London is the Place

 

I still smile every time I come out of the Brixton Tube station and turn left, and it’s like being in Africa and Asia and the Caribbean all at once. The incense man outside the supermarket is really from Barbados, though he pronounces “incense” like a Jamaican. A car passes, blasting the latest funky house summer scorcher, the unholiest of combinations of high life’s easy groove, dancehall’s driving bass, and soca’s call to wine.

 

Piece I wrote for Caribbean Beat Magazineon my ongoing love affair with Babylondon.

 

Things I learned today while learning to ride a bike

Yeah so this about twenty years late, but better late than never, no? Well I figure if I really want to commit to this hippy life I should at least know how to ride a bike. This is a lot easier than it sounds, but to my surprise I didn’t suck as badly at it as I thought I would and I did manage to pedal a few times.  But it occurred to me as I wobbled along, picturing all the while that I was riding to Spitalfields Market (maybe this is why I was distracted and couldn’t steer straight) that life is a lot like learning to ride a bike. For the following reasons, in no particular order.

1. it hurts sometimes.

2. you need to find balance!

3. you will fall!

4. it really helps to have a boomsie (thank you, starch mango tree)

5. did I mention balance?

6. be patient with yourself, you will get it evenutally (I had a few Don Music moments)

7.  random men will think it’s okay to give you their (unsolicited) advice.

8. when you can’t make it up the hill, it’s always good to have a friend to push you, and steer you away from the potholes.

9. there are potholes and you seem to be attracted to them.

10. laughing helps.

11. everybody looks this stupid at least once in their lives.

12. brakes! don’t forget the brakes.

Anyway, my hands hurt from hours of over-zealous brake application so that’s about as much wisdom as I can impart for now.  all of which is to say that I’m glad that I got over my lameness and actually took the chance to try something new!

This is what it sounds like when boys cry.

It is an awful sound.  Guttural and raw.  A teenaged boy sobbing.  It is the worst sound and it twists my insides and I am fighting back tears.  Not for the boy these boys are weeping for. I did not know Zac Olumegbon.  Or more correctly, I do not remember him.  He was the little brother of my little sister’s best friend.  She had the most serious face, I remember. I always wondered why children here always looked so serious. Like they had the world of worries.  Perhaps they do, living in this corner of Babylondon.

And if I have run away from Trinidad hoping to escape the endless statistics of little black boys killing each other for honour, to regain their misplaced manhood, I have run to the wrong place.

Brixton, despite the gentrification and the nice gastro pubs and the belligerent foxes, is one of those London places where crime happens.  I don’t see the Eastern European whores in the park anymore and outside the Library they’ve made it all shiny and new.  But there are still old homeless people and young drugged up people and sad drunk people of all ages.  They do not go away despite the shiny new surfaces.

The sight of crying children is unbearable.  I guess because I take such a pragmatic view of death. It happens. It is natural.  Zac’s life as one of the speaker’s says, has been stolen.  Like a chain from someone’s neck.  Like the childhood of all these young people who have to say goodbye to a boy who has not yet lived.

They stabbed him.  Children stabbed him.  Children like him.  What can they possibly know of life to warrant killing a 15 year old.  What could they possibly be so sure of that they can take another life?

I look at the faces of my sisters’ friends.  They are young and old at the same time.  Too much living too soon.  I cherish my own sheltered childhood.  That I got to doubt myself and make believe and wish and dream and never once wonder if someone was going to deny me the chance to make mistakes.

My fought back tears are not for Zac.  They are rather for his friends and family.  Hundreds of them.  Gathered in grief on this bleakest of summer days.  There are long silences punctuated only by half stifled sobs and sniffles.

The police stay a respectable distance.  No profiling now.  No microwaving of leftover sus laws.

A young man read/raps Psalm 37 in the rhythm and truth of his Sath Landin twang.  The cheeky boys from the bus hold each other and cry silently, and then wipe the tears away as if they are angry with their leaking eyes.

My fought back tears are for them.  For their anger and grief.  For his mother and his sister and my sisters and all the young women here who will have to find a way to keep loving these men who are at war with themselves.

What war the Pastor asks. What war can they fight when they own nothing? What post code, what block belongs to them?  What property do they own when they live in state provided housing, are second generation immigrants? Where do they belong? Not even to themselves.

These children cry and my mother instinct moans helplessly.  There is no consoling for this kind of grief.  You can’t stick a dummy in the mouth of a generation that is becoming accustomed to burying their own.

I leave before it is finished.  Leave his mother reading the mountain of tributes.  Leave behind  Zac Olumegbon, who was the little brother of my little sisters friend.  They hope he has not died in vain.  All these people who have come to weep for him.  They hope no more will have to shed tears like this again.  Still, sirens wail in the distance, louder than Zac’s mother, louder than the thud of a boy fainting from grief, louder than the shaky voices of his school friends crying out to Christ for mercy. On this bleak summer day.

Songs and Memories

Been doing a lot of backing up and adding and deleting tonight. Listening to favourite songs and some songs I haven’t listened to in ages. Brings back really wonderful memories of my life and times, trodding through creation, meeting some wonderful people and maintaining ties with some lovely old friends. Some songs I can’t listen to anymore because they are so full of memories…some of them bring back a time when life was less complicated. But I am thankful for them all. I guess I’m documenting them in the unfortunate event that I forget how much these pieces of music and the times and the places and the people mean to me.

Billie Jean – Michael Jackson Early 1980′s George Lamming was staying at our house, working on something or another. My sister had just got a copy of the Thriller album and we set about playing it over and over. Uncle George declares to our great shock and horror ‘Who is this Jackson person?’ So of course we had to put on a whole concert for him, including Didi doing the moonwalk across the living room. At the end of the song, Uncle George declares ‘This is a funny sort of house’.

Inglan is a Bitch – Linton Kwesi Johnson – 1987 London The mother took me to an LKJ concert in London somewhere. I don’t remember the details because I slept through most of it, but at some point in the night I remember waking up to see this little black guy prancing around the stage singing in the roughest, loveliest voice I’ve ever heard ‘Hinglan is a beeetch’. Been in love with him ever since.

Everybody Wants to Rule the World – Tears for Fears – 1986 Watford. I was standing at the bus stop outside Woolworths with my sisters on the way to school. I was standing there minding my own business when this woman comes up and punches me in the face. Dry so!! Buss my lip and everyting. Not pleasant. This is the song that was playing on the radio when the Babylon came to question me about the woman after school.

Natty Dread – Bob Marley and the Wailers May 2000 Kingston. Went down to Trench Town to do some volunteer work at a community centre. They didn’t cater for the vegetarians so we wandered across the street looking for a vendor. Happened to wander straight into the yard where Bob used to live with his mother and Bunny Wailer. We sat in the shade of giant ganja trees and reasoned with rasta elders who gave us fruits and coconut water to eat. Bliss!

He Loves Me – Jill Scott – Winter 2003 England – Road Trip to Stone Henge with my very good sister friends Tonni, Tamara, BinghiNya and Gab. Nya was driving us to Bath and then she started to sing this song. I am so very thankful to have these womyn in my life!!

Here and Now- Andre Tanker – Winter 2003, China. I didn’t find out that Andre died a whole three days after… That day Tonni and I took a trip to the sea off Qinhuangdao. It was cold and the water grey. But it was good to be by the sea and I was glad to have a moment to whisper my goodbyes into the waves.

Fools Die – Peter Tosh- New Years Day 2004 London. Passed out at Skateboard Pete’s New Years Party, woke up at 6 am and this is the song Svenn was playing. A melancholy way to start a bizarre year that I was very glad to see the end of!

Shanti Om – Lord Shorty – Jouvay 2004 Trinidad We were just coming out of the Savannah. I think Shel Shok was the DJ. The sun was just coming up and they drop this song! Ooooh gouud…I was never so happy to be home as in that moment. By Ash Wednesday I was cured of that, though.

Natural Roots – Jah Shaka – Summer 2004 Me and Empress Jo in Finsbury Park at an all day Dub festival. The house in Turnpike Lane with the Hairy Fairies and food and reasonings and energy balls and falling asleep standing up in all night Jah Shaka dances in the Rocket in Holloway. The N29! D&G ginger beers and the best 24 hour snack shop in Trafalgar Square. Primrose Hill and vegan Thai buffet paradise for stoners. Sundays in Spitalfields market. Cheesy reggae Saturday nights in Camden! And that lovely Ethiopian bredrin, Yohannes was his name?

Water No Get Enemy – Fela Anikulapo Kuti – Autumn 2004 London – Svenn used to play this song at least twice a day. I don’t know why it became such an anthem for us, given that we were living in the middle of Chelsea with Ralph Lauren as our corner store, ha! Walking down to King’s Road we would spontaneously start singing the song together. Our merriment was frequently cut short by a burst of running to catch the Number 19.

One Day – Mungal featuring 3 Canal – New Years Day 2005 London – Me, Kassie and Nya talking about all our hopes and dreams and fears on the brink of a new day.

Zion – Maximus Dan – Summer 2005 – I was living in Zürich and getting rather fat. So every morning I would go for a run in a vineyard near the lake. It was mostly uphill and I would never really think I could make it. But just as I got to the top of the hill this song would come on and I would practically fly down the hill towards home, smiling maniacally with my hair flapping about in the breeze. Needless to say the neighbours stared at me like I just landed from another planet….

Anisiedad – Daisy Voisin Christmas 2005 Trinidad. I hadn’t been home since my grandmother died in 2003. The mother was in the kitchen making black cake and then this song came on and it made me think of my Ida and the fact that she was the original black cakist. That I would never again have the pleasure of her boofs, her smiles, her sarcasm, her pakchoi and rice! I hadn’t had a chance to cry for her in almost two years of travelling, working, loving, moving again, running away and trying to figure out where home was. But then Daisy came on and I got a full appreciation of all that I was missing and all that I had missed.

Live Good – Burning Spear- Carnival 2006 Chatham …the first time I went down to Chatham and met the women of the community and was so impressed by the concern and commitment that I was motivated to get involved in their struggle against Alcoa. When the meeting was finished we ate with them and then Samantha, the 8 year old daughter of our hosts, took my hand and walked with me around her yard. She pointed out all the different trees: mango, pomerac, zaboca, fig. And then she looked me in the eye and said ‘if Alcoa comes I not going to have this anymore’. Part of the reason I never went back to Switzerland…

Ee wa Obakoso – Ella Andall – Summer 2007 Iceland – We were driving up to Husavik right at the northernmost point of Iceland. At about 1 am it was still light and my anarchist friends decided that that was a good time to go check out a crater. It was so windy and cold I ran all the way. Got to the top out of breath with the wind howling in my ears and the crater’s gravel crunching under my hiking boots. I don’t know if I was crying because I was so cold or because I was so overwhelmed to be where I was for the reason that I was there. I had never felt so far from home and yet so close to myself. The wind blew my tears away and then everything got very still.

Naturally – Slow Train – Rainy Season 2008, Trinidad. Me and Kassie, joined by Jacob on a road trip to Toco. We practically wore a hole into that cd replaying that song speeding through the north coast.

Even After All- Finley Quaye- Many Many Nights 2008 The Republic. After party cleaning up. Svenn bepping on the day bed. Sheli listening to every note. Keshav singing and washing dishes. Makeda cooking, again. Me playing ten last songs. Daddy O recounting Amel’s birth. Lemongrass and ginger tea, chocolate tea and pongkin choka. Enamel cups and loud laughter.

Okay I’m going to stop there before this gets too cheesy….

In my solitude.

So last month when I got the Babylon-don jones really badly, I decided to sublet my loft at the commie commune I’ve been living in in St. Anns for the summer. But of course my life works out the way it wants to so I got offered some work that’s going to keep me in the region till the end of August so I’ve moved back in with the mother for a bit.  But she’s been in Cuba so I’ve been house sitting.   I think this is the first time in a long time that I’ve had such a long spell of solitary living and I have to say it’s been blissful.   It comes at a good time too, when I’m doing all this writing and thinking and feeling and other ings that require space and time.

The funny thing about my life is that it always seems to work out exactly the way it’s supposed to.  The bizarre and unplanned twists I know now I’m not supposed to resist.  Everything is as it should be…in my own life.  I cannot, however, come to accept that this is how Trinidad must be and will stay.  And I guess getting my own head and heart in order makes my role in the solution finding more clear.

Glutton for Abuse

Take it
Take another little piece of my heart now, baby
Oh, oh, break it
Break another little bit of my heart now, darling, yeah
Oh, oh, have a
Have another little piece of my heart now, baby
You know you got it, child, if it makes you feel good.
Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin

Two hours into your day, you are tired.  Even though you’ve taken your vitamins.  You’ve done your sun salutations, breathing in positive, breathing out negative.  You’ve eaten sunshine in the form of a perfect Julie, just ripe enough to fill your veins with sugary goodness.  You’ve drunk your rice milk to make sure and take the osteoporosis in front.
You step into the world. You do all the right things. You say good morning to random people, because you believe that basic courtesies make life a little more pleasant for all involved.
The dirt clings to your shoes like children reaching out to be loved.
Mavado on the corner shouting, pleading to anyone who will listen ‘I’m special/so special/so special’.   Men mad from coke or rum or Trinidad are ranting and reeking on every corner.
The road bubbles liquid under your thin soles and you hope for decency’s sake to keep yourself from melting into the welcoming asphalt.
Jump in a taxi.  There’s a man on the radio.  His voice is shrill and desperate.  You do not want to hear his hysterical ranting this morning.  You do not want to listen to him spitting his hate at his microphone.  He is screaming about jammettes and a march and being bought out by Papa Patos.  You ask the taxi driver to turn it down.  The driver ignores you.  The fifteen-minute journey is unbearable.  The ranting continues, the passengers and drivers take the abuse in silence.
Exiting the taxi, put God out of your thoughts and make a parting comment to the driver about poisoning his brain. His response is swift and loud and abusive, echoing the same shrill almost emasculated tones of the radio voice.
You wonder if there is some special suit you can get. One that makes you impervious not just to the heat that makes you think you can hear your scalp sizzle.
One that helps you block out all the crappy things you hate about this place.  This place that makes you tired two hours into your day.
By the time you get home again your feet are dragging.  You are weak, you are not programmed to deal with this.   This place is sick and you are not a doctor.  You have no remedies to offer, no healing balms to give.
You want to lock yourself away and the back end of forever is too soon for you to want to venture outside again.
You understand now that perhaps people don’t drive around with their windows up not connecting with the outside because they are pretentious and materialistic but because they can’t deal with what’s going on in the real world.
There are days when the urge to stay at home is irresistible.
You willingly suspend interaction with the world. You create fabulous meals from the strangest of leftovers to avoid going out. You reach out only online on social networks.   To hug people and create wistful brilliant status updates to amuse your friends.
Sometimes you wish that you only existed inside your computer.  In your virtual world you can block out the things you don’t want to see or hear.  You create your own propaganda.
You could create a Trinidad that existed only in your imagination.  Where it is beautiful all the time.  Where eight year olds don’t beat up six year olds.  Where smelters don’t get built.  Where you don’t get cursed out if you suggest something to your taxi driver.
You know if this was a relationship with a man, you wouldn’t still be here.  You would never stick around and take this abuse.  Stay for what?  Because this is where you were born?  This is what you know?  This is the only place that understands you?
Your Trinidad tabanca has you peeping through your windows wondering if you have the energy to venture out.
Wondering what terrors await you outside and in.  What terrible fiction will become your reality today and what heaviest of straws will break your weakened camel’s back.

Another reason I can’t bear to leave this blasted place, even thought it drives me crazy…

sigh

Watching, writing and jonesing for Babylondon.

In a moment of procrastination today I was thinking about my life thus far this year, what I’ve been doing and what I’d like to be doing for the rest of year.

New Voices is taking the first real break since last May. Since then we’ve done two seasons which have been huge learning experiences for me, I can’t believe how much I’ve grown since I first started out in the tv thing.  The biggest challenge of course was venturing from behind my computer and really putting myself out there in a way that I never had as a writer. I guess it was made a lot easier by the activism stuff, which is taking new and interesting turns now that I’m not using my television time to preach.

It’s wonderful to not have to be doing so much thinking these days…well at least not about television.  I’ve been thinking about writing. Different kinds of writing.   A book, a couple scripts.  I’ve scribbled notes and fantasized wildly about directors I’d like to work with.

I’ve also been working on this, which is mind-blowing in a totally different kind of way.  Interacting with parents and teachers in parts of the country that I’ve passed through with NV or to do some guerilla tree planting is exciting but also frustrating.  It feels like our children are being forgotten in our manic rush to developed nation status.  They are quotas and statistics without faces. To talk to parents and teachers about children they know. Children who are wives, children who have to go and ‘put down a wuk’ to get money to go to school.  It scares the broodiness right out of me, it does.

Speaking of broodiness, I still vacillate daily between wanting to go out and get randomly impregnated and wanting to do some kind of tubal ligation to prevent me from ever having to deal with the huge burden of being someone’s mother.  Not seeing my nephews everyday however is almost unbearable although they drive me totally crazy, they are exceptional humans who make me hopeful that the species isn’t completely useless…

What’s the point of this post, I wonder…I guess every now and again I need to write down what I’m doing and why I’m doing it.  Perhaps to reassure me that I’m not completely wasting my life. Perhaps to make a note of all the things I want to be doing but am not.  I was talking with someone the other day and I realise that I’m doing exactly what I want to be doing, a little bit of writing, a little bit of television, a little bit of activism.  And some yoga in between to keep me sane.

Altogether I don’t think I’m doing to badly, except maybe on the money tip.  sheeit.  Oh and I’m kind of like, so over Trinidad and all the bullshit I’ve been jonesing for Babylondon in the worst possible way.

Footprints in the sky

Hmmm, what goes well with a big new house?  Why your own private jet of course.
It’s the ultimate accessory for young up and coming nations who want to squander as much of their wealth as possible on absolutely useless things.
Kind of like how so many low income households believe that having a huge television is much more of a priority than school books for their children.
The whole private jet hullabaloo reeks of that never see come see, conspicuous consumption that plagues all of us, from the richest to the poorest.  It reeks of I must take a loan to go to Miami to shop for Christmas. It also reeks of I must go to every all-inclusive fete for Carnival.
There’s a divine order in everything I suppose. So every fiefdom should have symbols of power and might before which the puny citizens can bow down in awe and wonderment at just what wonderful things their tax money can buy.
Coming down the road in a hot cramped up maxi taxi on Thursday I hear the Minister of Works and Transport Colm Imbert live and direct from the post-cabinet briefing say that he went online himself and did the research, he was the one who identified the Bombardier Global Xpress as the best plane.
Well whooptie doo and yippee yaaay for that.  We wouldn’t want to think that our government ministers weren’t doing their jobs.  I mean at least he wasn’t faffing about on Facebook on national time.
Long watery steups ring out in the maxi taxi as Imbert drones on and on, trying to defend the indefensible.  Traffic backed up on the highway I can see it.  Tired eyes of workers who had to get up before the butt crack of dawn and face three hours of traffic.  Bepping children and mothers bent over under the weight of long hours and high food prices and fighting to get public transport.
And Imbert drones on, defending the indefensible.
Every day the traffic gets worse and we lose minutes, hours of our productive young lives.  No worries. While most of us can’t get to our homes without having a bumper to bumper experience, some among us can now get to Russia without having to refuel. It’s cause for celebration indeed.
53 million dollars worth of celebration.  53 million dollars for a plane.  Not a hospital.  Not a bridge.  Not new roads for Mayaro.  Not even a blasted ferry going up the islands so that it might actually be cheaper to go to Jamaica than it is to go to New York.
Meanwhile, as local journalists frothed at the mouth to get up close and personal with the obsolete king to be, no-one bothered to ask why he decided to come out here at this particular moment in the first place?   I mean aside from trying to get away from the excessively mild English spring.
Even as he was getting flak from the British press about the huge carbon footprint his little trip to the islands was making.  I wonder if he gave Papa Patos a little private boof, as one royal to another, about the carbon footprint of a private jet.
I wonder how come the government took him to Asa Wright and not down to Union Village to the site of their experiment in ecocide.
And instead of running about trying to get the Prince to smile and give them the screw de lightbulb royal wave, it would have been really wonderful if our own press had rediscovered its gonads and pressed the prince on what he felt about the EPA that our governments have until March 15 to sign.
The EPA agreement on which many of our brighter minds agree is fraught with inconsistencies, inequalities and general salt-sucking for countries in the global south.
But maybe that doesn’t apply to us.  We have oil and gas and we will magically be transformed into a developed country soon.
Luckily for us, we can afford to buy a private jet.  It’s very prestigious, you know.  So prestigious in fact, that we most of us will never get to see or smell its interior.  Well, at least we’ll get to keep the footprint.

Life after 30

This world is mine

For all the time

I can turn any stone

Call any place my home

I can do anything.

Use the Force, Jamiroquai

So I’ve been freaking out about turning 30 for at least a month now. All things considered, I don’t feel any different now than I did two days ago when I was still a twenty-something, but I find the finality of it a little hard to adjust to.

I can’t remember feeling so stressed out about turning 20. Actually, to be honest, I can’t remember turning 20. It wasn’t as significant as 18 and not as terrifying as 25.

But a decade is a lot of living to go through. It’s sped past in a haze of books and protests and flaky men and interesting fashion decisions.

And ten years later I don’t feel older but I do feel a lot wiser.

I still don’t consider myself a grown-up, possibly because people still refer to me as “the chile.” In truth, being a grown-up is a terribly overrated thing. Being a grown-up is really all about responsibilities and expectations and the disappointments that come when you refuse or fail to live up to these.

I have resisted most if not all attempts to make me a serious frowny lady who wears pumps, pantyhose and other instruments of female repression.

I’m not too sure why. I suppose my life would have been a lot easier if I’d gone down a less odd road.

It occurred to me in the midst of my pre-birthday funk when I was wondering how my life had turned out like it had and why another birthday was approaching and my bank account looking just as empty as it had in previous years.

When I was 25 I used to say every day that I didn’t want to turn 30 still engaged in the daily reporter grind, locked into the wage slavery of a full-time job and conspicuous consumption of house, car and fetes.

I look back and see how the universe opened the way and here I am five years later, a full-time professional protester of no fixed abode and neither chick nor child to show for it.

And if I didn’t have the pictures to prove it, I would think that my life for the past five years was a dream, with a few nightmarish bits put in for good measure. How I managed to climb the Great Wall, trod through Babylon-don, cruise the Adriatic, scale the Swiss Alps, march in Chatham, and generally have a fabulously detached existence is beyond me.

This time around I think I’m going to be a little more clear to the universe and try not to doubt so much that nothing in my life happens by accident.

That said, the best plan for me, it seems, is to make no plan at all. To see what turns up and go with the flow.

Sometimes I wish that what turns up is a big pile of dirty capitalist cash that I can use to fund all my subversive little revolutionary projects.

In the dark and frequent hours when self-doubt grips me by the throat and threatens to snuff out any positive thought, I wonder if I can manage to balance my life between being someone that cares and someone that earns a livable wage. I wonder if I can really open myself to the abundant blessings rather than cursing the poverty and the loneliness that come with rejecting social norms.

I guess at some point I’ll have to suppress that Aquarian predisposition to be out in mental orbit most of the time. Or use the orbit time to plot a course that really leads me where I want to go, wherever that is.

I’m going to focus on the positives of being a dread hippy and not second guess my interesting fashion decisions. I’m going to embrace the flaky men and understand that they’ve taught me some interesting lessons about how I see love and how much I love myself.

The challenge for the next year, five years, the rest of my life is to just enjoy being me. A human woman feminist writer tree hugger activist meggie artist drama queen fashion outcast photographer traveller lover friend sister daughter auntie perhaps one day mother dancer deejay…the list gets longer everyday. The possibilities of me are endless.