the loss of dreams and what might have been.  She was trying to find back herself , it had been so long she said. People kept looking for books for their children. "Not for me, I don't read much" But your children would not read if you are not reading! The groundings this time with the Free Books, Free Magazines was near the People's Parliament and the topic "Why marry?" with the subversive agenda to impose homosexuality and gay marriage on the Guyanese reading nation so that the future of human kind will die out and so.  A lot of people think marr...

by Vidyaratha Kissoon   The coolie man with the green APNU tee shirt had me taking a second look since it was the Friday around 130 pm – a few hours before this column is due – and I wanted something to write about and he was not wearing a PPP shirt. The man was stomping the grass near a lamp post – kind of like how we had to stomp down the grass weeks after the Clean up at the picket for Courtney Crum Ewing.  The man started to pee near the lamp post on Middle Street not far from some of Georgetown’s fine old buildings. I turn into Main Street  and there is a small jeep. PRR series, and man in nice shirt and khaki shorts kind of standing up not far from where Sacred Heart Church was. He was not far from Qik Serv where you could use the toilet if you are a customer (or buy a ¼ pint ice cream or cheaper pastry). But the man was there, kind of behind the jeep door and hiding and not hiding at the same time. Earlier in the week, I was at one of the most b...

The white upright lily that lasted forever is now aging gracefully and it is slow.. not like some flowers which shrivel up and die quickly. But even in aging, the colours of brown and  yellow are interesting.   Funeral of a nice man whose death has marked the end of phase perhaps. Another relative confirmed with cancer - relative who was 'good good good' a week or two ago. Feeling foolish after not stopping to help a man who had a jute bag of bottles that might have been broken and he not sure what he want to do with them. He fell down twice he said.. riding from Sophia with them and he trying to do the right thing. And I said okay and walked on and wondered what I should have done instead because the man was not sure what he wanted to do. Binge eating junk. Money in the pocket and every place I pass I can buy so I go and buy even though I am not hungry. Never mind that the stomach feels sick after and there are deep regrets after eating the junk and thinking t...

by Vidyaratha Kissoon  The young man driving the shuttle to the mall asked “Uncle you aint coming” and I said “Nah man, I gun walk” and he looked a little puzzled. I wanted to experience the road my money had built “leading to jobs” , with the pavement which was slightly tilted. It is always nice to walk on a pavement in Guyana. The mall is not far from the Arthur Chung Convention Centre where the draft Youth Policy was  discussed. There were intense discussions about Guyana and what it means to be Guyanese and youth entrepreneurship and employment. Two of the people who were part of the discussions had asked me about what the building was and they realised that they were not far from the new Mall which would probably be more attractive than the National Youth policy or any discussion on any policy. Giftland used to be one of those Guyanese things which the tourism people probably would not have publicised – a place known for selling pirate DVDs and many ...