The Tramping Man + Duenne

 I happened to be in Guyana when the Theatre Guild put on a production after a hiatus due to COVID. Both productions had a strong Trinidadian link and the former was written 60 yrs ago and adapted to Guyanese circumstances.

Duenne, I was later told, is used as a CXE book for Literature and explores themes of relationships and what happens in pre-life. The stage was set closer to the audience and gave a more intimate feel with the actors utilizing all parts of the auditorium, reminding me of the warehouse theatres in London-- sadly mostly closed down. I thought the actors were very good - having to shift scenes in near darkness!

The play opened with the Creator getting ready to send one of his creations to earth and we were also introduced to the recipient of this creation - an artist living a bohemian life. Luckily I am not a parent but I wondered how I would feel about the description of (happy!) post-coital musings to my 15 yr old. My view is that the young of today already have the joys of childhood stripped away from them way too fast. Another friend who attended observed to me that the average 15yr old in Guyana would have been exposed to enough sexual views just riding the minibuses! Sheltered middle class must be a dying breed?

The spirit child was not keen on leaving her comfortable existence but as her father God explained - how could she be said to exist if her presence on earth is not manifest? Our bohemian artist meanwhile been abandoned by her 'love' and finds herself pregnant with all the misgivings about her condition being voiced. Meanwhile the spirit child has had a change of heart and is prepared to manifest as an earthly presence and tries to console the potential mother although they are in different planes of existence. I liked that the Guyanese description of 'throw the baby away' was worked in and kudos to Paloma for an original play with a nod to the Trinidadian concept of duenne.

The Tramping Man I had a bigger problem with as the only noticeable Indian actor in both plays was the policeman who was carrying out orders of his commandant to bully the happy go lucky and probably mystical working class local 'Pied Piper' of all men. The blurb in the program explained the play was written 60yrs ago most probably while the writer was in Trinidad. The play was re-written using Guyanese locations and must have been performed around the mid to latter part of the 1960s.

Before I proceed, I should point out my background: I was brought to Guyana as a 4yrs old after my mother was appalled when my older brother came home to ask her 'what is a paki' - being called that at a school she gave up her career to become a teacher in -  a private Kindergarten. I think at that time I did not question why most visible public people were white and it never occurred to me the complete change in colour of the population when we moved to Guyana. HOWEVER, when the maid took me to the Empire Cinema around the corner from the rented house we were living in - my first Indian movie was a complete RELEVATION- here were Indian people doing regular things - and covering the whole spectrum - the goodies, the baddies, the comics and ordinary roles! Somehow my 5 yr old self now had a picture of how Life could be.  My Nigerian friend in London amused me in 1996 by buying black magazines to scatter around the home so her toddler could also have these positive images. 

The local Guyanese newspapers both at that time and now have mainly pictures of people of African origin and mixed races. It has always irked me how the images never reflected the silent and largely bullied majority - thanks US and UK.  Today's Stabroek News has a letter with this observation: 'George Lamming argued that the Anglo-Saxon was taken over by the Afro-Saxon in the Caribbean since little has changed. This is the birth of neo-colonialism.'  In London currently the pendulum has swung completely the other way to ridiculous where Anne Boleyn is black and when practically every family in TV Ads is a Black and White mix, in spite of the population having more people looking like they came from the Indian sub-continent than the African one - however with a lot of Africa planning on jumping on little boats to get to Europe and the UK - I m guessing that might change and it may be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But back to the play, the main story is that the powers that be are threatened by a country (Berbice) upstart who is uniting the masses cutting across class lines. As a Guyanese, the play would make more sense to me if the Indian actor was the Tramping Man upsetting the status quo - that would represent pre-independence Guyana.  However I concede that he was not as good an actor in terms of projecting his voice as the actor who did play the Tramping Man. One can argue that the audience ought to look past the race of the actor but in the Guyanese context  - post 1998 certain segments of the black working class took to tramping the streets at the behest of Hoyte as he had lost the elections and I thought having a Indian police in this play represented the perception of the Government at that time as promoted by Hoyte.

My friend who was also there said it never occurred to him about the significance of the race of the actor who was the police and thought he represented the colonial powers and I suppose the tramping man those colonies agitating for independence.

Poison for the Fairies

This was a more modern Mexican film than the previous ones shown at the Mexican Embassy in Guyana. The Ambassador explained that this film was released about the same time they started the Film Institute to celebrate Mexico’s film industry making this year its 40th anniversary.

The film started with one isolated, orphaned child, Verónica, being assigned to help a late comer, Flavia, who was also an only child and a bit of a loner. Veronica’s imagination is encouraged by the tales of witches by her nanny but she is also fairly strong willed and manipulative and gradually starts to dominate and bully Flavia who becomes scared to resist her.

Veronica makes Flavia get her invited to Flavia’s family’s ranch for the holidays and the girls spend a lot of time collecting witchy ingredients to make a potion to kill the fairies as they have the power to kill witches. The idea being to sprinkle the potion on any places where the fairies might hang out. Of course the girls break the parents’ rules but the film concentrates mainly on the girls’ activities and the mainly faceless adults seem oblivious to gradual domination and change of character of Flavia. The final straw for Flavia is the demand for her beloved pet - a small black dog, who Verónica thinks would be a good substitute for the traditional witches’ black cat to help with the spell. There was an unexpected twist at the end. The Ambassador  revealed at the end that the actress playing Verónica went on the be one of the famous telenovela actresses in Mexico who specialised in playing villainesses!

Guyanese Abroad

So there were a couple moments of mirth on reading a report in SN today (pg 20) about a Guyanese who got pulled up for bad driving in Montana.  The sheer stupidity on the roads that push one to fantasize about having a shotgun when a slow moving vehicle pulls out from a side road in front of you, forcing you to brake when there is NOTHING behind you and when you are driving behind someone who clearly doesn't know or care about the rules of the road and who immediately slows down when passing a police vehicle to show deference; showed up in mid-America.  I was amused to think that a sane police patrol on the lookout for terrorists and illegal migrants must have been bemused at the 'ignar' Guyanese driving and there must some anthropological thing involving the Guyanese man's car veering into the shoulder when being passed by the police car and not using an indicator to change lanes (another pet peeve) that alerted the American police that something was amiss!

Admittedly there was a strange connection with the other person in the car-- who sounded like a native Chinese-- and clearly they didn't co-ordinate stories-- the Guyanese going to sell local products in a neighbouring state and the Chinese going to a more distant state to sell cosmetics!  Turns out the alert police hauled in 70lbs of ganja-- wonder if the Chinese are diversifying into other local products now that the timber avenue seems to have dried up?

Jumping to conclusions

My sympathy for a young British-born and bred Muslim teacher rose after reading that he was turned back from a flight to the US.  His apparent crime - having a Muslim name.  The US authorities quite rightly state that they don't have to give a reason for refusal - it's their prerogative after all to decide who they want in their country.  My sympathy rose because I had been in a similar position - I had just finished university and literally picked up the letter confirming that I had qualified from the University on my way to the airport as I had planned to spend the summer break with relatives in Canada.  While I was there, some cousins decided to drive over to New York as another cousin was getting married and I thought that it would be fun to go. I went to the US embassy in Toronto confidently not expecting a problem, only to encounter a know-it-all middle-aged woman who questioned why I had not applied for a visa in London (hadn't occurred to me as I hadn't thought of going over to the US!) and informed me that I was just the age of Guyanese looking to 'disappear' in the US (a couple of years younger than this teacher).  I was suitably astonished and I informed her that I had just received my degree and had a job lined up for my  pre-registration year and that my degree was not recognised in the US. I would have loved to see my face when she  turned me down...as it never occurred to me that THAT was possible. I was sooo annoyed I thought to myself they could stuff it and it would be their loss and I wouldn't ever go there.

Ten years later, I decided to open a business in Guyana and logically the best place to source equipment was ... the US!   Pragmatism won, and I had to fill in the part that asked if I had ever been turned down for a Visa before. Well I have to say, I found the Americans to be a very generous people on the whole and black Americans willing to go the extra mile and in return I have spent many thousands of (US) dollars in their country.

Really is it worth the Badwill generated by randomly targeting  and antagonising people with a different name/culture?  Surely a better tracking system should be instituted? My Iranian friend had to report to the British police on a monthly basis although she had lived in the UK since she was 13yrs old before she presumably applied to be a citizen.

I really wonder about the stupidity of the officers carrying out the duties of their paranoid and ignorant leaders. I had to endure a more rigourous search at Miami heading to the Caribbean (not exactly a target of terrorists!) on a Caribbean airline with mainly Caribbean passengers. What annoyed me was, I had only a couple of hours been through a similar but less invasive procedure from a connecting internal US airport, which I told the officer while being poked and prodded and if that officer didn't find anything, they were unlikely to! But I hasten to add it's usually the disgruntled working-class person OD-ing on power who is being ridiculous, most of the Immigration officers and men with dogs are very pleasant and respectful.  There is always a danger of doing more harm than good.
 PS..I would have said Wales, where this teacher hails from, is not exactly a hotbed of militant terrorist types but remember listening on BBC to an interview of a native Welsh woman who married a muslim and had five children.  Her only son became withdrawn and then left to join IS secretly one day and she was relating how she found out he had died subsequently; that son would have been about the same age as this teacher and I wondered if guilt by association meant this teacher was refused entry to the US?
PPS... a 10yr old girl-child??    http://abc11.com/news/family-upset-over-tsa-check-of-10-year-old-girl-at-rdu/1148445/
PPPS... and a 65yr old American woman??  https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/a-panty-liner-triggers-a-tsa-pat-down-just-one-step-removed-from-a-pap-smear/2017/03/30/ec86c10c-154d-11e7-ada0-1489b735b3a3_story.html?tid=sm_fb&utm_term=.09216d8633bf 
My gut feeling that the Americans are morons confirmed: http://theweek.com/articles/441310/confessions-former-tsa-officer

Parking Meter Fiasco

So backwards Guyana, unable to institute a fair Tax collecting system, put questionable people in City Hall...their election seemingly rigged and repellent to decent folk who could make positive changes...who must have been approached by 'smarter' foreigners out to make an easy buck. Then, only in Guyana..it gets crazier..an apparent entrepreneur Jewish guy associated with a Russian telecommunications company (Russian mafia?) is uncovered to be behind it all...see photograph...all decidedly unGuyanese and without Guyana's interest at heart.

  The result was second-hand units shipped down and dodgy underhand deals with a select group of ignorant people signing the City of Georgetown to 49yrs of 80% of the takings given to 'brains' and 20% to City Hall to apparently pay themselves inflated salaries as services are likely to remain poor in the foreseeable unaccountable future! Super smart move to have the citizens pay for the nooses around their necks!
Their local PR person who it is alleged, contributed to the racial strife back in the day has mounted a slander campaign against the newly politicised citizens - even including suggestive remarks towards their employers.  Of course, this has limited use, as the ignorant seem firmly in driver seat, like under the last Administration, and the chattering (and more capable) class can only gnash their teeth and hope for a few crumbs of consultancies to eke by as most not in an employed situation.
Because the meter attendants are paid a bonus and there is virtually no-come back for the hapless parkers..see ticket and charge below..people will be under stress even if they ARE within the time zone-- having no higher authority to appeal to! 

The ultimate joke being that the parking Laws are not gazetted implying that the current practice is illegal.  Looks like the only thing to do that will be effective would be to not use the system as it is basically a shake-down operation-- I may actually miss the tramps on the street begging for $100 to 'watch' ya car!

Hidden Figures

Having grown up without the distraction of TV, the boredom of Sunday was relieved by Sunday School/church and a trip to the cinema to see a double (two films) in the afternoon, possibly with swimming at Pegasus in between.  With the re-entry of cinemas in Guyana, I reflected that my time must be drawing to a close as I have come back almost to full circle of going to the cinema at weekends.
Hidden Figures was a pun on the coloured female mathematicians who worked on the Space program in the 1950s/60s. While the three black actresses were very believable, I thought the white actors were very good...Kirsten Dunst played the HR person talking down to the women who were her intellectual superiors, to perfection.  Jim Parsons brought his constipated look from The Big Bang Theory as the silently outraged white male whose turf was intruded on but reluctantly acknowledging the genius of Katherine Johnson.  Both characters played were fictional ones - but stuck in as gentle reminders of the Black scientists' grace under fire.  I was disappointed though that the film resorted to imagining that KJ took 40 minutes to go to the coloureds' washroom when in fact she simply used the whites' bathroom-- showing more gumption than the meek character on screen. The director said the film's portrayal was to indicate the help of the decent Whites.  I thought that was subtly done when the astronauts came to NASA and John Glenn made a point of coming over to the coloured women to introduce himself and ask their role; as I was reminded of an American Embassy staffer on duty here, who would acknowledge the help staff like the waiters when she went out, by asking their names and remembering to use said names during whatever event - I was quite impressed with that-- people simply just want to be acknowledged and appreciated.....shame that couldn't translated to American foreign policies!
The film did try to stay close the actual events and I was glad Katherine Johnson is still alive at 90-something to see it and finally be acknowledged on a larger scale-- to NASA's credit they named a building after her. As with Sully, the film ended with pictures of the real people...truly to tap the potential of a large pool of people will lead to things greater than the sum total...if only the Americans can figure THAT out.

Worrying developments

Ironically while sorting out taxes, I happened across a YouTube video by a journalist speaking about aid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C30bJBcM_0c  Her point was - that countries NEED good governance, particularly poorer countries, not just emergency handouts when the shit hits the fan. Unfortunately, aid doesn't go to less sexy projects such as training inspectors to ensure that buildings respect codes to lessen damage in the event of a natural disaster-- Japan has done remarkable work based on bitter experience so the knowledge is out there...and tax inspectors: doing so would ensure sustainability and lessen the need for aid as countries would learn to be self-sufficient.
With that in mind, observing what the elephant in the World is doing raises flags of concern! The new Trump administration is continuing to target journalists covering stories of groups of people protesting government actions which seemingly support corporate actions by insisting on implementing policies without bothering to consult with the people directly affected.  In effect, suppressing publicity which could garner further support and force said companies/corporations to back down - looks like numbers might be the only effective tool as the thinking class is a under threat and the strategy seems to be to keep them occupied by increasing the struggle to keep their heads above water starting with increasing the cost of living and removing social supports.  Amy Goodman of Democracy Now was charged for giving air-time to the protests against the Dakota pipeline which the Obama administration eventually bowed out of but now Trump, who had/have shares in the company, has repealed said backoff so it looks like the pipelines are back on.   Of course, I am against stupid things such as damaging cars and property that are associated with the protests but it is not unlikely that the opposition put in vandals to give the protesters a bad name.
This upcoming scenario is what Snowden feared could happen....a sizeable proportion of the population are interested enough to educate themselves about an issue but are opposed by the might of  government resources who are representing the interests of a small handful of people benefiting from short-term gains and divesting themselves of Public Bads and long-term losses such as environmental damage and pauperisation of the rest- consciously heading for bad governance by dismantling regulatory checks and balances.
I would shrug my shoulders and say-- well that's their problem but their stupid decisions affect the rest of us- starting with American funds not being given to worldwide programs which offer abortions as an option for some women.  BTW I have no sympathy for the tears being shed by those shaking their hands that their last election was possibly influenced by outside forces as the US  has been tampering in other people's elections a long time now-- karma!  I would say thanks and well done Russia except we all suffer from ignorant policy decisions arising from a greedy, ignorant and corrupt administration most likely to arise from a Trump-led one, or one that put Trump at the head.