happy 8 year homecoming anniversary to me. 50:50 Guyanese officially now woo hoo
Michelle Heralall Ramsaroop
we all pulling for you, Michelle. nuff love
to my pal michelle
sending you positive energy to pull on through
ps. i got dat one from the archive gerhard 💃🏿🕺🏻😁
garden’n cats
romeo ‘helping’ me plant annatto
https://www.organicfacts.net/health-benefits/seed-and-nut/annatto.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annatto
pumpkin is amazed by the maiwiri pepper 😀 #avocado and #cherry also pictured
https://www.stabroeknews.com/2017/the-scene/tastes-like-home/06/24/maiwiri-versus-wiri-wiri/
List of Guyana companies qualified to provide services to Exxon Mobil — mark jacobs lives!
. . . To pacify the local black gold dreamers Exxon Mobil ran an add and I immediately fell out laughing. Whitey yuh too too cruel. ExxonMobil is seeking contractors for support services for helicopter operations, maintenance and ground services. Also being sought are support services for platform supply vessels, multi-purpose intervention vessel and tanker […]
via List of Guyana companies qualified to provide services to Exxon Mobil — mark jacobs lives!
grow more
how many can you identify? how many do you have growing by you? this is some of what’s growing in the backyard of the one ‘family property’ remaining in Lusignan.. blessed by the ancestors even tho most of their descendants have long beat out for better pastures- i mean bright lights n big cities.. me- i happy to be mobilizing downward, into the ground.
blue
blue
Justice for Courtney Crum Ewing
The sky was dark and overcast. We had just come from the night shelter where the Haitians were being held. It was a bad situation and we were all on edge. “What are you doing about Crum Ewing?” she directed loudly at me. Huh? “What are you doing about Crum Ewing?” she repeated. “Um, what do you think I should be doing about Crum Ewing?” She let out a long suck teeth. CHUUUUUPSE. I sighed, a deep heartfelt sigh. “Look, they held somebody, but every time the magistrate lets him go.. You know that…” I does go and check out his tree once in a while- a lovely Pride of India sapling. I’m glad you remember him though, sister. I’m glad you remember him. #CourtneyCrumEwing #JusticeNow What are YOU doing about Crum Ewing??
a tale of two mothers
a tale of two mothers. the first is trying to slow down time. she gets a year with her newborn before the child is taken away. these simpletons think its better to sever the maternal-offspring bond than bring the child up in prison. but children are born and raised in brothels, sweatshops, and shantytowns the world over. #hypocrisymuch The second mother is trying to speed up time. She’s got a release date, see? she has 3 children- a girl and 2 boys who are both in the GDF (Army). She was busted at the airport with cocaine. She plead guilty right away and has already served 2/3 of her time. She lived 10 minutes away from the prison, she said. She used to exercise around it when she was young; she’d run past early in the morning, tantalizing the big women inside. Now, funnily enough, many years later, she’s a captive, staring out at life going by. #ataleof2mothers #Guyana2017
jubilee +1- Guyana 2017
Sometimes I decide to go to things. Sometimes I get to thinking I should engage/participate more in the larger society out there. So I leave my hammock and my yard of growing things, and- risking my life in the minibuses- I go. Sometimes I’m glad, pleasantly surprised, meet cool people, feel stimulated. This being Independence eve and all, I made the effort. The event description mentioned young people and an environmental organization- that’s why I went; Earth and the future is in peril- I wanted to hear what young people thought and were doing about that. But it turns out that was just the first 15 minutes; the rest of the time was devoted to the Constitution and blah blah blah. There weren’t that many people there- there were competing events- the flag raising, something about oil and gas- undoubtedly more people were at those events. So i forced myself to stay. It was hard for me to sit there though. I twitched my fingers and toes, slumped then pulled myself back up, closed my eyes, rested my head in my hands, just fidgeted. All I kept thinking while man after man droned on about the Constitution and politricks was the little girl I had spent the previous hours of the afternoon with. She was 7 going on 8, in Grade 2, and she couldn’t write a proper sentence. In fact, she was at the ‘cat, bat, rat, hat’ stage of reading/writing. At 7 going on 8. She has never not been in school. It’s public school tho, not private; she’s not from a wealthy family. They have had their share of troubles actually, but she hasn’t been the one directly affected. Physically- as far as the eye can see- she’s fine, healthy. But the learning deficits are unmistakable. 
She’s never been assessed though- where does one even go to get that done in Guyana, another colleague/friend and I pondered the other day? I thought of one person who might know; after the holiday we’ll reach out and see (Karen H- is you I thinking of). 51 years of independence. 7 yr olds who can’t read. She’s not alone- when I was volunteering at the Drop In Center- before it burned down killing Joshua and Antonio George- I found many children who were going to school every day, who had notebooks full of notes, but who struggled to read and write basic sentences in English <Charlene, you have to give me tips on how to assess Creolese fluency in writing>. I stopped volunteering after the fire- there wasn’t any suitable place for that at the new location where the surviving children were re-located to, I was told when I visited there. Besides, they reported, most of the children had been sent back to their families. I see them around regularly actually- usually it’s they who “Miss” me. I saw one of the boys last Friday, unloading thrushes of water coconuts from the back of a pickup truck at my weekly neighborhood market. It was around 11am, time when he should have been in school. But instead, he was child laboring. When I asked if he was going to school, he dropped his eyes and lied. “Yes Miss. I just didn’t go today.” I stood there for a few minutes, just watching him silently. When the backs of the adult men directing the operation were turned, I asked him softly if they were paying him. He nodded. These children are everywhere- you don’t have to know or look hard to see them; they are everywhere; clearly visible every day. They’re at the intersections and road corners selling water, soda, and beer. They’re pushing bales of stuff in the market and climbing into storage bonds. They’re running errands for big people and engaging in all kinds of hustles. The girls are a bit more invisible- unless you’re in the bush or a bottomhouse bar. 51 years of independence. And these men are talking about the readability of the Constitution and all the beautiful things it promises the Guyanese people. The environmental organization man talks about how happy he is to have found a job he likes and the awesomeness of nature. About the pristineness of Guyana’s environment and the difficulty getting coastlanders to appreciate it. The young woman on the panel- the only one, someone i know, who blew a kiss to me earlier- talks about love. Love of country and the awesomeness of nature. The other young man talks about his love of the law, and youth coupling with wisdom. He is careful, too careful, already lawyerly-careful, to not blame anyone (the government) for anything. 
The veteran trade unionist’s 15 minutes feels like an hour and at the end of it I’m completely discombobulated. I want to scream. I want to cry. I leave when another comrade of sorts asks about the lack of a strong civil society response to the abuses of power. My head feels like it’s going to explode; I bolt outside- if it does, I want to at least get one last glimpse of the stars before oblivion. Instead I’m greeted by the sight of overflowing garbage bins and piles of garbage strewn about the pathway. On the other side, inside the GuyOil compound, nice Jamaican music plays and people dance, enjoying the pre-Independence. 
I walk to the National Library, to check on the banner I put up there day before yesterday. It says LGBT and Guyanese on the same line and it was a minor dream of mine to get a banner like this in this position. 
This being Guyana though, anything could have happened to it. So I’m going to check on it. I have some more wire in my bag to secure it more if necessary. I hear a sound behind me and turn; it’s just a dog. Still, I’m on the alert. I am a woman, walking alone. I have been mugged before and have no desire for a repeat. Another block and another sound, this one human. Turning I see a man in slippers, one of the numerous street dwellers of Georgetown. Shit. I pick up my pace and search the wire out of my bag, wrapping it around my fist. I could poke him with it if necessary, or strangle him maybe? Yes, these are the things women walking alone on darkened streets think. Under a streetlight I see that he is of indigenous heritage. It’s funny- I had been thinking, in the event earlier, when the environment organization people were talking, about how I would have liked to see/hear an indigenous person’s perspective. So now the universe had sent me someone. Real funny. I cross the street, looking back still. I know he sees me looking at him, judging him a threat. I feel like shit but this is life. Fucked up shit. As we near the library, he greets me. “Exercising huh?” he says inanely. I just grunt. My head still feels like it’s going to explode.
Love makes a family
❤
Last night, I gave a speech at an event hosted by the European Union and Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination in observance of IDAHOT. Due to my clumsiness, I did not finish my speech and I was asked to post it up in its entirety. So here it is, with a few edits and additions.
As a child, it seemed like everything had definitions. Not only definitions, but stringent ones; ones that you could not necessarily change because it did not seem to apply to you. Just like how I learnt that us humans are basically made up of stardust and I learnt how to differentiate between water type and grass type Pokemons, I also learnt that a family was made up of a man, a woman and their children. There were some slight deviations from this of course. We not only had the nuclear family, we also had the…
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