Thoughts of a minibus traveller

  Camouflage    'You going down?" .. man smiles and asks. Quiet morning, I am first passenger. Gospel music playing. The man is one of the quiet drivers, doesn't talk much. I have seen him smoking a joint when he is on his break.  Other passengers join.. school children, some adults. Everybody saying 'morning'.  Nice vibe. I am anxious as some challenging work ahead. An out of route bus picks up some passengers in front of him .. we all talk about how police don't see and so on. Woman sits between me and the driver.  Music changes and Caribbean man calls to 'Bun batty man " and plenty talk about batty man and so. I say 'aye man, lift up the nation nah man, batty man aint do nobody do nutting.. what you killing so early in the morning' . Driver smiles, a tense smile. He fiddles with the set. Music changes. Woman smiles. "Is nah me.. " he says,  "But you is the driver, you in charge of dis bus, who can tell you want music to play...

   Menstruation The smell is strong, all over. Smell which I associate with some menstruating women. The smell comes through the mask. There are no women near me. I had run through the rain, so breathing is a bit heavy. Is it the petrichor? Place was hot before. Is the earth menstruating? Atashscia Bovell's work is about womanhood. For one wild moment I wonder if the installation includes some kind of device to produce the scent. The smell though, does not come  here. One of the pieces features the padding from the menstrual pads, red blood and screws. The softness contrasting with the pain. I have witnessed, helplessly, the pain. And the shaming. Navratra is coming up , worship of the divine Mother while many people will mutter about 'unclean' women. Period poverty and the shaming of menstruating women are forms of gender based violence.  There is no imposition of motherhood as the essence of womanhood here. There are representations of vaginas.  Navratra on my...

  The teenage descendant of the enslaved has to go public about the abuse he is enduring in the school system from other descendants of the enslaved.  The Queen is dead. Long live the legacy of the Kings and Queens of England in Guyana The people complain about the koker door. No one bothers. It breaks. It is temporarily fixed. Temporary like how the indentured from India imagined themselves to be on the land. Old people talk about how the villages used to manage their own drains and kokers in the white people days. Bring back the white people days some say. The Queen is dead. Long live the legacy of the Kings and Queens of England in Guyana 2022. Birth certificates, other certificates, passports.. difficult to obtain. The descendants of the enslaved and the indentured who manage these systems don't see any need to fix them.  The Queen is dead. Long live the legacy of the Kings and Queens of England in Guyana 2022.  Suicide rates are among the highest in the world....

  politics Woman has two string back of katahar seeds and two plastic bags of peel katahar. Sun is hot. Midday in the market. I. Thinking of the katahar seed and the pumpkin mix.  Look for the pumpkin. The young man selling the pumpkin says with a half smile, almost apologetic.. $400 dis  one, $500 dat one.. ".  The market .. things are changing. The taxi man asked me earlier.. 'what you think abotu the country booming' and I had to careful. Coolie man few years older than me.. I just say well some booming some not booming. And he tell me how give dem dis five years and another five years and things gun fix, look all the road and so. He said he getting more work than he can handle. I want to ask him if he needs to make more money than he does now .. but I shut up.. because is a tense conversation . Conversation with the woman selling katahar is not so tense. "I can lef it till tomorrow to cook?" I ask her because afternoon sun is too hot in the kitchen and I don...