For old timers born and bred in Guyana, especially in some rural countryside, river-rain or interior community, nighttime in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, Orlando or the Oranges HAS to be different.
It’s all now hi-tech – TV, DVD’S Video Games, Cable et. al. It’s today’s life chosen and inherited from the voluntary migration Guyanese opted for. But for those “new Guyanese Americans” over, say, fifty, the lore, the lure sometimes, the memories and nostalgia of country-side nights in Guyana will not and can not go away. We mean for those Americans BORN IN GUYANA.
First, instead of the hi-risers, the apartments and four seasons of the US,, there would be the wide open, windy, moon-lit nights, often with no electric lights in abundance-in the fifties to seventies. Add to that the mango, dunks, guava, star-apple, banana, cherry, psidium, golden apple or coconut trees – to name a few. Whichever grew in your country-yard. THE YARD, the compound in which the humble wooden cottage or bungalow would be located. And on the STEPS – the wooden stair-way – would sit the youngsters – with no radios, no television, no computers – listening to their uncles, fathers or grandfathers tell them stories of JUMBIES (ghosts), OLD HIGUES, BACCOOS, FAIRMAIDS, MASSACOURAMAN, MOONGAZERS and BUSH DAI-DAIS.
As this series develops, we will explore in depth a few of those intriguing folk beings mentioned above. But the elders would also tell stories of village characters, strange animals and incidents and of natural disasters. Stories that scared. Stories that created laughter and wonder. Do you remember Gang-Gang? Mechehmecheh? Ganga-time?
Well as you try to recall all that, I’ll leave you just two verses of WORDSWORTH Mc ANDREW’S “OL HIGUE” – an epic poem about the village granny who transforms herself into a wicked, vampire/witchlike ball-o-fire creature:
“Ol woman wid de wrinkled skin
Leh de Ol’Higue wuk begin
Put on yuh fiery disguise
Ol’woman wid de weary-eyes
SHED YUH SWIZZLY SKIN.”
*******
“Fine de Baby where e lie,
Change back faster than de eye
Find de baby lif de sheet,
Mek de puncture wid yuh teet
SUCK DE BABY DRY!”
*******
Til next time.
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