Blowing the conch to sell fish and press freedom..

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 blowing is not as exciting as say.. beauty pageants, or singing or so. When we talk about Guyanese culture and music, the conch blowers will not get the media attention that others get. Maybe there would be a chance if the conch blowers were in central Georgetown.

Life, apart from crime, happens outside of Georgetown 
There are not many stories from outside of Georgetown, or the coast.  I am glad that there is some stories about Hindus now and then in the Pepperpot of Guyana Chronicle coming from Essequibo, except of course the journalist seems only to cover the events of the Guyana Hindu Dharmic Sabha affiliates. I don't know if Hindu people have events in Essequibo.
There is a little article in February 1916 about a man in Canje who had a feast and prayers. This might have been a yajna. Hindu cultural life is outside of Georgetown, and happens in yajna and mandirs. The media stories though don't seem to bother with these kinds of stories any more.
When we talk of representation in media.. I look in the media and wonder as being Hindu is part of my identity, where is the Hindu life in Guyana's media?

Daily Argosy,

It seems during other religious and cultural festivals, only Georgetown people go to church or do things. Outside of Georgetown gets covered mostly when politicians or criminals are involved.

The Highbury Indian Arrival event is covered because the President visited and gave a speech. The other events for Indian arrival which happened in Berbice are not covered much. Phagwah it seems is only celebrated in Georgetown or at the mega melas.

The Internet should have been the opportunity to train and encourage persons to tell stories from other parts of Guyana. The Amerindian Peoples' Association  has trained young people to create and share media

Way back in the 2000s, when Internet was still not widely available, the first online news agency in Guyana was a Berbice Online News edited by Kinda Velloza. Maybe it is time for other people to consider using the Internet to share the stories from their villages and towns.

I tell a Hindu man in Canje who has some creative events to make sure he records them and puts them online, because nobody else will do that for him.

Media and power
"I will not be able to cover anything you are involved in" the journalist told me. Things were not good between us. I had started off as a source but then things degenerated. I am not sure if the lack of coverage was because of concerns about negative bias.
Since that time, I had to make sure that any thing I was involved in did not come to any of the media houses where the journalist worked.  It became difficult when I could not explain why I was not giving comments and so to other journalists from the same media because I did not want the stories to be rejected. It was a good time though, to push the journalists to other sources and find ways of getting issues raised in the media.
I had come to know most of the journalists through the work with Help & Shelter and later with SASOD. It was easy in Guyana I thought to get visibility in the media and I remember one time holding back a bit as I felt that the stories and reactions were becoming about me rather than the issues I was dealing with.  I also recognised that the media's power also was in how they did or did not cover certain people and events - for a variety of reasons. There were ways of framing stories and after awhile I stopped giving oral comments and emailed them to the journalists.
The media makes mistakes from time to time. The trouble is that the mistakes are often more permanent, more long lasting, more visible than say any apology or correction. This is true even with online media when the media houses do not want to edit the online stories. I have not had good experiences with trying to correct some of the stories. In the most recent experience, the editor  did not even bother to acknowledge the emails I sent.

When press freedom day comes around, and the media workers assert their position and role in the society to "keep power in check" , I wonder sometimes, when would the media also understand their own power and be accountable for that power.

I am grateful in Guyana, that the media has been mostly supportive of the issues I have wanted to raise.  There are important issues which have never made it to the media because of the biases of the editors and others with the power to decide what would be the agenda.

I hope that with the Internet, that people get to tell their stories. It will require some learning how to do so.

At the same time, I hope as the media 'keeps power in check', they will also show the accountability they demand of others.

I hope that we hear of the other sounds Guyanese make from the natural elements.