Tag Archives: Georgetown/Guyana

Guyana: Dolling Up for the Year-End Festivities

05 Sunday Dec 2021

Posted by in Festivals, Guyana, People

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Photo by Inga Seliverstova on Pexels.com

December was the most hectic month for my stay-at-home working Mom. As a sought-after dressmaker among middle-class women in the capital, Georgetown, Mom had little time for Christmas shopping, home decoration, and preparation of our traditional Christmas dinner specialties. Guyanese love to party. The Christmas and year-end festivities meant parties galore: office parties, nightclub parties, and house parties. The greatest fete of all was the Old Year’s Night Ball to welcome in the New Year with a bang.

As early as October, to ensure that their dresses were done on time, Mom’s clients who had several functions to attend would start bringing in their dress materials. For the Old Year’s Night Ball, no expense was spared when choosing the best imported fabrics. Clients could select designs from fashion magazines—JC Penney, McCall’s, Sears, and Vogue—Mom made available. A few clients brought clippings of photos from women’s magazines featuring the rich and famous. At the time, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, and Jacqueline Kennedy were the rave. I enjoyed a front seat view of the woman’s world of dolling up for parties and other social events to attract a mate or to hold onto your man or husband.

I was a thirteen-year-old teenager in high school when Mom began sewing for three attractive working-class women of Portuguese descent. All in their twenties, the three friends worked in the office wing of Bookers Guiana General Store. To protect their identity, I’ll call them Catherine, Marcella, and Yvette. Catherine was the most beautiful with hair and features to rival those of the French actress Catherine Deneuve. Yvette had muscular shoulders and arms from playing tennis at a competitive level. Marcella was a dark-haired beauty like the American actress Rita Morena in West Side Story (1961).

Continue reading →

Lessons from Nature: Adapting to Change

03 Sunday Nov 2019

Posted by in Nature and the Environment

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Section of my succulent garden

 

The succulent plants in my garden brighten my life. During humanity’s mad dash towards the abyss, their quiet dynamic presence calm my troubled mind. Under California’s scorching sunshine that set dry brush ablaze, my succulent plants have found a way to survive the extreme heat. Some change color; others become more compact in form.

“Flap Jack” or Paddle Plant – Parent plant under heat stress

“Flap Jack” or Paddle Plant – Area of little direct sunlight
Grown from cuttings from parent plant

 

Given their amazing ability to propagate from cuttings, I’ve planted succulents in several garden plots of our apartment complex. I marvel at their adaptation to different soil quality and amount of sunlight.

Aeonium “Mint Saucer” – Area with full sunlight

Aeonium “Mint Saucer” – Little sunlight during early morning

 

The adverse effects of our climate and ecological crises will intensify in the years ahead. It’s already happening here in California. People who have lost their homes in areas ravaged by wildfires must now question the viability of staying and rebuilding. This is also the case for areas facing prolonged drought and frequent flooding.

My birthplace in Georgetown, Guyana, is also under threat. The Guyanese Online Blog recently posted a video (duration 2:04 minutes) demonstrating the gravity of the situation.

Source: Guyanese Online Blog

 

A time is coming—perhaps, sooner than we envisage—when people everywhere across our country and planet will be on the move. Pulling up our roots and resettling in different lands is nothing new for our species. But the climate and ecological changes already underway will demand much more of us.

Like the succulents, will our species adapt to surviving on less water, on less food? How will we adapt to living on a hotter planet?

“A Simple Man” – Poem by Caribbean Poet Ian McDonald

13 Sunday Oct 2019

Posted by in Poetry

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Front Cover: People of Guyana by Ian McDonald and Peter Jailall
Photo Credit: MiddleRoad Publishers/Canada

 

My Poetry Corner October 2019 features the poem “A Simple Man” by Ian McDonald from the joint poetry collection, People of Guyana, by Ian McDonald and Peter Jailall. Born in the Caribbean island of Trinidad in 1933, Ian McDonald is a poet, novelist, dramatist, and non-fiction writer. After moving to then British Guiana in 1955, he made his home there. Today, he lives partly in his adopted homeland and partly in Canada.

Born into a white family of power and privilege, the young Ian fell in love with literature and writing as a schoolboy. In 1955, after graduating from Cambridge University in England with a Bachelor’s Honors Degree in History, he began working with Bookers Ltd., then owners of the British Guiana sugar estates. When the company was nationalized in 1976, McDonald remained as the Administrative Director of the newly formed Guyana Sugar Corporation until his retirement in 1999.

On one of those days while working with Guyana’s sugar estates, McDonald visited Betty, a former sugarcane laborer, “an old woman in a run-down logie room,” to get details for her resettlement. In his heart-wrenching poem, “Betty,” the poet captures her long life of deprivation, forgotten by society.

she said her life was nothing to her
she said all women’s lives were as nothing
no one had been pleased when she was born
she was sure of that boys were princes 

Once married, she had been abandoned by her husband for another woman, eventually ending up “with old women in this place.” Betty didn’t want to move. They were the only people she knew. Continue reading →

“Broken System” – Spoken Word Poem by Guyanese Poet Renata Burnette

01 Sunday Jul 2018

Posted by in Poetry

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Victim of domestic violence with her mother – Guyana

 

My Poetry Corner July 2018 features the spoken word poem, “Broken System,” by young Guyanese poet Renata Burnette. Residing in the capital, Georgetown, she is a second-year undergraduate at the University of Guyana, pursuing a degree in Communications.

Renata’s poetry calls attention to the daily struggles and issues of young Guyanese, especially those in their late teens and twenties. She gained national attention in August 2016 with her poem, “Dear Mr. President,” expressing her challenges in finding a job as an undergraduate.

In “Broken System,” published on Guyana’s Independence Day, May 26, 2018, the poet portrays a system that offers little to no protection to the country’s vulnerable youth.

We have 15-year-old girls being gang raped; boys being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just children running away from their homes because the ones that are supposed to be protecting them, they’re now physically and sexually abusing them… These children, they have no faith in us because we have failed them…

Renata observes that the justice system fails these abused children by either condemning them to the juvenile penitentiary or returning them to their abusers. Further on, she raises the issue of drug dealing and the difficulty of finding work, even for someone with higher education.

So how do we fix the system, the same system that’s putting away our young men for selling or smoking weed, but we’re yet to curb the increase of lung cancer disease that’s mainly caused by tobacco smoking, also known as cigarette smoking. So what do we do? We put a warning label on the pack and just hope that it stops… And even when I graduate from one of the highest institutions in the land, they cannot guarantee me a job…with or without this degree. And you want to know why our young people are out here selling weed. Food for thought. Stay woke. See, plugs make more money than teachers make on their government salaries.

Without a pause, Renata addresses sexual harassment. No subject is taboo for our young poet.

And if you’re a woman in today’s society then sexual harassment is something that you’re almost guaranteed. It’s like a rite of passage, so be careful. Don’t wear anything loose, don’t appear to be too revealing, because when the man across the street shouts for you, calling you every single thing except your name, you better look… But really and truly all our tongues burn to say is just stay away from me. But we’re too scared because our system is broken; it’s backwards…

The system also fails victims of domestic violence. The police, the poet notes, not only show up until after the attack, but there’s also no justice for the woman.

And even though she’s the victim, there would be no justice for he [the abuser] knows people in high positions. You know, that can make a police report disappear regardless of how he acts. Those kind-a people in authority that have a knack for sweeping every single thing under the mat…

Like a maestro conducting an orchestra, the young poet controls the rising and falling rhythm with expressive hands. Without a script. Giving voice to the voiceless.

On America’s Independence Day, I offer these closing words of insight from our young Guyanese spoken word poet (emphasis mine):

If history has proven anything, it’s that the truth would always survive and, if needs be, it would bleed through crooked lines.

You can watch Renata Burnette’s performance on YouTube. For my complete transcript of “Broken System” and to learn more about the poet, go to my Poetry Corner July 2018.

CAPTIONED PHOTO
Victim of domestic violence with her mother, Guyana
In 2013, Natasha Houston’s husband killed their two children, slashed her arm and hand, then killed himself.
Photo Credit: WGVU News

“This is My Meditation” – Poem by Guyanese-born Author & Poet Sir Wilson Harris

01 Sunday Apr 2018

Posted by in Poetry

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Dawn and Evening Star, Olmec Maya Series by Guyanese-born Artist Aubrey Williams, 1982

Dawn & Evening Star, Olmec Maya Series (1982) by Guyanese-born Artist Aubrey Williams
Source: October Gallery

 

On March 8th, Guyana’s illustrious literary writer, Sir Wilson Harris, died at the age of ninety-six in England where he had lived since 1959. Born in 1921 in New Amsterdam, British Guiana (now Guyana), Harris began his writing career as a poet, obtaining exposure through the colony’s literary magazine, Kyk-over-Al. My Poetry Corner April 2018 features one of these poems, “This is My Meditation,” published in 1947. Since I couldn’t find the original title of this poem, I’ve used the opening words as a substitute.

When he was two years old, Harris lost his father, “a well-off insurance businessman with a chauffeur-driven car.” His mother moved to the capital, Georgetown, and remarried. Six years later, tragedy struck again. His stepfather disappeared; believed drowned in the Interior.

“At almost the same time, I saw a beggar on a street corner, with holes in his face,” Harris tells Maya Jaggi (The Guardian, December 2006). “I came home and couldn’t eat – I never forgot that man.”

After completing his studies at Queen’s College, the prestigious secondary school for boys in Georgetown, Harris trained in land surveying and geomorphology. Beginning in 1942, his work as a government surveyor, charting the great rivers of the colony’s interior rainforest and savanna regions, changed his vision of man’s relation to the planet.

balata_bleeders_shooting_rapids_on_the_cuyuni,_british_guiana_c1908

Balata Bleeders Shooting Rapids on the Cuyuni River, Interior of British Guiana (c.1908)
Source: Overtown Miscellany UK/John S Sargent

 

“The shock of contrasts in river, forest, waterfall had registered very deeply in my psyche,” Harris tells Fred D’Aguiar (Bomb Magazine, January 2003). “So deeply that to find oneself without a tongue was to learn of a music that was wordless, to descent into varying structures upon parallel branches of reality, branches that were rooted in a stem of meaning for which no absolute existed.”

Of equal importance was his discovery of pre-Columbian myth and history gained through his contacts with the indigenous peoples in the region.

In his poem, “This is My Meditation,” the young poet calls out what he sees as the cruelty of the Christian God in the treatment of His beloved son, Jesus, left alone to suffer the painful and humiliating death by crucifixion. Continue reading →

“If I Had A Hammer” by Pete Seeger & Lee Hays

04 Sunday Dec 2016

Posted by in Poetry, Uncategorized

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us-post-election-2016-stop-hate-crimes-against-muslims

U.S. Post-Election 2016 – Stop Hate Crimes – Muslim Lives Matter
Photo Credit: Quartz.com

 

In keeping with my end-of-year tradition, I feature a song on my Poetry Corner December 2016. Bob Dylan’s award of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature prompted my choice. In the uncanny way that our memory weaves songs and events into our lived experiences, the song “If I Had A Hammer” forced its way to the frontline and hammered for attention. I discovered that Bob Dylan didn’t write this song. We owe this tribute to America’s folk singers and social activists Pete Seeger and Lee Hays who wrote and recorded it in 1949.

If I had a hammer
I’d hammer in the morning
I’d hammer in the evening
All over this land
I’d hammer out danger
I’d hammer out a warning
I’d hammer out love between
My brothers and my sisters
All over this land

Owing to the political controversy surrounding the lyrics and Seeger’s connection with the Communist Party, the song disappeared from public radio and TV. But folk songs with an enduring message never die.

During the Civil Rights Movement and anti-Vietnam War rallies of the 1960s, the song surfaced anew. With a new melody and the harmonized voices of the folk singing trio, Peter, Paul & Mary, the song soared to the #10 position of the top charts in October 1962. Eleven months later, the Latin-tempo rendition by Trini Lopez catapulted the song to #3.

I was a kid when the song hit the top charts in my home-town Georgetown in what was then British Guiana. With its feisty beat and repetitive lyrics, the song became an instant hit among us kids. We banged out the rhythm with sticks on pots and other makeshift drums.

It’s the hammer of justice
It’s the bell of freedom
It’s a song about love between
My brothers and my sisters
All over this land

The years leading up to our country’s independence from Great Britain in May 1966 were dark days in our small world on the shores of South America. On winning the 1961 General Elections, the East Indian left-wing socialist party gained the right to lead the colony to independence. This development troubled Uncle Sam. After Fidel Castro had seized power in Cuba, the Americans feared the spread of communism in their backyard. Those were the days of Cold War I.

With financial support from Uncle Sam, the opposition parties incited demonstrations and strikes across the country. The fire that razed the capital’s commercial district on February 16, 1962, was just the beginning of the racial/ethnic struggle between the leadership of the majority black and East Indian populations for supremacy in the emerging nation.

Today in America, our President-elect has unleashed the demons of bigotry, misogyny, and xenophobia all over this land. The struggle continues. Once again, we must hammer out our need for justice, freedom, and love.

See the complete song “If I Had A Hammer,” learn more about Pete Seeger and Lee Hays, and listen to Trini Lopez’s rendition of the song at my Poetry Corner December 2016.

Guyana Population Census 2012: Panoramic View of a Nation

13 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by in Guyana, People

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Guyana National Junior Squash Team - August 2012

Faces of the People of Guyana
Guyana National Junior Squash Team – August 2012
Photo Credit: Guyana Times International

 

We are a complex species, living in a complex world of our own design. Except in small rural communities and suburban enclaves where people know each other by name, our urban centers have become too large for us to know everyone. In many cases, we don’t even know or chat with our neighbors.

In order to meet the needs of a nation’s population, policymakers rely upon a critical planning tool: the national Population and Housing Census. Such a comprehensive population count is not only costly but also a colossal operation. For about 150 developing countries, home to 80 percent of the world’s population, help comes from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

Undertaken every ten years and in compliance with the United Nations’ mandate for the 2010 Global Round of Censuses, Guyana held its Population and Housing Census on 15 September 2012. In June 2014, the Guyana Bureau of Statistics released its Preliminary Report of the nation’s 2012 Census. All population figures are not yet available; factors affecting changes since the 2002 Census have not been fully analyzed. Continue reading →

Will Guyana Survive the Great Flood?

01 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by in Guyana, Nature and the Environment

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High Tide at the Seawall - East Coast Demerara - GuyanaHigh Tide at the Seawall – East Coast Demerara – Guyana
Photo Credit: Caribbean Development Bank

 

When I was a kid in Georgetown, capital of Guyana, flooding meant a day or more off from school. During the rainy season, it was quite normal for drainage canals to overflow into streets and neighboring yards. To drain the flood water, kokers or sluice-gates could not be opened until low tide.

Koker or Sluice Gate - Georgetown - GuyanaKoker or Sluice-Gate – Georgetown – Guyana

Over the years, flooding along Guyana’s 264-mile-long, low-lying coastal plain has intensified. This is due partly to failure in upgrading the sea defense system built in the 1740s under Dutch colonization. But the main culprit has been the rise in sea levels. In a country where over eighty percent of the population lives along the coast, ranging from 20 to 40 inches below sea level, this is cause for concern and an action plan.

Evidence on the ground and from outer space indicates that Earth’s polar ice caps, Greenland, and mountain glaciers worldwide are melting. According to research done by Evan Persaud of the University of Guyana, the mean sea level rise for Georgetown is 9.25 inches over the past fifty years; greater than the global mean sea level rise of 7.9 inches for a hundred-year period.

In a stunning chart, National Geographic depicts rising sea levels from AD 1 to 2013, plus four scenarios for the period 2013 to 2100. Their aerial global map, If All the Ice Melted, shows the world’s new coastlines. Georgetown and most of Guyana’s coastal plain would be inundated.

To prevent this scenario, Guyana’s capital should be relocated to higher ground inland. The nation’s lead climate change negotiator disagrees. As quoted in a Reuter’s article, he “believes it would be difficult to move the capital inland.”

Remaining on the coastal plain will be costly.

Quoted in the same article, Guyana’s agriculture minister said: “I cannot give an estimate but it will be massive…millions of US dollars that we have to invest in order to ensure that our housing schemes are properly drained and that our agricultural lands are properly drained and irrigated… It is not something that could be done in one year or five or ten years.”

As one of the founding members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Guyana is not alone in facing the threat of rising sea levels. Seven small island member states already face critical economic losses from climate-related disasters to their tourist industry, agricultural lands, and infrastructure.

In his message for World Environment Day, 5 June 2014, the United Nations Secretary-General noted:

Small Island Developing States [and Guyana] have contributed little to climate change.  Their combined annual output of greenhouse gases is less than one per cent of total global emissions, but their position on the front lines has projected many to the fore in negotiations for a universal new legal climate agreement in 2015… 

Raise your voice, not the sea level.  Planet Earth is our shared island.  Let us join forces to protect it.

Can Guyana’s racially divisive leadership join forces to protect the nation? Based on their record to date, I think not.

 

UPDATE: News from Guyana on U.N. World Environment Day, 6 June 2014

“Guyana pays US$3,500 to build one meter (3.28 feet) of sea defense,” Kaieteur News, Guyana, June 6, 2014.

Approaching Le Repentir II: Plantation of Grief by Mark McWatt

06 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by in Poetry

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Bangladesh Factory CollapseTwo victims of the Bangladesh Garment Factory Collapse – April 2013
Photo Credit: NY Daily News

 

In my Poetry Corner November 2013, I feature the poem “Approaching Le Repentir II: Plantation of Grief” by Guyana-born poet Mark McWatt. This poem is the second of four poems about the torment and legacy of Pierre Louis De Saffon (1724-1784), from Mark McWatt’s poetry collection, The Journey to Le Repentir, published by Peepal Tree Press in 2009.

In “Approaching Le Repentir I: Pierre Louis De Saffon,” we learn that the Frenchman had sought asylum in the heat and sweat and stink of Demerara where he was doomed to a life all but sorrow, penitence and shame for accidentally killing his brother in a duel (over a woman).

As expressed in “Part II: Plantation of Grief,” no penance was enough for killing his brother. In spite of his wealth and status as a result of his success as a sugar plantation owner, De Saffon suffered a sorrow without relief. In naming his plantations, La Penitence and Le Repentir, he tried to channel (his) lifelong guilt and grief.

The poet in “Part III: Atonement” voiced De Saffon’s hope that the names would live on in a future city as monuments of his atonement: the sincerity of my penance.

As a final act of atonement, described in “Part IV: Hetta,” De Saffon instructed…

that his fortune be used to educate white orphan
(or half-orphan) girls of this purgatorial place…

Henrietta Wilhelmina Cendrecourt, the poet’s paternal grandmother—a poor, white girl who had lost her father—was numbered among the beneficiaries of De Saffon’s will (learn more).

What impressed me about De Saffon’s affliction is the dichotomy of our nature as humans. To the outside world, the Frenchman was a successful plantation owner to be respected and adulated. In his inner being, he remained tormented by loss and remorse. No penance, no achievement could make up for his crime of fratricide.

It’s this crime that inspired my Haiku poem, “Penance.” What about our own crimes of fratricide in our pursuit for greater profits and cheap consumer goods?

In 1782, after seizing the Colony of Demerara, established by the Dutch in 1745, the French built their capital, La Nouvelle Ville, at the mouth of the Demerara River. The Dutch captured the city in 1784 and renamed it Stabroek. When the British took control of Demerara in 1812, they renamed the city, Georgetown, in honor of King George III.

In a strange twist of fate, De Saffon’s Plantation Le Repentir became a part of Georgetown’s largest cemetery, named Le Repentir Cemetery. Saffon Street in Charlestown, built on the front lands where he was buried, is a reminder of his legacy. La Penitence forms the southern border of the cemetery.

In “Approaching Le Repentir,” we approach our final resting place. It’s a journey we must all take. Try as we may, we cannot escape the consequences of our decisions and our actions along the way. When remorse resides in our innermost being, our wealth and power cannot restore our peace of mind. Only forgiveness can do that. Only love heals.

Guyana National Service: Sacrifices for Nation Building

30 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by in About Me, Guyana

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Rosaliene in Guyana National Service Uniform, 1976

When Guyana’s first Executive President created the Guyana National Service (GNS) in October 1973, he had a vision for “a new Guyana Man and Woman, oriented towards their role in nation building.” He had envisaged a nation working together, with respect for each other, to develop our hinterland regions and defend our territory (1973 State Paper of the GNS, www.guyanapnc.org).

Over the next twenty six years of the paramilitary organization’s existence, thousands of Guyanese youth spent a year or more at GNS hinterland centers cultivating and processing cotton, black-eye beans, peanuts, and other cash crops. For young men and women without job prospects, the GNS provided an opportunity to learn and develop new skills.

When the first GNS hinterland center began operations, I was a second-year undergraduate at the University of Guyana. In my final year, completion of one year of national service became a requirement for obtaining a university degree. Caught in the change, graduates 1976 were required to complete only three months of national service.

With reservations about my safety, I resisted the requirement of spending three months in an isolated location in Guyana’s jungle interior. Moreover, I was a high school teacher, already doing my part in preparing our young people for their place in our young nation. Even though I had sacrificed a lot to attend university classes in the evening while teaching during the day, I was prepared to forfeit it all to avoid placing myself in harm’s way. I was not ready for such a sacrifice. Then the good news came. We would be serving in Georgetown, the capital.

The first weekend that we assembled at the GNS Center in Sophia, we formed a unified mass in our parrot-green uniforms issued by the GNS. My name badge bore only my family name: Fung. Divided into four units, each under the command of a GNS Officer, we spent our weekends studying cooperative socialist policies for nation-building; doing marching drills and physical training; and engaged in agricultural activities.

Mondays to Fridays, we served at various government agencies. I worked with six other graduates at the Guyana National Service Printing Center, setting up a staff library and executing other duties.

Under the tutelage of army sergeants from the Guyana Defense Force, we had to conform to military modes of conduct. I was relieved that we did not have to train with rifles. Our platoon had a tough, buxom, female sergeant with a booming voice.

“Fung, fall in line!”

Within three months, from July to October, she transformed our platoon into a marching unit for a top-notch performance at our Passing out Parade – held in October at the University of Guyana Turkeyen Campus.

Completing those three months of national service was an achievement for me. I had survived the marching drills, physical training, and agricultural work under the merciless Sun. Later that October, when we assembled in the auditorium of the Guyana National Cultural Centre for our graduation ceremony, we were no longer strangers.

“Fung, to the front!”

Rosaliene receiving Chancellor’s Medal – University of Guyana 1976