black and brown water would never mix...

 

A man who speaks English sits in a speedboat and watches a child who tries to squash black water and brown water together. The man oncludes that it seems as though black and brown water would never mix. The speedboat is stranded out in the ocean.

This from the story "Yuh waan to crass de riv-vah" in Daryll Goodchild's collection of poems and stories about 'experiences of Caribbean people, particularly those of Guyanese.'

I read this collection at the end of that Guyanese experience of the elections 2020 in a time of Covid. Black and coolie .. black and brown ,  rich and vibrant and dominant colours, so  reading how the man in the boat wonders about black water and brown water never mixing, and seeing how in an article by another man who speaks English,that others have observed that Guyanese thing "While Guyanese of Asian and African descent have lived side by side for centuries, “they mix but they do not combine,”

True true story... .

One place where the black and brown mix might at the Chinese owned food businesses. And so 'Chiney' imagines a Chinese origins food maker interacting with Guyanese customers who didn't want daag and who wanted extra chicken.  And thinking of the other awful story  in which black and brown stood and watched as a people of Chinese origins attacked a brown woman. And of the man calling me Chiney .

True True story..

But .. we live together and we eat one another food and so on and we even sometimes wear one another clothes.. and "Cul-cha day" is about wearing those clothes and I think how I don't bother wearing 'Indian' clothes , and when I was in a picket and a black woman made it clear how her child was only dressing as African and not Chinese or any other race.  

True True story... this dressing in other people clothes and eating other people food story..

And in the "Buss Driva' .. the bus driver of one race tells a woman who jumps in the bus 'We aint reaching wey you going.. ' .. true true story as a woman shared a story of waiting for a bus and the bus driver telling her the same thing . "We not reaching where you going.. ".. the problem of Guyana - coming from different places, thinking we not reaching where the other going.. even though is the same place.

The author wanted to  tell stories from Guyana, and about Guyana which reflect Guyanese lives.

Two of the stories Crekateh and Old Mr Greaves  deal with the stigma of mental illness and with relationships between the elderly and their children and grandchildres.

"Tickets to board " is set around Stabroek Market square."Scare Tactics' is a story about the power of rumour. 

There are five poems but I am not  a poems man. The author asked in the introduction for readers to commit to reading and imagining words and gestures in the poetry. But ..

Crassin de Rivvah is available on Amazon . Or from Daryll if you don't want to support Amazon.