..Enfin, personne ne l’a emporté .. , nobody won

 

Doing your own thing.. 

 Sunset on the Friday of a difficult week and the woman I first met in 2000 is walking briskly down the road. Finishing her walk, 'I am 71 now you know' and this is her second set of exercise for the day after doing gym earlier. 

We talk about the seawall and walking there now..she has been attacked twice on the seawall, 'you gotta know when to go'

She is managing some circulation issues so the exercise is key..'you gotta do your own thing'.. she tells me.

Thinking of 'doing your own thing', deciding how you win and lose and so..

Nobody winning.. 

A letter from French President Macron after the elections noted that 'nobody won' in an appeal for the coalition building across differences to form a majority, and he felt that there has to be some power sharing.

Power.. and winning.

A mother tells her children 'If I abuse yall, I gun go to jail fuh life.. I don't abuse yall, I does just hit yall fuh yall know how fuh behave.. you see i got dis pot spoon.. ' 

I listen though, body pains flowing, can't say anything to the woman as I have done many times and she tells me she don't really hit and she take the reference I give her for the place for parenting.. 'Mr Kissoon, you aint know, it hard.., I does try..'

, having lost to family values and culture and so in which goes on in homes and schools across the prosperous and developing Guyana, adults, many of whom vote,  brutalize children and in many cases without any consequences. 

Some school violence, some parents are scared to report violence - one teacher reportedly telling the children that she has connections to the winners in the Parliament. Other children and parents and relatives might retaliate.

2006/2007 was the first attempt in Parliament to outlaw the abuse of children in Guyana's schools but that fell down as the majority of the winning Parliamentarians did not want to really do anything to stop the violence. 

There was in the 2012 to 2014  Special Select Committee , and many of the NGOs and individuals working on child protection presented to the winners in Parliament who were supposed to stop violence against children.

18 years  later, more winning in Parliament, majorities passing legislation and dismantling institutions.. and we talk again of the continued violence in a hearing convened by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, of the brutality since 2006. 

Winning in Guyana seems not to be about sharing power, but using violence in different places and ways to assert the winning power which comes from votes and other supposed means.

Winning with  fluffy orange goodness 

IACHR hearing though does not bring any relief to the body pains which now come up from gotaying the same thing over to the same people who are stuck in the rut of their trauma and prefer to continue the legacy of violence rather than stop it.

Sun coming up after rain and it shines on a tray in the market which has some orange cakes and red and white sugar cake and other things.  I should pass the sugar . , take my escape in walking like the 71 year old woman and searching for the scarlet ibis in the mangrove on the sewall and so.. but..

The woman says pumpkin pone.. and it is different, fluffy, can't see the lil bits of brown from grated coconut or so, but tasting the pumpkin and the corn. 

Soft really, escape.. like how so many of us have to escape this place in sugar, alcohol or in creating bubbles around us in order to survive those who are winning.