Only These Grandmothers

 

Only these Grandmothers

A poem by Guyanese writer Maggie Harris

 

Only these grandmothers can see down the long road travelled

where all the love and pain converge like cars in a traffic

jams. Only these grandmothers carry the scent of kitchens

infused by cooking pans and garlic pulled out of the wild woods

to layer the earthenware pots where rabbits simmer.

 

Only these grandmothers smell of milks suckled at the breasts

of Amazons and lowly countrywomen whose babies

make do with Cow & Gate, make room

for others who will inherit the world.

 

There are grandmothers who left those kitchens long ago

for factories and offices where the typing pool

and the cleaning women all walk on rollercoaster

ledges, keeping their determined stares ahead

not looking back the way they came where sheer edges

mark the abyss of failing

to be  mother  father  provider   teacher.

 

Generations on, the mother’s sleep is haunted

by dreams of a succubus inhabiting her body

and soul, when every fever of your child ushers

in the terror of gravestones

fists beating where the heart should be

pounding into midnight

the long hours of midnight

cloaking the bedroom floor with a terror

unnamed.

 

Blessed are those who remember the burial place

of the navel string

Blessed are those whose faces still glow faintly in daguerreotypes

whose gold bangles circa 1903 swing from the wrists of a favourite child

Blessed are those whose memories string like fairy lights

between balconies and high-rise flats

villages of lamplight

country lanes and cane fields

blackberry bushes and mango trees.

 

Only these grandmothers can raise their rifles over the gates

and shoot into the trees where the limbs of young men

flail into the foliage.

Only these grandmothers can halt the slingshots aimed at birds

in the knitted palms of their hands.

Only the grandmothers can look down the long roads travelled

into the histories of yesterday

and back to the future where the children test the waters

with their toes

and languages ricochet like gunshots.

 

Only these grandmothers can stand between yesterday

and tomorrow

and tremble, at the knowledge they have gleaned.

 

MAGGIE HARRIS

 

Earth Heroes: Peter. "You don't have to be a dinosaur."

Note: This post was first written back in 2012. In view of my soon to be published novel set in Guyana, I'm reposting it so that it is new on the blog.

There’s no way I can call Dr Peter Pritchard an unsung hero. He’s already been named a Hero of the Planet by no less than TIME Magazine, and he’s already famous in animal conservation circles as the leading expert in marine turtles. Yet he’s a prime example of those people I mentioned in my last post—people who go about their work quietly and diligently, doing what they know is right; if they ever do call attention, it’s to the objects of their ardour, not to themselves, and that’s Peter all over: a big, unassuming man beating the drum for a humble animal he’s determined to save from a ruthless world.

I was little more than a giggling teenager when I first met Peter, working at my very first job as a staff journalist at the Guyana Graphic. My own personal hero at the time was one of my editors, Sibille, a few years older than me and already a household name in the country due to her bylines. A tiny woman with a huge personality, Sibille was everything I wasn’t: confident, outspoken, spunky and funny, and I looked up to her no end. She was also a great writer, and I wanted to be a great writer; I couldn’t believe it when she took me under her personal wing, and in time we even became friends, close friends, in fact. She drew me out of my shell and helped me find my feet as a journalist.

My other friend, Pratima, and I would tease her mercilessly about her “Turtle-man”—the gentle giant who every now and then would swoop in from Florida to take her, and sometimes us as well, out to dinner, or off on expeditions in Guyana’s swamps. One day, Sibille flew off to Florida, and didn't come back.

Reader, she married him.

That was over 45 years ago.


More about Peter and Sibille, "one of Central Florida's most exotic, and unlikely, power couples".


 A few days ago I called their home in Florida—where in 2004 I was their guest for three weeks--just to let them know I was going to Guyana.
“I’ll be there myself in March”, Peter told me, and so yet another case of serendipitous scheduling slotted into place.

Of course, knowing that Peter will be in Shell Beach working on that project means that, once again, my plans have changed.
Karanambu. Jonestown. Shell Beach. I just hope I will have time for the real reason for my visit: my mother.
She’s my third Earth Hero, to be introduced. Coming up tomorrow.

About Peter Pritchard:

From Wikipedia:

Dr. Peter Pritchard (born 1943) is a leading turtle zoologist. Educated at Oxford University and the University of Florida, where he earned his Ph.D. in Zoology, he is most commonly known for his campaign of almost 40 years for the conservation of turtles. Appropriately, his privately funded Chelonian Research Institute, for the study and preservation of turtles, is located in Oviedo, Florida, United States, just a half hour's drive from Disney World. Frank Sulloway had noted that Pritchard 'has amassed nearly 12,000 tortoise and turtle skeletons - the third largest collections in the world.'

From Time Magazine:

     Pritchard has done his most innovative work along the Atlantic coast in Guyana, a haven for sea turtles. By the 1960s, overhunting by local Arawak Indians--themselves an endangered group--had ravaged the turtle population. But Pritchard helped save both turtles and tribe: he has lobbied Guyana and private sources for grants that have weaned the Arawaks off turtle meat and into chicken farming. And he hires Arawaks to tag turtles for research and defend nesting grounds. The killing has largely stopped, he says, because turtle protection is now "a family discipline thing" among Arawaks, "rather than an outsider laying down the law."

There's a wonderful video  interview with Peter on this site: Oceanology. Watch it; it's about far more than turtles. There's real wisdom here:


Narrator: Turtles are slow and not very smart, but they've been around since the day of the dinosaur.

Peter: I think the moral of the story is: don't try to be dominant.Try to have your place, but you don't have to be the big dinosaur. That lasts for a while, and, you know, it comes to an end.

Another video:

...and then, at last --- Karanambo! Part One: Arrival

There was a little hiccup over the flight booking. I left it too late and it seemed that while I couild get a flight out, all the return flights were booked out. Sent an emergency email to Andrea. Next thing I knew, I got a call from someone at Wilderness Exlorers saying they had a reservation for me, Saturday to Tuesday. Andrea had Skyped them and placed the order... So, Saturday morning, there I was at Ogle airport. I had sent a message asking if I should bring anything with me, and the return message was that all they needed was a few hinges and that someone would meet me at Ogle to hand them over. Turns out that this was all handled through Jocelyn Dow -- I had visited her Friday morning; she had contacted Salvador with the message HEY! Sharon's Here! and he had said, Yes, We Know, She's Coming, and can you hand over such-and-such. So, I got the hinges safely and boarded the aircraft. The rest is video, ending with my triumphany arrival at Karanambo Airstrip, and Salvador's welcome dance. And wow, I never knew that it really was just that: an airstrip, in the middle of nowhere.

Interview with Eileen

Remember the post about my mother, Eileen Cox? Well, about ten days into my Guyana visit someone came around from the Guyana Times to interview her on her retirement as President of the Consumers Association. It was an interview for the newspaper as well as for TV; that is, a TV cameraman filmed it. And so did I. The print version can be found here. And here is my own (shortened) version of the video interview. In the course of the interview it came out that I was a published writer, so immediately afterwards they interviewed me, as well; that interview was also published in the Guyana Times, here. And one evening they showed the TV interview. I didn't see it. But a couple days later I was riding through GT on my bicycle (yes, I bought a bike!) and someone on the street called out: "Hello writer!" And following that several random people, most of them strangers to me, told me they had seen it. Rather surreal; to think how as a European writer it's so difficult to get exposure; how every other writer seems to be self-promoting the life out of their books, and I, being by nature a non-self-promoter, tend to get left behind; and here, in my home country, it all falls into my lap.

Do you know this bird?

A brief intermission: can anyone identify this bird?
I filmed him on the frangipani tree in my mother's garden, from her gallery window.
He sits on this tree all day and does this: all day. I would come and go throughout the day and he would still be
squeaking and hopping around. Maybe some kind of a mating ritual, but it was really cute.

And listen for the kiskadee at 0:53!

Out to the Amerinidian Reservation: Wakapao

Sunday afternoon: Aunt Zena arranged for Patsy and me to take a trip to the Amerindian reservation at Wakapao.

Shirley, who works as a cook at Adel's, came with us; her family lives at Wakapao.
Amazing trip! and I don't know what was better, the fantastic boat ride out there, down the Pomeroon river and then into a narrow creek through the rainforest; out again into the savannah.
We landed the boat and then walked to the first cottage, where Shirley's children live.
The two girls ran out to meet us, delighted with their mother's visit. Shirley hosted us with drinks
of freshly harvested coconut water, after which my camera's batter ran out.

We walked on through the reservation -- all the houses are spaced widely apart, with a ten to twenty-minute walk to each home -- looking for cassava bread for Aunt Zena. Unfortunately, nobody had any.
But the story is best told with a film, so here goes:

Goodbye Jinky

Jinky, the Phillipinian VSO volunteer, has a Master's degree in Aquaculture and was assigned to AUnt Zena for six months. Aunt Zena was delighted with her work; she could not have managed the passionfruit plantation without Jinky's hands-on application. Jinky wanted to stay on for a further six months and AUnt Zena was desperate to keep her; but the Guyana Government had to process the application and failed to do so. "You see," said Aunt Zena, "This is how we lose qualified people. Pure slackness!" By the time the Government got around to Jinky's application, VSO had already re-assigned her: to East Timor! It was a sad day for all when Jinky left Adel's -- though everyone, most of all she herself, managed to smile!