Thoughts of a minibus traveller

  (A social media page 'Voices against BHS' was used by students and former students to break silences on the abusive behaviour of some teachers. One of the former students wrote to the school asking for an apology for the abuse. Other former students broke silences on abuse throughout the years. The Bishops' High School teachers went on strike demanding apologies , instead of apologising. Because in Guyana, that is what we do. Due to Covid-19, I imagine this apology which the teachers would give. I attended BHS from 1981 to 1986 and I watched Angelique V Nixon's TedXTalk ; The Elements of Decolonial Healing Justice today)   Dear students and former students  Once again, you have had to highlight the failure of some of our teachers to show respect to you while we teach you and deal with the challenges which some of you bring. We realise that we as a teacher body, have not been held accountable to you the students because in Guyana's history, of slavery and indentur...

    A few weeks ago, my friend Daryll did a writing retreat. He wanted to connect writers because Guyana lacks infrastructure and there are not spaces for us.  I attended some sessions and missed several. The most memorable occurred when someone wrote about a man who was a hunter. The writer described in detail the inner-workings of a gun and I found myself leaning in and I knew this writer had experience in this subject area. It felt too authentic to be faked. I wrote a story about a little boy’s fascination with a funeral, the story connected with everyone. Primarily, because it was authentic. The workshop reminded me of the value of being an authentic writer, not one who writes to “show off” superior prose writing and diction. I think this comes with authenticity.  But, what stood out for me the most was a conversation I had with Daryll on the last day of the workshop. He said that I cannot come to the workshop because I am not organized and due to this, I do not ...

  Body is paining, in different places but I have the knife to cut the bananas which might have been soaking in flood water. Last time I checked - two days ago - before the flood, the bunch was still green even though sucker had broken with the weight. I said arite, a day or too more, Friday I will pick and leave to get ripe. I have been checking since end of July when I saw the bananas being birthed from the flower which I ate later. I didn't plant the sucker, never watered it or looked after it. Banana flower was nice. I am not sure when to pick the bunch.  I keep planning green banana recipes in my head.. roasting in microwave, boiling and so, pressuring with coconut milk, heck maybe even chips Knife in one hand. Other hand shifting  the sucker leaves. Last time I remembered, the huge leaves kind of hid the bunch, protected it. It is something about how these bananas grow under the leaves. Some of the leaves are brown now, finished their time.  I push them aside,...

When I was little, my mother would accumulate pieces of cloths. Naturally, they were of different sizes, colours and shapes but she doctored them with a pair of scissors then, artfully, stitched them together and, joy oh joy, they became a Comforter, complete and charming, that gave amazing sleep experiences. It was magical.  It was as magical at the Guyanese Writers First Virtual Retreat!  We congregated, as agreed, via phones and lap-tops, of course. We walked with our ‘pieces of cloths’, so to speak, to show them off. We were anxious to show them off and anxious that they should be accepted. The Coordinator, Daryll, invited us to share our ‘pieces.’ We did. What happened for me was amazing! Each piece shared had its peculiar ‘colour’, ‘shape’ and ‘size.’ There were pieces of prose, and pieces of poetry and they were not the same, exactly, yet they each stood-out uniquely handsomely. We talked and talked about the pieces and grew excited over them. And in our strongest momen...

Sometimes it takes a village to foster a disciplined creative's mind.  We all wish to write new forms and lay the foundations for new, exciting concepts that are yet to grace the eyes of our aroused readers but are often lost in the planning phase.  As such, these inventive ideas are often buried in the graveyard of underdeveloped thoughts, the premature concept map never fully developed.  Our inaction to write often forces our creative voices to shrink our uniqueness, to abandon our experimentation with the test subject of our ideas. To avoid this colony of graveyards, Mr. Daryll Andrew Goodchild, founder of the Guyanese Writers' Virtual Retreat has created a remedy for this self-harm of the creative writing process through a series of writing, sprint writing sessions. Ever heard of a military workout course, yes, I'm sure you have, now have you ever experienced it? These writing sprints facilitated by Mr. Goddchild is as brutal as any workout camp, but the fruits of you...

  When my friend Daryll first contacted me about joining a virtual writers meeting, my first instinct was to push the idea aside. These sort of things were for people who actually wrote and shared their work, not those like me who hardly did a thing these days.  But Daryll was insistent in that mild, encouraging manner of his and soon enough I gave in. The first session was very relaxed. A few persons attended and we got to know each other, hearty laughter and jovial comments made here and there. It was a relief to me that these people seemed down to earth and kindhearted.   So I occupied my Sunday evenings with a group of strangers with whom I shared a common passion. We shared and discussed pieces of our work, everyone pitching in helpful critiques and comments that would surely go a long way. I learned not to use adverbs, to show rather than simple tell of an action. I missed quite a few sessions due to my pitiful internet connection. It was quite a shame because I had...

   I've never written for a blog before, so I'm not sure what the expectations are. So I'll just jump right into sharing my experiences over a writing retreat held by a person who has been a confidante of some sorts to me, Daryll Goodchild. It began in the last week of September, an idea birthed out of the need to do more with themselves during the lockdown .     Moving quickly on from my sporadic thoughts. There I was, in my dining room, anxiety-ridden and absolutely frightened out of my mind at what would be expected in this new normal. What was normal anymore? Was this normal? These were all thoughts running through my head as I greeted everyone on the call with a smile and began telling them about myself. "My name is Hannah Singh and I'm 19 years old..." were the first few words that I said. I honestly don't know why I always introduce myself with my name and age. Like yeah, name is a big part of identity but most people say age is just a n...