So It Go

The curtain is only just down on the recent Limacol Caribbean Premier League cricket tournament, enjoying sold-out games and strong sponsorship, and here comes the usual wailing in the press about the demise of cricket propelled by the T20. 

Every time I go away to play to audiences outside I hear from Guyanese in the diaspora on the coping-with-life-in-Guyana question.

I’m writing this in Toronto a few hours after a concert at the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts, designed to help raise funds for the Burn Care Unit at our Georgetown Public Hospital. 

In a column in this space in mid-January 2012, in the aftermath of the general election, I wrote the following: “The playing out of this scenario, in very public view, of a President sitting in a Parliament, where his party is outnumbered by the coalesced opposition, is going to mean that the normal ruling party dictates will not be operating in Guyana, and  this manoeuvering for consensus, by its very nature, is going to require exemplary people, people of character, for the governing apparatus to work.

A recent note from a Tradewinds fan about the design of a particular album cover took me back to the time I had begun recording with the band in Toronto in the late 1960s.

As Guyana’s interest in tourism appears to be gaining momentum, it is useful to reflect on the development of that sector in two Caribbean countries – St Vincent and the Cayman Islands – that moved into tourism at approximately the same time in the 1960s. 

I always travel with a little scribble book where I make notes to myself (books or CDs to get; observations; a reminder to me or to a friend, etc) and browsing through it recently I found the following reference to an incident that had completely left my memory.

First of all, “the book” is ultimately not about Guyana.  Yes, it took place here, and it involved many Guyanese, but it’s essentially about a US State Department sub-culture bubbling in the US visitor-visa scam that is found in several US embassies around the world.

(This column originally appeared in the ‘Caricom Review Magazine,’ July 2013) We have been at it as far back as 1921, when the Jamaican legislature saw a motion to ask the British Colonial Office to consult the other islands on the idea of a federation – this notion of regional unity, that is.

Barely a month passes in the English-speaking Caribbean without a reference on some stage or in some letter or political speech to the deleterious effects of colonialism upon us.

I’ve always been intrigued by the process in which the apparatus of a culture is gradually modified, even mutated, by persons migrating from one culture taking up permanent residence in the host one.

Most of the truly riveting or memorable things we’ve seen reside in still photographs that freeze a fleeting moment and hold it for us forever.

It is often the case in life that you see absurd behaviour taking place and you immediately know the reason; like a driver running a red light at full speed.

Airline travel these days is often a taxing and frequently painful experience.

There is a Guyanese organisation in Toronto called the St. Stanislaus College Alumni Association which has done stellar work over the years raising funds to help maintain the school.

I get a modest monthly American Federation of Musicians Union pension cheque which I deposit in the bank here, but it takes 30 working days, yes 30, for foreign cheques to clear (money laundering; fraud, etc, is the reason you’re given) which means, taking in weekends, foreign holidays and ours, that it’s actually closer to 45 days.

I’ve mentioned before that we don’t need to wade through reams of data or voluminous comparisons to reach some basic conclusions on seemingly complex matters; that we can often get a clear and almost instantaneous insight on these issues from indicators staring us in the face.

A friend of mine, who knows I love Martin Carter, alerted me to a recent letter in the press by Ruel Johnson that contained a poem by Martin apparently written in the dark days of our suspended constitution.

During Mashramani this year, my friend Vibert Cambridge and his New York-based Guyana Cultural Association (GCA) organised a Masquerade Band competition on a Saturday morning in Victoria.

Every time I meet a foreigner in place in Guyana, I’m curious about (a) what led them to our country and (b) their impressions after being here a while.