Thoughts of a minibus traveller

Still shot from 195 Lewis Drums playing and the woman who did questioned whether she should be a Spiritual Baptist lay on the floor in a white dress as part of her initiation ritual in Barbados. The woman is lesbian and is conflicted about the faith. Barbados is on our mind  as Mia Mottley becomes the first woman to be Prime Minister after an elections in which Bajans seemed to reject the homophobia of the previous Governing party. The film has a lot of colour and images and the director said she joined the Spiritual Baptist faith after doing the film. But.. one person from the audience which filled up the Conference Room at the National Library asked what everybody else was wondering.. 'is what really happen at the end of the film?" The Timehri Film Festival 2018 and Guybow hosted a Pride Cinema Night on 29 May, 2018 at the National Library in Georgetown. The first film was 'Elephant' - a woman dancing almost naked on a street covered in body paint while r...

Saturday afternoon , Independence afternoon and Camp Street is quiet down to Regent Street. The place has a grey blue tinge after the rain earlier, sun is about to set. Place is so dead that my neck hairs raise as I start looking to see if anyone would come to rob me. I wonder where all the Carnival people gone. Minibus to Gardens "I only going to the gardens.. can't go further.. if you want you gotta go to the market and then get a bus which going all round... but gas too expensive.." I curse the Carnival and the people who think the roads should be blocked because people want to sport. Regent Street kind of dead. Nobody walking. No cars either. I wonder what the driver talking about. Reach the gardens... gardens still  open. Buses waiting for passengers. Barricades up. Police liming by the Barricades. No music as such,people moving. I hold in my belly and say, arite.. walk home time now. I look around for plantain chips... but nothing around. People sellin...

Facebook reminds me that on this day in 2010 I had chamomille and vanilla and honey tea to calm my 'flippin nerves'. Eight years later and I can't bend over to cry in frustration as I fail in one of the jobs which I did not expect to take on .. I can't bend over because the lower back is paining and the shoulders are paining and it is difficult to cry with  your head and body held straight up. I had promised never to cry again at this particular job, and the b-complex seemed to be helping. But sometimes, maybe the moon is too close to the earth.. and the mind and the body collapse. So crying can't happen to give release. Other things get thrown in.. I am careless in some work. Yoga is there. I try to do the yoga, and to breathe and so. Some poses work. Some don't. I am glad I can breathe and try them. The mind is not emptying though.. no matter what I try.  The lower back is stiff, none of the bending forward poses can release this. I couldn't hold...

"Is where yall going? Yall not going to town.. yall tell me yall going to town..." the woman shouted. The conductor tried to explain that the bus was going to Georgetown The woman raised her voice and said, no no... The driver looked confused and started responding. I was shocked. The bus had been quiet. No music. Driver moving nice and slow, and conductor also quietly asking people 'if dey going down' The voice was strong, trembling. I know the sound. The voice which might have been used to assert rights and dignity, but also now , as age and the confusion sets in,  communicates confusion. "Where is the gas station.. is where yall carrying me.." The gas station had been demolished for refurbishing. My mind is on the phone calls from the woman who wanted to borrow money. Something wasn't right in the way she made the calls. My mind is on the other woman, consumate professional, dressed to go to work at her gate while the caregiver waits ...

Breathing deeply. Inhaling the whiff of the cake baking. Nerves a bit tense.. not only the unfamiliar cake recipe which is my mother's favourite, but also from weeks of weirdness in which the past seems coming up as often as I try to let go. Breathing deeply and stretching. I am glad my mind is on the cake. My mind is not on the late night phone call from the loved one which ended in the quarrel and the painful hanging up and painful sadness of unmet expectations on both sides. Mind is on the cake and the irony of yoga for health with cake. Mind is not on the wishful conversations I could have had with the loved one about health and well-being and resilience and fantastic work. Mind is not on the other things which wind the body up. Mind is on the postures, and trying to do them in time for the 30 to 35 minutes of baking time which is needed. Back is not bending as it used to.. Pains are there again and I know that some of them have nothing to do with muscles but with th...

The man, a fish vendor,  is blowing the conch on the video and I rejoice. The students did an assignment around fish and fish vending. One of the students lives outside of Georgetown "in the country". I have a memory , when I was in the 'country' of  a man on a bicycle blowing the conch to sell  fish.  This vendor though is in a car, but still using the conch. I suggest to the students that they bring some of the 'country' to their assignment.  I am not a journalist and the teaching of the multimedia journalism course has meant pushing the students to go and find different stories (Video done by Julianne Gaul, Nathifa Punch and Simone Moriah Phillips , students of the University of Guyana ) Pandits blow the conch, the sanka/shanka, during puja. It is an art  to blow the conch. I have puffed my mouth swollen my cheeks and pushed out air and just got a wheezing sound. The students probably thought it was mundane, everyday.  Conch...

Dear pinkish mussaenda and red orchid I did not see you all the time even though I must have looked your way.  The afternoon was gray and as I looked around while standing on the bridge , I looked and saw to my surprise that the mussaenda which I thought had died and which I had forgotten about was actually blooming again. I saw buds on the dried sticks which had been my deep sense of failure at being able to maintain the yard and the few hardy trees which seemed to die when I attempted to nurture them. I could not believe that you mussaenda are there again, faint possibility of what might be possible, even if not flourishing and growing almost wild like in other places. As to you red orchid, I don't even know where you have come from. You are sticking out of an old tree, with another plant which is purple but there is something about the way in which you have been waving in front. I don't know if I should pay attention to you and if you will wither up if I do pay ...