Parking for selfish jerks only
guynana gyal
Plenty Guyanese does place
rocks and concrete blocks to
prevent others from parking on
they (public property)
parapet. Around suburbia you
can see them stones lined up
on the edge of (public
property) parapets. Out of
consideration for drivers, so
they don’t bang-up they car,
homeowners does paint them
rocks white. (Or maybe they
ain’t want to get sued).
Where I live nobody don’t
block off them parapets. But
at one home further down the
road, at a corner lot, that
homeowner plonk massive, white
concrete slabs along the
parapet-and-road edge.
They look like headstones.
The first time I see them I
been tempted to sneak there
one night and paint red
messages. Here lies Jack, dead
like a doorpost, 2006. Here
likes Johnson, deaf like a
cricket bat, 2006.
But for all this preventing of
others from parking, I never
see or hear about anybody
blocking in a car like what
happen to we. As my mother
maneuver and klunk around them
blocks, kabonk under the back
bumper of we po’ ole car, I
turn to check out the address
of the duck-egg pink house.
No. 69.
“Oh my,” I mutter. “Number 69
Cheery Place.”
Yesterday, a idea hit me. I
going into the rock business.
I gon sell painted rocks with
all kinda messages on them to
homeowners.
“Please turn me over,” one
rock can say. And if a curious
person turn it over,
the message on the rock belly
gon say, “Ahhh, thank youuuu.”
Wey-heyyyyy, I gon be filthy,
stinkin’ riche.
Oh me moomaa
Lawd-oh
Gawd-ohhhh.
Monday, January 08, 2007
Market
Heh. I did always want to shout about something in the same way them vendors in Bourda Market does shout.
When we was teens, me and me cousin Sam used to go to Bourda Market for we mothers. In them days, vendors used to shout a whole lot more. Mostly, was women shrieking in a special vendor voice, more high-pitch than a bagpipe, yet each one o’ them doing it with rhythm. I think they been to Vendor Shrieking School.
“Buy you Boulanger here Bora Banana Mango what you buying love come get you Pepper here.”
All them names of all them vegetables, fruits and herbs rise into the air, come together in you ears ‘til it sound like one hullabaloo, but sometimes you hear somebody yelling out the price of Married-Man Poke, or, a shorter version, Married-Man, which is actually that innocent herb, Basil.
Long squash with quiet greenie-white skin, pumpkin with the loudest orange colour; yam and cassava still with soft, fresh earth, waiting in front of vendors in row after row of wood stalls. Watermelon, sapodilla, sugar apple, fruits all colour calling to you from li’l wood stalls on the roadside. Itinerant vendors pass by too with baskets of produce, or some roam with they greens in they bare hands.
One Saturday, me and Cousin Sam hurrying to get out from the biting sun. We heaving heavy baskets, skipping from point A to point B to avoid them mukky puddles which gather even in the heat, on the road and in the market itself, because vendors does sprinkle clean water on they produce the whole day to keep them fresh.
“Snicker snicker,” say Cousin Sam.
“What?” I ask she.
“Snicker snicker. Listen to that fella with them limes, let we pass he
again.”
We
head towards he, fella with a short, short, picky-picky afro, he clothes
clean and he ain’t sweating one single drop, he walkin’ slow like snail and
holding plenty shiny green limes in he two hands.
As we pass, he lips barely moving, and the sound muttering out from six feet
under he breath. I had to stretch me ears long to hear.
“Lime lime. Lime lime.”
He attitude say, I ain’t able with this shouting business, why I should holler when you can see what I got in me hands, and too besides, who can compete with them bagpipes all around me? Mutter mutter, lime lime, lime lime.
“Snicker, snicker,” Cousin Sam say. “Y’never know what you gon hear in this market.”
Nowadays them vendors don’t shriek so much anymore. But even so, occasionally you does hear one, two, three o’ them shouting out Boulanger, Tomatoes, get you Married-Man here.
Friday, December 22, 2006
Stairway to...?
Two li’l ole ladies push aside Cousin Analis friend Yvonne, to ride on it. People racing to the glittering new mall, just like what they got Abroad, to ride on it.
Progress, dolled up with glitz and glass and steel and chrome, come to Guyana. Progress sneak up and bring a escalator, the very first escalator. Moving steps. The only mobile steps many folks here ever see before is ladders.
People lift they foot, pull back, lift they foot, put it down, wobble, wobble all the way up, not sure how to use it, my cousin tell me.
“Aye cuz, suppose they get a power cut if I happen to be on it?” I ask. “I got to wait for lights to come back on? Or I should walk up? Giggle giggle.”
“You fool!”
Progress arrive, yes.
