KAIETEUR
Boating down the Potaro River; with an engine though, not paddling like that chief from the stories long long ago…
“Here is where the first official boundary is; we are now officially in the National Park.” Ranger station comes into view, through a thin tree line.
76yo Granny Liloutie at Menzies Landing, all by herself in her shop, peeling awara with a long knife, with tinny sounding old Hindi film tunes wafting from a cassette tape player for company.
Half a dozen planes are parked at the airstrip, including a big man’s personal, branded, craft. Gaggles of tourists abound, from old white ones with papery skin and slow, careful steps, to younger, more exuberant, colored ones. We laugh at the kid with a mosquito net hat surrounding his head; there are few insects around, even though “bush” is everywhere.
Everyone poses for a photo near the Kaieteur National Park sign. Kaieteur- Guyana’s most famous tourist attraction, known the world over. Longest single-drop waterfall in the world.
A place of spiritual importance to the Patamona people, indigenous to these parts.
A place now controlled by the State. A place where they are told they must now submit to the will of the authorities from ‘Town. Yes, there were ‘consultations’ prior to the establishment of the Park and Protected Area. But it’s hard to see how the community benefits- they get no revenue from the stream of tourists and have no say in what happens there anymore.
Presidential Grant money that never reached because the tashao dared to speak out/back.
Guesthouse languishing unfinished for almost two decades.
Gold and diamond mining the main source of income.
A younger generation that no longer knows or practices the old ways.
Football and church the main activities, along with drinking. Cases and cases of beer in yellow and blue plastic crates mark the various shop locations.
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WARAMADONG
“Where are you from? Is your mother Indigenous? You resemble my cousin..”
Why are you here?
Why are you here, coastlander?
Is it to steal our land?
Is it to rape our women and children?
Is it to destroy our culture?
The fear and distrust is palpable.
“They only spent a few hours; that wasn’t enough time for us to understand properly..”
“We need translation in our language. Some of these English words..”
One Guyana my bamzee. Mirages disappear as soon as you delve beyond the surface.
“If they build it, maybe they could take it back, even though we’re living in it..”
“Grandfather said.. Marry your own kind of people..”
Why did grandfather say that? What did he experience? What was he afraid of? What did he know?
As we welcome development and zinc sheet houses and coca cola and jesus christ as our lord and savior and the internet and Exxon and partisan politricks and tractors and boat engines and rum and carbon credits and conservation and representative democracy and the rule of law and wine up and backball…
“Can they- the government- take it away, because they built it? Even though it’s on our land?”
So apparently I look (at least partially) indigenous, like cousin Bernadette from the Upper Mazaruni. Tho, as far as I know (without giving my DNA to any of those online people), my genes are 100% South Asian.
I’m here, I replied, because our lives are interconnected and when you don’t have rights, it’s as if I don’t have rights. Oh, she said, looking intently at me.
This is Kapong/Pemon land. Small in stature, but large in passion.
Here, I was a linguistic and cultural minority.
(NOT) One Guyana
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JAWALLA
“Granny”, she calls me. She- who is a decade older than me. It’s the hair, greying for two plus decades, which I refuse to blacken.
How many children do you have? Oh.. You have a husband though? Again, I shake my head negatively. And smile. I’m husband free, and happy! That’s the end of that conversation.
“If you have a grandchild, give it to them to wear,” he said, gifting me with the beaded item. Because my brain still isn’t computing, I tie the strings around my neck instead. It’s only when I see the giggles that realization strikes; it’s not a necklace but a lap apron for a small child.
Granny.
I’m 46. Granny material in this culture where almost every young woman I see out of a school uniform has a babe in arms and/or by her side.
I’m not offended, not really. I could have been a grandmother after all, if I’d been raised in this society, and if I’d made different choices two decades ago.
I’m bemused, and more than a little sad, at the fact that women like me are apparently as common as unicorns around here.
Women like me. Child free.
Not child-less, but child-free. It’s an important distinction.
Bodily autonomy. Reproductive choice.
These are foreign concepts here.
Here is the largest primary school that I’ve ever seen in an indigenous community (apart from the one in Santa Rosa, the largest indigenous village of Guyana).
You know that abortion is legal in Guyana, right? I ask the young trainee nursing assistant at the health post. Her eyes widen- I don’t know if it’s at hearing the word abortion spoken aloud, and she remains silent. Yes, I continue, since 1991- longer than you’ve been alive (she’s a child of the new millennium)!
She tells me then about a mother who didn’t want to permit her underage teenage daughter to get on birth control. No matter, the girl was already pregnant. Now the mother is a grandmother. Granny.
Not only child-free, but husband-free as well.
“Boys in the ring! When the song stops, pick a partner. A girl. C’mon, all boys- in the ring! If you have a ball, into the ring!”
I see him hesitate. He, with the fashion sense, long curly dyed auburn hair, pretty face, and expertly groomed brows. It’s obvious that he’s ‘family’. He finally steps into the ring, does a perfunctory lap, and slips out again onto the sidelines. Like me. Hello my rainbow brother, I want to say to him. But this is not my place and I do not have the words to unlock that door. I did try- complimenting him on his necklace and asking about his role in his village, but his demeanor did not invite kinship. (Maybe because he saw me as a granny.) I understand that arms-length wall and moat very well though; I too still reflexively deploy it, even at times when I don’t necessarily need to. Survival tactics, once learnt, are hard to unlearn.
“I’m security,” he asserts, when they call for him to go back inside the ring. They leave him be then and I seize the opportunity to slink away myself as the singing resumes.
freedombyanymeans 