Thoughts of a minibus traveller

  LGBTIQA+ Pride  Guyana Trans United held a panel discussion "Prideful Stories: Honouring our history, Confronting Injustice" to start off their Pride 2025 celebrations.  Twinkle Aria and Candacy McEwan led the discussion  which is available on streamyard .   Twinkle shared the story about the protest against the homophobic attitude of the police in June 1969 around the Stonewall Inn in New York. She invoked the memory of Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, two transgender activists who were active in the protests (called riots).  In June 1970, the first Pride marches were held to remember those riots and to advocate for equality.  Guyana In July 1959, in British Guiana, there was a different kind of street activity when as the Sunday Graphic reported, t here was an 'all male wedding' but the police did not stop the cutting of the cake. The shadow of police harassment is reported, even as the transgender and 'gay' community would have gathe...

  (This is not a review of either ' Pleasantview' by Celeste Mohammed or ' What storm what Thunder' by Myriam J. A Chancy There might be some spoilers )  Domestic workers May Day morning and I stand with Red Thread for an hour or so to make up for the privilege which includes being in a book club where we discussed two books the day before.  Red Thread is part of the Caribbean Domestic Workers Network   .  Red Thread and the Network use May Day to advocate for rights of domestic workers and to highlight the value of caring work.  We chat about caring work, experiences of domestic workers, women who work as security guards while we wait for the May Day parade to pass. The conversation about domestic workers' experiences is similar to what Sonia says in What Storm What Thunder "My mother had always told me that she wanted me to do something more with my life than work in a rich man’s house. It was too much work, she said, tiring work, she who had worked as...

  Image taken from Ego-Eco-Seva Revisted  by Martin Brown on Fairsnape Gay sex "We are human too" one woman said in answering why members of the LGBTIQ+  community should be concerned about the climate crisis and the environment. The Guyana Rainbow Foundation - Guybow- hosted a workshop which was facilitated by Sherlina Nageer. The theme of the workshop  was "Environmentalism and the LGBTIQ+ community"   The assertion that 'we are human too' is that all human beings including LGBTIQ+ humans are affected by climate change and the resulting climate crisis.  The assertion that 'we are human too' is important in country and region which does not value LGBTIQ+ citizens as equally human  as those who are not LGBTIQ+ (except of course for those people who have 'connections' to the power brokers). The workshop also discussed , in the line of 'we are human too' , the responsibilities to protecting the environment and recovering if possible fro...

  The conversation about Intimate Partner Violence in LGBTIQ+ relationships was held on 24 June, 2021. The conversation was held in collaboration with Guyana Rainbow Foundation(Guybow).  Dr Preity Kumar, Asst Professor, Hamilton College, New York  and Colleen McEwan, Executive Director, Guybow shared opening thoughts to lead the discussion.  Carlotta Boodie-Walcott and Vidyaratha Kissoon facilitated the conversation.  Preity shared from the research she had done as part of PhD. Her thesis "Women Lovin’ Women: An Exploration of Identities, Belonging, and Communities in Urban and Rural Guyana" includes a chapter  on the Culture of Violence experienced by the women who shared their stories.  The culture of violence experienced by the women was connected to experiences of early childhood abuse, suicidal thoughts and attempts, non suicidal self harm, sexual violence,  racialised sexual violence , psychological and economic violence. Colleen reflected ...

Old and new Sitting in the Georgetown Club. Thursday 30th May .  The Pride Symposium is one of the events for the Pride activities. The 2018 symposium was about LGBTI and Family. There were powerful stories - sharing of family acceptance, and family rejection. About adopting children, and about being banned from seeing children. Symposium is a kind of formal word. But symposium could mean a interactive  gaff. I made an effort to be here again. Colleen McEwan introduces Guybow.   Guybow was f ounded by Andre Sobryan to offer support to gay men dealing with HIV/AIDS in 1990s. Guybow now does work with lesbian, bisexual and queer identifying women. It is the 'oldest' LGBT organisation.  In the conversation, Colleen and Maeve talked about the Mother's Day concert they had, and the fun day for the families . Different from the beginning when HIV/AIDs first came to Guyana. The other partner for the Symposium is Equal Guyana . The newest LGBT organi...

Screenshot from Chitthiye video "My sister is queer.. I don't know what she will do" the young man of Indian origins told me , in a quiet matter-of-fact way. He and his family were returning to India. I am thinking of his sister, and him as I laughed and went 'Wow' and got angry several times watching  Ek ladki ko dekha to aisa laga. The film does not have any hot Lesbian love scenes.  And they do not kill off the lesbians like what happened in Fire. There is a hint of the heroine 'ending it all' , a Bollywood theme. The film is about, Sweety,  a woman who loves a woman,  and her relationship with different men and her grandmother who love her.  The director Shelly Chopra Dhar said this was not meant to be an LGBTQ love story. There are stories about LGBTQ characters in Indian cinema, and some love stories. Many of them end with death, as happens in real life. There are some poweful moments in the dialogue, laughter and wit generated in som...

My first instinct was to giggle hysterically and then I felt a deep sense of sadness. I heard the nice woman, personification of decent Christian Guyanese woman,  upstanding with her moral authority saying 'Do you know know buggery is destructive? That structurally buggery is not good.. that buggery kills homosexuals .. that Men who have sex with men have the highest HIV infection rates.. I imagined her telling Christ he must not mingle with the riff raff.. and he must look after his robes and make sure that they don't get dirty. ..  I could imagine her and me telling minibus drivers to turn off the dirty music... The nice upstanding Christian woman was the first person to talk about ..er buggery.. in the National Library conference room. The National Library was the venue of  another attempt by LGBT activists to deal with God's love of homosexual which seemed to drive the public policy of discrimination   The first attempts were way back in 2003 The Nati...

by Vidyaratha Kissoon “Is Guyana..” the minibus driver said while lighting his cigarette. We were talking about police and traffic tickets. “Nuff people doan pay ticket, is only we bus drivers because we deh pun de road all de time” .. “So is true about de orderly at de court could fix it? “ “Yeah.. dey have tout near de court. You go and walk roun’ like you looking confused and aint know wha’ fuh do and dem gun come up to you and ask whuh yuh looking fuh’? The day before, in a full minibus, the driver told the conductor “If dem man aint want tek you money, is bes’ yuh give de orderly at de court a raise fuh duck de jacket.. dis road hard. Duh is what I had to do yesterday” Open conversation about the hustle all over. I asked how much he had to pay the orderly. “3,000 – is 10,000 for the ticket. “ It sounded positive on one hand, that some police now are issuing tickets instead of collecting the lesser penalties from the drivers. I should have gone to the co...

GuyBow (Guyana Rainbow Foundation) hosted a discussion "LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) rights are Human Rights" on 9 December, 2017. There were presentations from a panel. The presentations were followed by discussions. The panelists were Melinda Janki - Justice Institute of Guyana;  Jairo Rodrigues - Guyana Responsible Parenthood Association and me. Guybow asked me to talk about Hinduism and LGBT rights so as to get other religious perspectives from the usual ones. Melinda Janki spoke about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the challenge to minorities in societies which were British colonies. It was noted that even though the British had decriminalised homosexuality for over 50 years, many of the former colonies still held out. She felt that the courts had to be used to bring judgements against discrimination using the existing laws and conventions.There were questions and discussions about discrimination in landlord tenancy, and in employmen...