Thoughts of a minibus traveller

  "Converging Ties" is an exhibition of works by Kwesi Bovell, Dominique Hunter, Roberto Teekah and Morag Williams. The exhibition continues until 17 July, 2024 at Castellani House.  Art in French  I check Akima McPherson's articles in Stabroek News on Elements and Principles of art again.  Reminding myself of what to look for, then I go find an article in French because we are supposed to talk in French about the work. Yeah, I am a nerd like that. I learned French at the Bishops' High School, with other things. I have forgotten some of the other things. I like to think I attended Bishops' twice - from 1981 to 1986 as a student, and then from around 1995 to 2006 as an old student engaging with a different school, revitalised, under the administration of Ms Massiah followed by Ms Walcott and Ms Daly.  After passing the soldier with the gun at the gate of Castellani House, I meet and talk with Ms Massiah - now Reverend Massiah -who had visited the exhibiti...

   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...

  "Like you nah mean fuh plant nuttin'" the minibus driver tells me as I jump in the front seat and fix the two salt bags of the weekly market produce so that the tomato and the banana dont' crush  and he could see the rear view mirror.  ' Nah.. me han gat blight.. some ah we gah fuh buy, nah everybady can plant'' I tell him and he said 'arite'. Another time I told him that it was not food in the bag, but aile money which I could not keep in the bank. He said 'arite' then too. I don't worry about the seat belt as I imagine that the tomato and the banana and maybe the pineapple and ochro and plantain chips and so on might together buffer a crash.  Saturday morning and I am relieved that there is no rain because holding umbrella and two salt bags while trying to manage wallet and money 'look yuh money fall down' is not as good as just slowly walking through the market and looking at all the nice fruits and vegetables and imagini...

      Hot Saturday afternoon.  Moon is moving, dark clouds hovering over my capacity to do major tasks. I decide to make a pilgrimage to a new painting which is sometimes covered by the sea. Moving off from liking the virtual Facebook posts , to seeing the thing in real life when I don't really feel like going anywhere. Professor Vibert Cambridge initiates a discussion about a CARIFESTA 2022. A woman messaged me about  diversity in an event she was organising. A writer messaged me about writing a letter to restart the Guyana Prize for Literature , to figure out a way to stimulate more writing opportunities and exposure for writers in Guyana. A diaspora poet invites me to participate in an interesting poetry project which would have involved me writing a poem - I declined as I aint a poems man. I worry that I am an impostor and poseur getting asked into things which I only do as 'like' and 'not like'.   A young economist who plays dholak and sings chow...

I have to buy stuff in the market and my mind is not focused. If you are not present, the sellers slip in the bad stuff. I didn't watch and then one of the five tangerines for $200 is not good, one of the five passion fruit for $200 is not good. I did not feel each one or examine before throwing in the bag. The pineapple though turned out okay. Mind is on the back pain.. weight has to be lost as a first step to dealing with the pain. So much loss this year.. and trying to adapt to things.. ability to do things quickly, nothing new learned.. but weight gained as a way of struggling to cope with the loss.  Trying to imagine how I would cook differently.. as the logistics of cooking differently are not so easy. Everything has to started new, I can't go back to the past. I see sweet potato and agonise over whether to buy it.. I can't see myself peeling and cooking as that requires focus and energy which I can't seem to find. I look at the pumpkin.. what would I...

Is a rainy day to do nothing but the Universe dictates otherwise. The doing nothing is more in the mind though even though doing nothing is not the solution. Anxiety deep as mind is fumbling about the other things I said 'yes' to. Thinking of how things could go and mixing up things. But immediate here and now. Roti has to be mixed.  Mind can't focus and the hands can't move to take out the bowl and flours. Step back. Pour a bit of lime juice and cold water in the glass. Just a little. So I could sip because the sour is a kind of reminder of coming back to the present. There are times when I have not felt the sour but thankfully the sour is there. Sip. Mind thinking of the two things to write. Pour the wrong number of cups of flour and have to start over. I know it is stupid and I have a pang that I will throw the lime water in the bowl. I move it one side. I don't know how I can sip while both hands have to be used for kneading. Sip. Wait.. mind flow...

Dance (II)Henry Matisse - http://www.wikiart.org/en/henri-matisse/dance-ii-1910 Wake up this morning and there is a Facebook message from a man who is reading a lot of Bra inpickings on Art as Therapy I skimmed the article and was drawn to the dancers in the blue and green painting. According to the philosophers,s"The dancers in Matisse’s painting are not in denial of the troubles of this planet, but from the standpoint of our imperfect and conflicted — but ordinary — relationship with reality, we can look to their attitude for encouragement. They put us in touch with a blithe, carefree part of ourselves that can help us cope with inevitable rejections and humiliations."  I had never seen the painting before. This evening, Moray House Trust hosted a talk by artist Dennis De Cairies. Mr DeCairies highlighted some of the artists and paintings which impressed him. I was surprised to see Dances II again. He said the artist is one of his favourites. The pai...

Sky is orange and pink and blue, and piece of the moon is overhead. End of Sunday, cool breeze blowing. Walking through a side street in Kitty to avoid the  busy road. The street has a mix of old buildings and new buildings. Walking is made easier when the mind wanders and I do the usual of imagining the lives of people inside the houses. Remembering when I used to walk home from UG back in the late eighties when some of the houses near the  Cummings Lodge/UG road still had kitchens with open windows and you could smell curry and dinner cooking. Architecture and cooking habits and the smells have changed there and here Rum shop is open, it always seems open. Lady wearing a cap with her bags sitting down, I look to see if she drinking rum, but she is looking at her phone , kind of hold the phone far away as you do in the dim light when you have to put things away. I wonder if she knows she needs spectacles. I wonder if she is waiting on the rum to come. Old house, no ...

People say Sunday is the NYC Marathon and I say oh oh, I hope I could avoid it .. thinking the marathon is a big thing. But there is a calling for church and I find myself, waking up early, getting ready and jumping in a train and then coming out and wondering as I walk to my favourite Brooklyn church about how I used to wonder about how people in Guyana travel for miles past other churches, mandirs and masjids to go to their favourite ones when there is no need really. Marathon is just outside the church. There are blue lines which nobody seems to bother with. The drums are drumming loud and the pastor in church pauses now and then as voices raise as people see their friends outside. The church was part of the underground rail road. I had finished reading Isabel Allende's Island Beneath the Sea , which was about the period of slavery. One of the hymns was Guide my feet - I don't know if it was selected for the race outside. Church is over and people come out to ...

Guarding the exhibits "So many of them are pretty girls, I wonder if they were forced into this lifestyle"... the woman guarding the exhibits in the gallery said. I had asked her what she thought of the exhibition . She had laughed and put one hand on her face - the way that many people do when they hear an unexpected question. We were facing the slide show of powerful images which was part of Zaneili Muholi's :‘Isibonelo/Evidence'.  She points to the images - "that's the artist". The woman said that she had seen one of the films as part of the exhibition and had heard one of the women say that she was encouraged to be a lesbian. I told her that people could be born that way. She said "well, it doesnt matter.. but when I read on the wall, the things which were done to them, that is not good, these things are bad". She was talking about the testimonies on the wall from South African citizens who had experienced the violence. The ra...

Image edited from http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/467642 "The Museum of Sex is supposed to be good, but I wouldn't pay the 17.50" the woman in the tapestry room us. "The sex shop has all kind of interesting things though... that might be interesting to visit if you don't want to waste money in the museum.. apparently they have the first porno picture from Thomas Alva Edison of a couple kissing closed mouth.." There are the beautiful tapestries hanging on the wall in the Cloisters museum with the medieval collection. Conversation had started with how people can watch through the stained glass windows and see the bad weather coming in. The woman explained the tapestries and then we ended up at sex... Big city and lots of people walking around. I keep hearing loud voices and I wonder if people are talking to me but when I look back , they are talking to themselves.. or rather their phones. I see a man sitting at the b...

I jump out of the bus with plenty other passengers near the Botanical Gardens and I realise that I still had the money in my hand. Some notes of the first steel band playing. Clouds provide a nice eclipse of the sun so 4pm it is cool. Gardens look nice and clean but some Guyanese can't make it to the rubbish bins. A former work colleague has her stand set up. She is a Jehovah Witness and preaches at the Gardens. Her grandson is one of the bands and she said that last year, the crowd seemed larger. The steel bands are around the bandstand. I ask her if she is not coming in and she laughs and says "I am doing Jehovah work while enjoying the steel pan music" I sit at the edge of the manatee pond. The music is kind of faint and there are some children talking excitedly because they see the manatees. I have not seen the manatees in years and feel foolish that I could not find anything to feed them, though I think we are not supposed to feed them. Imagine that there co...

The man said he was glad I stepped up the writing from the blog and got on to the Coil. He described one of the sentences I wrote as "nice flow, stream of consciousness" . The blog was awarded first prize for the 2015 Godfrey Chin Prize for Heritage Journalism. The prize is managed by the Guyana Cultural Association of New Yor k Inc. The second prize was awarded to Dr Maya Trotz for a video recording of an interview with her father Dr Ulric Trotz. The third prize was awarded to Akima Mcpherson and Stanley Greaves for the series "Conversations on Art" in the Stabroek News. In 2014, the blog won second priz e. It was an honour then to be nominated. I was surprised that the blog was nominated again this year.   I feel nice that the blog win a prize. I feel anxious too , even more so than last year, about the feeling that I should keep writing 'well'.  There are some people who I wish would blog more . Some of them are journalists and have stories w...

Pictures could tell a thousand words but then there are some pictures which need words to make them and I realised recently that there are times when I am stuck because I cannot decide on the composition of an image or what picture to take if there is some moment to catch, or whether to just try to record words.  Some discipline is required to decide. But here are some pictures which I  wish I had taken... Eating warm puri and fish cake in a bus in Linden on an early rainy morning  Marvelling at how a bus which was hot and humid while waiting to full in the rain then becomes so cool with breeze on the highway less than an hour away that most of the windows have to be closed The idea of cooking chunks with carrots and tomatoes and peppers and realising that it looked better than it tasted, though it aint taste bad, but it make a nice picture for this blog Seeing a man with locks and tatoo walk in the drizzle under a blue umbrella patterned with flowers which r...

I in a rush and I swallow me tongue and say, I aint kay how dutty de music or how fast it going.. I have to take de fus bus dat come and I aint gun seh a word because I dont want to have to lef de bus. (Dat is how principles and so does go) Climb in de front seat. Music not too bad and the top of the Windscreen got something followed by a crucifix. Bus fulling up gradually. Bus man had to swerve to avoid a dancing drunk man on de road and de panic was eased by everybody laughing. Bus man, big man, wid tattoo and ting,  open sweetie and throw paper on the road. I think about the conversation with Captain Clean where I said I aint going and pick up after nobody. So I gently say , man.. how you gun mess up yuh house so? Dis area didn't flood? Bus man look at me and say nah nah.. is not sweeti paper dat flood up de place is styrofoam and plastic bottle. Man in de fus row at behind we say.. dis place gotta clean up. People attitude gotta change.  Anodda man say recyc...

Kim was managing the small restaurant for her aunt. She had moved to Kamarang from Georgetown to be closer to her husband who is from Jawalla. My teeth have gone out of sync so chewing is not as it should be. Kim cooked roti and baigan choka, which was made more delicious by watching the watery sun going down behind a hill.    Yeah, I know that I should have had cassava bread - but one night we had boil and fry cassava which was easier to mash with tongue, cheek and the few teeth which are still aligned. Kim's interaction with her customers is 10-star, the mix of hospitality and marketing and responsibility for the well being of all her customers. There are many persons in Guyana who are like her. She at 26 years of age is  inspirational - reminding me of Rohit the young man who weeds starting at 5:30 am and works every day including holidays once the work is there. Watery sun set in Kamarang After a rough few days in Georgetown, after elections, there ...

(17 May is commemorated as "International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia ", a day for the Worldwide Celebration of Sexual and Gender Diversities ) Quincy McEwan of Guyana Trans United was happy on Saturday 16 May, 2015. Quincy was relieved that there was going to be a change.. the Bishop who approved of "gays on an island" was no longer a Minister. The GTU had mobilised its members to vote. They had different political parties. According to Cracey Fernandes, another member  of GTU, the trans went out in their numbes and "voted like a boss" Quincy did not dress up too much, in case there were problems with matching the appearance on the ID Card. Other trans who voted, said they had no problems with anybody telling them anything. One trans from a rural community said it was no problem dressing normally with makeup and clothes as she normally did. The polling agent was from the village and was able to verify the identification for ...

The young man told me "you are a kind, thoughtful caring person" and I felt guilty thinking of the woman and the men who had told me similar things and then stopped talking to me or issued restraining orders in various forms when they would have realised that I was not they expected. Another young man was angry that I would not engage him in discussion about my not voting.. he constantly expresses his disappointment in my lack of objectivity and so on. I know I know.. there is this thing that human beings are inherently good and they do bad things and that hope is in trying to get them to realise their goodness and so on. In the madness around condemning Bheri Ramsarran's contempt for women while not calling for his resignation, a lot of people talk about how 'good he was/is' . One woman I know who is not partisan in any way said she was shocked because in all her dealings with bheri ramsarran ,  she never had any disrespect or problems. She is an ol...