Woman, scream: no more violence!

My dear friends,

MARCH 5.

Write this date in your diary!

Here's why:

This unique event features women speaking, rhyming, screaming to be heard in our current climate of discrimination, subtle and obvious violence towards women. This event features local women poets. Funds raised from WS go to Starick.

 

Through this event, the audience will have an increased understanding of the lives of women in our community and the daily issues they both grapple and overcome. Further, this event is one link in a chain of international arts-based events that mark International Women’s Day and demand an end in violence towards women.

Feature poets include: 

 

Taonga Sendama
SoulReserve
Chaucer Cameron
Manveen Kaur Kohli
Joni Boyd
Saoirse Nash 

 

Read more here: Woman Scream 2022 in Perth, Australia.

Bye for now.

I have some exciting news coming soon. Watch this space. Have a great week. Plenty love, neena. xx

Soap, snake and roses.

My dear friends,

Ya ever been struggling away at a mundane task but, instead of worrying as usual, you find you' mind travelling to places of bliss?

Yeaaaah. 

Friday morning gone, I been scrubbing the bathroom when I notice that Ma need more bath soap. She ain't like soap in a plastic bottle! Give she bars and bars o' soap, and she gon want to bathe 2, 3 times a day, and she take so long, you believe she writing a book in there.

And that is how me mind start to drift.

Back to the book that I write, the first in the Guyana series. Got a short story about a duck and snake that fall in love by the giant water vat where the sweet smelling rose bush did grow.

Don't know if it is that same vat that grow old, or if a new one appear in we childhood when we the grandchildren go to spend holidays with grandparents, Nanee and Pa. It was countryside, and they didn't have running water in they home. I think it was the same rose bush.

As soon as dusk come down, the older cousins would bathe the little ones by the vat, filling the enamel bowl from a spout in the vat, washing we with the coldest rainwater and the sweetest smelling soap. 

Up in the house, we would put on pyjamas, Pa would light the lamp and tell we the best stories, then off to bed we go.

Back to regular life, cleaning the bathroom, no fresh air, no rose bush blossoming. I must make a note that Ma need mo' soap... 

...how to make life sweet again, dear friends?

I gone to take a nap.

Have a lovely week, neena xxx.

Characters.

My dear Friends, y'know what I miss not being in my lovely native land?

Characters!

I am walking to the market, and a scraggly man tripsing past me, pause, look 'pon me and shout out, "Hello Fren. How you do? You doin' okay?"

Now, to be honest, I ain't know this man from Adam or Eve. I suspect he would spot me going regularly to the market. He would probably be sitting over the road, in front the old building where them druggies-chaps hang out.

How to answer he? 

Proper ladies would walk past he with they nose turn away, like they didn't hear or see he. Or they would give a very polite nod.

I give he a pretend-shy, genuine-friendly smile and say, "Yeah man."

And I keep walking. That is enough. The man go 'long he way. 

Every time since then, whenever I walking to the market, he would greet me, "Hi friend."

And I smile and say, "Hi," and keep walking.

Characters all over the city streets of my homeland. You got to develop the instinct to know which ones to reply to, and how to respond. Not snobbish. And most certainly not palsy-walsy.

The ones I reply to easily, and gyaff...chat...with, is the pen-man who convince me to buy a pen from he every time I pass he. The pine-man who pine does be sour like lime sometimes, and I take it home and cook faux-Chinese food with it. Mango-lady. 

But you see them bus conductors who shout for passengers to take they bus? Walk past like you don't see or hear them. Because, if you ain't careful, they gon haul you into they bus, and the next thing you know, you heading off for the inner parts of countryside even though you only been going to the lawyer office across the road.

And them chaps with cutlass under they arms...cross the road if you see one coming. No, I don't miss them and bus conductors.

I must say though, they add to the sounds and sights and drama of small sea-side town life.

What is your city like, Friends? (I mean, out of covid-times). What sounds and sights and people you enjoy?

I should go for a walk in this tranquil suburb. I really should. But I might read a book instead, or write email.

Have a loverly weekend. Plenty, plenty love, neena. xxx

Once upon a girl-child...

My Dear Friends,

Le' we gyaff...let we chat. Grab some snacks and le' we sit down and gyaff.

Weeeeeeeee!!!

All-body welcome, all ages, everybody.

Y'all like being around young people? 

Had a 13  / 14 year old girl I useta tutor in English. This child got the most-est ability to enjoy life by sheself. Climb tree and stare into bird nest. Save caterpillars to be butterflies. Make bubbles in the bathroom and giggle.

Play.

How and why so many people forget to play when they grow up? Culture put spokes in we?

Nah me.

Somehow...I manage to keep the child in me dancing, curious, fixing me gaze into the grass on the roadside, into the sky, and seeing daily, routine things in a different way. 

Pregnant bed.
(I stuck  pillows between  blankets to stay warm at nights in this cold, foreign weather.)

Could be a skill I learn when I been in tv, and something I inherit from me mother...she a li'l odd, the way she does see things. (I gon tell y'all about this another day).

I got this theory:

If you can keep that child inside alive and dancin', you got a better chance to bounce back from troubles. That child is the one who chase 'way boredom, and keep you' mind from getting so hard it keep out new ideas and solutions. That child don't need cafes, restaurants, travels to fancy destinations. Even the mundane at home gon be something of interest.

Friends, I got to go cook lunch. Chomp on some snacks, stare at the ceiling and tell me 'bout them people you see dancin' up there to Afrobeats.

Plenty love, neena xxx