The colour of guava jelly and other lessons from Ms Magda Pollard

Guava jelly
"What was the colour of the jelly like?" Ms Magda Pollard asked me.
She had arranged for me to  get some guava jelly from the Carnegie School of Home Economics to take for a relative.

The jelly was delicious. I didn't think about colour. She explained that the presentation was as important as the taste. The jelly should be clear, and have a reddish brown. She told a story about making a jelly dessert during her student days. The jelly was made in layers. They had to do each layer separately then let it set, and it took a day or so to do.

I remember when someone had donated a cake to an event we both attended. A lovely rectangular cake, laid out in a silver baking foil tray. The person had surrounded it with white flowers and leaves. I thought the layout was pretty. And that it reminded me of a body lying in a coffin at a funeral.

I remember there was a little disturbance. Ms Pollard had intervened.. yes that is the word I am thinking of - and removed flowers and leaves. She said that it was not hygienic,  - flowers and leaves might have things on them and should not be near the cake. 

There is something about the attention to detail. Not about being fussy, but about being patient. And something in my mind that the cake was better off without the flowers and leaves. Simplicity is okay. Other  women I know, older women of the generation who took time to write neatly, same kind of philosophy. Take your time, get it right, no fuss needed too.

(This blog is not a tribute to them as it might have many mistakes )

Old girl and old boy of Bishops'

1994. PPP won the elections the year before. People talking Black and coolie more openly. Not fixing anything but talking.

I had started working after University and thought it was time to give back. I joined the Bishops' High School Old Students' Association. With all of the quirks, the five years I spent at Bishops were part of my life.

I met Ms Magda Pollard - retired, forty years older than me in the Association.

 I was the second generation of  old "girls" of the school with testosterone and  and who could not make  the high notes of the School Hymn - Look down on us O Father. A Bishops Old Boy wasn't a thing.

I was not obsessed by traditions and hymns. The Bishops I had attended had done away with a lot of the traditions.

Bishops, the colonial legacy in the 1980s  when I attended being the Christian-Black-middle-class lens of watching 'the other' who might not have made it, but where many persons sought to deal with difference.
 Bishops' where prominent women in the PNC were old students at the time when Burnham was banning flour and others were defending the ban. And where it was possible for one old girl to  oppress another one. in real life.

Ms Pollard and I connected across our differences. Many times we did not agree on things. Many times we did.


The letter
One day I visited Ms Pollard for a meeting. She and her sister were reading a letter on a blue aerogramme. She told me it was a surprise letter from  Mr and Mrs Rai.- Mr BS Rai was a  Minister of Education and depending on who you talk to, racial coolie man , or hero .

His name was invoked by the then anti-PPP-"pro-Indian" politicians. He had 'exiled' from Guyana in 1970.  He was Minister when Ms Pollard started work at Carnegie.

I understood then that there was a Guyana where people had connected across differences, and despite tense times,  had remained in contact decades later. I was not close enough to Ms Pollard to ask more about her memories of Mr Rai. (The other stories are told by mostly men of Indian origin).
 

Music
"Why don't you come and sing with Woodside?" she asked me many times. I had told her that I was singing in the Ramyana gole and no matter how much I insisted that the singing in the gole did not require the same musical skills as singing in a choir, she thought that I should give it a try.

She and I talked about music., classical music. She wished that there was more music education.  She encouraged me to listen to operatic singing but I had to beg off.

The women at Smiths Memorial Congregational Church
I am standing in front of the participants at a women's conference of the Guyana Congregational Union in the beautiful Smiths Church.. I am nervous as I used to be in those days.

Ms Pollard had invited me to talk about domestic violence to the conference. Her life's work included work for legislation and policy for gender equality in the Caribbean  even as she talked about  '..not this nonsense about involving men, if that means taking away resources from the work needed for women.."  She remained concerned about gender equality long after retirement.

The phone calls to say 'good letter' when she read a letter I had written about domestic violence or child abuse. Her referrals to documents and conventions which I did not believe in because nobody was really bothering with them.

Her encouragement and support, and confidence that I could talk with the women of her church about something which was not talked about much, then, are always in my memory.


Ms Pollard, Danuta Radzik and I worked on a National Policy for Domestic Violence in 2008. The policy was launched but nothing happened after.
Another man has been arrested for killing and burning his wife. The news is being greeted with lamentations.

I remember sitting with Ms Pollard, going through the document 11 years ago, her neat handwriting on the computer printed draft, thinking that something will be done

Domestic violence affects PNC and PPP supporters equally, so therefore NOTHING serious will be done really as no one will lose votes for not seriously working on responding to domestic violence.

Ms Pollard though, long after retirement, still had some hope then.


Ms Pollard had also signed a Statement to Support a ban on corporal punishment, in schools especially.  It is still legal to abuse children in Guyana's schools.

The woman on the radio
One day we were talking about teaching, and how important the profession was. She said that one night late, she was listening to the radio , while getting ready for bed. There was a news recap, an Education event in Berbice. She heard her name being called on the radio. A woman, a teacher, was receiving an award and talked of Ms Pollard as being one of the people who influenced her. She said that she wished she had heard the name of the woman, to contact her to thank her for remembering her. In her assertiveness about her own values, I remember Ms Pollard always not being carried away by her achievements, and being glad when she had some influence on some matter but not seeking to have prominence.

Fixing Guyana
The last time I saw Ms Pollard and spoke with her, she said with a smile 'Vidya , we must talk. We have to talk about the Association, and  other things".
 
Her shoulders were slightly stooped , but her voice still clear and musical.   I think of her as Ms Pollard, referring only recently to her by her first name.

I had eased out of organisations. I was happy that she was still thinking of fixing Guyana, and sad that for many of the people who had spent a lifetime trying to fix Guyana, Guyana still has not been fixed.

Previous conversations, long on the phone, which would have started with some thing about Bishops had extended to fixing education, or gender inequality, or violence or poverty or crime or politics in Guyana.

I have no doubt that this conversation would have moved to the continuous struggle to  fix Guyana.

We didn't have the conversation.