Thoughts of a minibus traveller

Been awhile since the food craving and all the crunching.. chocolate, junk, food, more junk and then feeling restless all the time. wake up feeling like that and then the day is upside down.. having to talk at a thing which you did not want to attend and then also having to engage in things .. The management should have been hey.. slow down.. sit down.. one place and stretch.. but it was easier to go open packs of crunchy things and other things and eat and eat... belly a lil sick now.. and some kind of steadiness.. A project requires focus and concentration and open ness and learning and I should have remembered to ignore but I thought, let me do what I could do for now.. until I could do what I should do..  gathering the information and the tools and so.. Words not coming together for a thing which has to be written.. ideas not flowing and ideas mixing up with other ideas about things.. Feeling that in the past on a day like this I would have gone for a run, but the body n

Women asked if I aint hear that we going to orange up the city and so , as part of the activities for 25 November, International Day to Eliminate All Forms of Violence against Women. Another smart woman my age tells me of her near escape from an abusive husband and how even after she is divorced and living in a different country, she is still on the watch out. Years ago when I had first got involved in the work, the colour was Purple, and there was a man in Canada who had started a White Ribbon campaign for Men against Violence Against Women. I am not sure when the colour changed from purple to orange. Monday afternoon though, a man who could drive stabbed a woman because he could.  Regardless of the colours, there is an underlying culture, reinforced, that women are lesser than men, and that it is a big li Man who involved in Man's organisation said that he don't want gay men at the front of his organisation because homosexuality is 'antithetical' to manh

Late on the night of the 45th birthday a phone conversation with a loved one who you had never expected to have a conversation with again. Two days after the45th brithday..  hearing that.. nah you don't look 45 and then a while after wards 'you are late forties'... People walking past you no matter how hard your feet scissors and move and the tree branches you want to jump and touch seem out of reach. Taking longer to do things and learn things. A 13 year old and a 18 year old find you 'entertaining' after a difficult-ish workshop. The sleep is not deep and always feeling pains and sleepy and wondering about sleep and escape. Sitting in rooms talking to people about things in recent history, and accepting that some of the people were not born or barely born when that history was happening. Feeling smug that you not dying your hair even as it seems everybody you know is dying and then realising, that you looking at people to see if they are dying their ha

It is not my yard and the trees in it need pruning and other kinds of caring.  One tree with small green leaves and plenty plimplah (thorns) loosens during the rain and hangs down over the clothes lines and I curse when the tree brushes my naked back as I try to hang out clothes. The tree also blocking the sun from the clothes line. It is not clear how the tree got there, if anyone planted it. It is not a fruit tree, and no flowers on it. Just these bright green small leaves.. So I go chop off a branch and I feel bad as I cut it, but at least the clothes line is clear. Even though the tree bore me.. the leaves are soft and small.. but the plimplah is on the branch. The man next door has removed all the trees and replaced with concrete. It is scary.. long time coolie people used to like plant up dey yard but some new time coolie people remove trees.. there was jamoon, whitey, sijan, mango, suriname cherry, some banana.. rose bushes, bouganveillia..  all gone.. And I stop th

by Vidyaratha Kissoon Young black woman and young coolie man laughed in that could-not-help-ourselves way,  in the minibus driven by a man who face say that he not laughing at nothing. We were talking about suicide and how we tell the stories and try to understand the causes.  I had made remarks like  yeah.. I mean.. you lef yuh house and pass nuff nuff place where yuh could end yuh life and go somewhere far.. dat is determination… It is not proper to laugh about suicide or death really in many circles. What seems proper in Guyana though is to dig into the details of the life of persons who have taken their own lives and give some prominence and fame even to them. What seems proper in Guyana too is to go around in a quicksand of finger pointing and posturing over who is to do what about preventing suicide every time there is a suicide.  The PPP even had strategies which as with so many others, they never bothered with after launching, and the present Government i

by Vidyaratha Kissoon Market vendor said tangerine coming back –  is 5 for $200, nice small sweet ones and I know I remember when I was getting 10 and 12 for $100.. way back in the past , but things are never the same. But a small soda in the nice new cinema is $250  and one scoop of foreign ice cream is $200 so why not 5 tangerines. The sweet tangerines purchase was a nice Made in Guyana thing in a week of fear of floods and celebration that some places did not flood while mourning that places which never flooded, flood for the first time. Week started with Made in Guyana dark red water coming through the tap. This is not a PNC thing, it is not the fault of  Comrade Baby Doc Van West Charles since in the PPP days too, there were days that the water would be clear and the water would be dark and then of course there are many, many days when the water was cloudy as a kind of half way from red to clear.  Cloudy water as a sign of hope. One of my favourite shirt

It is not adultery because.... ... we not talking about having sex or we not having phone sex and we are not talking about even meeting up in person for juice or so.. .. we find words to talk about many things and even though the words come fast, nervous like sometimes because I think we both making sure the conversation and the words are neutral.. .. when you say your spouse don't want you to do something I keep my mouth shut and don't say.. but but.. but.. you can do anything you want right .. and I don't ask.. I wonder how your spouse feel about you talking to me... ... when you reach home and done the call I can't fall  back asleep easily because I keep wondering if I am doing the right thing in encouraging the conversations as much as I like them.. and then I fall asleep when I say over to you God.. if good is to come of this, then good will come, and if bad will come, let it only come to me becaue I know I could hang up the phone and because love is sup

by Vidyaratha Kissoon Diwali Night, or rather , my Diwali night. Sea breeze blowing the barbecue chicken smoke all over the people who are waiting on the motorcade. Even though I eat carcass, I feel bad.. the idea of the chicken smoke blowing through all the floats with the holy images and bhajans is not right. Women and girls selling lights, women and girls selling water, juice, Guinness, beer. I do my puja at home, light my diyas and then come out because of crass commercialism – I will get paid to write this column. I would not have come out otherwise. There are a lot of people. I recognise a family – three women. We start talking. They will celebrate on the 11 November. “Is why all of a sudden the change..” “All the time we been a guh good good why dem gah fuh change?” I tell them I am out on the seawall to find something to write about and they laugh. One of the women tells me “you are always so bitter. Why is everything you write so bitter, s

Cloisters, NYC, October 2015 Three major tasks to be accomplished in two days, different things which require different kinds of creativity .. weaving words, another one to weave words and images, and another one to weave words, images, video, activities for an audience with which I am least comfortable.. and thinking about all three instead of thinking of one at a time and moving on each one.. Procrastination sets in.. mind is whirling.. body feels still.. exercise routine is okay ish.. a distraction really but it is good to do.. and cursing that I cannot get through one thing at a time quickly... I wonder whether the brain energy spent fighting  to stretch the body and counter the sluggishness could be better utilised doing in going outside the box.. I am lucky.. I have cream soda and milk.. I have lime water,  I have sweet things.. I have work pending.. and payment once I get the work done.. well.. I have other distractions to say.. take a rest and do something else and

Man said that his uncle - 60+ years - drank poison for the third time. "De man like poison.. he put a shot of rum in de poison.. we kerry he public .. but when he hear he gun get charge $45,000 - he get away.. couple day after.. he come by me fuh lime.. he seh dat rum, lime and pepper does help get over de poison.. he had to go back to [private].. dem nah gun charge he $45000 but he mussee had to pay nuff million dollar ..man wife seh she sick and he chirren nah a do nuttin.. " No anecdote of whether any social worker intervened at any time from public or private hospital.  Another man said... 'dem gah fuh stop show Indian picture.. all ah dem a kill dem self'.. I tried to explain that things change and now people don't kill themselves as much in Indian pictures.. and then in 'My name is Khan'.. Kajol tells Shah Rukh "I will kill myself if you don't take him out" .. Every reported suicide in Guyana usually drives a series of lamentat

You say 'I reach home now... " and in this most recent ritual of adhoc late night phone conversations.. I reply with 'Good night' instead of 'I love you' or any such inappropriate adulterous thing. I am curious as to why after restraining orders and other ways of pushing away, and marriage.. why this new ritual and it cannot just be that you will choose from a list of people to keep you company on the phone as you go home late. Maybe it is .. and part of me is finding it funny that I still have some use as a great conversationalist ; and that there is no fiction like this. Late night and we are both kind of tired. There is safety no doubt in that people can hear your side of the conversation. And so no more intimate talk or personal talk.. there is politics, and coffee and cocoa plants and work and religion which I tried never to talk to you about before.   It is late night and I could keep a conversation flowing .. and try to fill the silences with po

by Vidyaratha Kissoon “You open de newspapers lately… yuh see wah a guh an?”.. almost midnight at JFK Airport in NYC and the tall man, who left Corentyne for greener pastures a few years after PPP came to power is on a McDonald’s break – eating fries while watching the clock. He is convincing me that Guyana is a bad place. “How de hell Ramjattan can be home affairs minister, Ramjattan ah defend criminal, even in he own village he defend criminal.. he nah gah wan police fuh wuk.. police in Guyana useless.. my parents were robbed three times.. they are coming up here finally… rice dead.. economy dead” The news of home when you are abroad can be scary. The prestigious New York Times has an article which starts off “Tangles of brush shroud the cement graves of this city’s major cemetery, among the largest in the Caribbean. Lumps of trash dot the fields. Mourners’ paths are overgrown with weeds. Decomposing bodies left above ground by funeral homes gi

People say Sunday is the NYC Marathon and I say oh oh, I hope I could avoid it .. thinking the marathon is a big thing. But there is a calling for church and I find myself, waking up early, getting ready and jumping in a train and then coming out and wondering as I walk to my favourite Brooklyn church about how I used to wonder about how people in Guyana travel for miles past other churches, mandirs and masjids to go to their favourite ones when there is no need really. Marathon is just outside the church. There are blue lines which nobody seems to bother with. The drums are drumming loud and the pastor in church pauses now and then as voices raise as people see their friends outside. The church was part of the underground rail road. I had finished reading Isabel Allende's Island Beneath the Sea , which was about the period of slavery. One of the hymns was Guide my feet - I don't know if it was selected for the race outside. Church is over and people come out to

Guarding the exhibits "So many of them are pretty girls, I wonder if they were forced into this lifestyle"... the woman guarding the exhibits in the gallery said. I had asked her what she thought of the exhibition . She had laughed and put one hand on her face - the way that many people do when they hear an unexpected question. We were facing the slide show of powerful images which was part of Zaneili Muholi's :‘Isibonelo/Evidence'.  She points to the images - "that's the artist". The woman said that she had seen one of the films as part of the exhibition and had heard one of the women say that she was encouraged to be a lesbian. I told her that people could be born that way. She said "well, it doesnt matter.. but when I read on the wall, the things which were done to them, that is not good, these things are bad". She was talking about the testimonies on the wall from South African citizens who had experienced the violence. The ra