More memorable sounds 2nd July 2009.

Sunset in Guyana is relatively short and as soon as darkness sets in, an orchestra of sounds begin. The six o’clock beetle (or bee?) would give a burst of buzzing sounds like a mini electric saw, to announce that the show was about to start.
Soon the frogs sang out loudly with their throaty voices, cicadas fiddled a continuous accompaniment, crickets chirped occasionally to highlight the medley of sounds. This went on throughout the night.

During the rainy season, the frogs would try to outdo each other as they bellowed out "Ribbit, ribbit... I’m the sexiest frog of you lot! Croak, croak!" And of course there was the odd bark from a dog to heckle some stranger going past it.

But it was just before sunrise that I have especially fond memories of my home country. Just before the dawn of a new day, cockerels (Oh gawd! write fowl cocks, nah man!) would call out verbally abusing each other, thereby proclaiming their territory.
I can just see them now, deep breath in, flapping their wings energetically, as they crow loudly: "Cock a doodle dooo!"

Incidentally, where I live in the UK, on the way to the newsagents, I actually heard a cock crow. I was so disappointed with it. All it could muster was: "Cack dooh! Cack dooh!" in a broken voice like it was suffering from a sore throat!
I guess it’s because it grew up as the only male chicken around, poor thing, no role model to follow.

Across Lombard Street to the West of us, was the rubbish incinerator, and about 5.30 am. the drivers would lead their donkeys pulling the collection carts on their way to various parts of the city.
Some went East past where we lived in Drysdale Street, and others North along Lombard Street. The cart wheels rumbling in concert with the donkeys’ hooves made a pleasant waking call for me to get ready to rise and shine!
This was soon followed by the raucous calls of the kiskadees! There was one that would stand on top of the telephone pole across the road and seem to shout: "Kickadee! Kickadee! I’m the king of the kiskadees! Who wants to fight me?"

At about 6.30 am, Georgetown came alive! Dray carts pulled by horses or mules rattled and clipity-clopped past at a trot, well the empty ones that is to say. The loaded ones went past more circumspectly, obviously.
There were not many cars or lorries on the road in those days, and most persons went to work on bicycles. I miss the "bling! bling!" warning of a bicycle bell.

Hey! I mustn’t forget the sound of rain. It’s so nice to experience a heavy tropical shower, especially when you’re indoors. The staccato "Pittah, Pattah!" on the windowpanes, the drumming of the raindrops on the sheet-steel roof, was so soothing that it made me want to curl up in bed. But sometimes the ear-deafening clap of thunder overhead and blinding flash of lightning were rather scary.

The characteristic smell of rain on earth/tarmac will never be forgotten. Would you believe it? It smells the same here in the UK! And so it continued on throughout the day, somewhere there would be ducks quacking, cocks crowing, hens cackling, cats meowing, cows mooing, sheep bleating, kiskadees kiskadeeing, dogs barking, people greeting each other, horses whinnying. What noises do goats make? Mehhh?

There were other song-birds such as canaries noted for their warbling melodies. Owls hooted at night. There were the noiseless circling of carrion-crows overhead and the screech of the chicken-hawks. And so the tapestry of sounds from morning to night repeated itself, punctuated by the seasons however.

At Easter there were the throaty roar of traditional paper kites. A kite-flyer would tug repeatedly on the string to encourage his kite to sing.
During the Pagwah festivity, there were the happy noises of people exclaiming their delight at getting wet with coloured water or throwing powder on each other.
And at Christmas, dear Christmas, how my heart remembers those days that I sometimes long for. The Xmas trees lit up with fairy lights and stars or fairies on top. The sometimes irritating "bang! bang!" from toy guns being fired. And the dull 'whoomp!' of someone exploding a carboid-filled Ovaltine tin-can.
I can almost feel the excitement as we rushed to the window to see the steel band or masquerade band going past.

Christmas was also noted for mouth-watering foods and the traditional special fruit cake, dark in colour from being matured in red wine for months and months. There was the obligatory gluttonous noises of people gorging their Xmas dinner, well from me at least, I’m a little pig when it comes to food! One Xmas I ate so much, as I left the table, my stomach began hurting like hell, so much so that I had to sit on the floor for maybe an hour before the pains abated sufficiently for me to get up.

There are other noises too, that lie in the nooks and crannies of my mind, and only make a shy appearance when I'm least expecting it, like the 'ouch' when a red-ants bite yuh! Or the disturbing high-pitch whine of a mosquito, as it flies past your ear!
Uh, oh! Time to be quiet now, think I've made enough noise! :-)

Memorable Sounds! 17th May 2009.

Soon after turning five years old, we moved from Bent Street to Drysdale Street. There were so many more activities going on there compared to Bent Street. Across the road from us was the Fire Station. The sound of the alarm bell ringing to alert the firemen to get ready to put out a fire, also alerted us that sumthin was on.
The youngest of my sisters and I would rush to the window to see what was going on. We were soon caught up with the excitement upon seeing the firemen rushing about. Putting on their helmets and boarding the tender as quickly as they could. The climax for us, was the sound of the siren going "Deee Dahh! Dee Dahh!"
Hang on, I think I tell a lie, it may have been a bell, Ding! Ding!...Ding! Dinggg! as the tender pulled out from the station with speed! Yuh know sumthin? I really surprise myself at remembering dese tings!

There was a big mango tree on the High-Street side of the station, and a biggish star-apple tree on the Lombard-Street side of it. Sometimes in the evenings, we would hear the sound of stones crashing through the leaves of the mango tree. Boys would throw stones at the tree in the hope that they would dislodge a few mangoes from the tree.
But not for long as the firemen would chase the boys away. However, when the tree was fully laden with ripe fruit, they would arrange for a boy to climb the tree and get the mangoes.
Word would soon spread to the local resisdents. The fireman who was sharing out the mangoes would very quickly be surrounded amidst cries of "Me! Me! Me nah get any mango man!" With outstretched hands pleading for a share of mangoes.

Oh Gawd! Friday and Saturday night was bad nights for us chillren trying to sleep. There were two cake shops across the road from us and there was big competition to see which shop could pull the most customers with its blaring jukebox playing the latest calypsos.
This went on through the night! I don’t know how long for sure, somehow I fell asleep before 10 o’clock. How do I know this? There’s a clock on the wall outside my bedroom which chimed every 15 minutes and the full count on the hour. I rarely heard the clock chiming after 9.30 pm though.
But we enjoyed hearing the latest calypsos and watching people leaning on their bicycles outside the cake shops as they listened to the music. It's so amazin how you can get used to enjoy 'earing two different songs being played at the same time.

Oh yes! On Sunday, we had the Salvation Army in attendance. We could hear the characteristic "Boom! Boom! Boom!" and the trumpets blaring out "Onward Christian Soldiers" as they marched to an area on the road in front of the star-apple tree. Oh, the army sang the hymn too, yuh really tink they would march quietly? Nah man, yuh shud know bettah!
From the comfort of looking out through a window at home, I could see that the good Captain(?) would begin by reading a few passages from the Holy Bible.
Then he preached or rather berated all and sundry around him to be God-fearing. We must be very good to avoid everlasting damnation with the flames of hellfire and brimstone raining down on your back! Not nice! Not nice at all!
Perhaps it must have benefited me as I think I turned out to be a fairly good person. ;-)

The story about Dutch gold!

The father of my friend Neville told me a story. He said that there was a man who lived on the West Coast and one night he had a dream. In the dream, he heard a voice telling him to go to a certain spot on Haig backdam and he would find a treasure chest. However, if he heard footsteps following him, on no account was he turn around to see who it was!
The next night, obviously to avoid being seen by others, he set out with shovel in hand. Sure enough he found the spot and dug down to reveal the chest. He opened it to see golden Dutch coins and other golden artefacts. After removing the chest, he filled the hole and set off for home with it. (With the chest, not the hole... stupidee!)

He could hear footsteps following behind him, when he stopped..the footsteps stopped! But remembering the warning he didn’t turn around. That is, until he was about to climb the front-steps of his home. He couldn’t resist seeing who or what it was that was following him.
As he turned around, appearing before him was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, well her ghost that is! She had waist length hair and the face and body of an angel.
She glowed ever so gently like moonlight reflecting off the surface of a still pond. But that was the last thing he ever saw as she plunged her hands into his eyes. There was a brilliant flash in his head! He was instantly blinded! And in his mind, he could hear her say: "You have what you want, now I have what I want, goodbye!"

Panic set in as he clambered up to his front door and somehow managed to get safely indoors. Feeling safe now that he was in his house, he realised that he didn’t hear the footsteps following him inside. And there the tale ended, Mahabir remained stone blind from that day on, until he passed away.

I always thought this was a ‘fairy tale’ to entertain us children. But soon after getting wed, I told this story to my wife. And to my surprise she said it was true! She knew it was true, because she was the great-grand daughter of Mahabir Pandit, the man who had the dream and found the treasure. I asked her what became of the treasure? She said that he had it melted down into gold jewellery and shared it to his wife and children. Sadly none of the inherited jewellery filtered down to her.
Anyway, I felt so proud marrying to someone who had descended from a Guyanese legend.
May great-grand-father Mahabir's soul R.I.P. :-)

PS. I was discussing with my wife, the change I made to elaborate on how Mahabir Pandit got blind. She corrected me by pointing out that it was a man ghost and not a lady one. But I said a lady ghost made the story more entertaining, so I am going to leave it as it is!

youtube videos

I haven't figured out how to show a link to youtube as yet.
So here's the URL: http://www.youtube.com/luvisharmony

I've uploaded 14 videos so far.

Odd memories of school days.

Do you remember jumbee bubbee? Well, jumbee bubbee was great if you knew that you were going to get 'licks' from teacher.
For example if you were going to turn up late for school. The plan is to demonise the teacher by rubbin jumbee bubbee on the palms of your hands.
When you got your lashes, your hand would break out with terrible weals. And you can complain bitterly to your mother about how the teacher was so bad, bad, bad for beating you so cruelly. You probably got more 'licks' from your mother though, instead of sympathy.
I think jumbee bubbee was purple or red berries, but the name of the tree or bush from which it is got, escapes me. I never used it anyway, I was a good boy!

At school, did you have ladies selling sweets, green and ripe mangoes with salt and pepper? What about tamarind coated with sugar or drippin with syrup?
Did you have a shave-ice lady too? The shave-ice lady lived across the 'gutter' (narrow drainage stream) from us, and she would give me a full shave of ice 'crumbles' with extra syrup whenever I bought from her. It's so good to have friends.
Talking about gutters, as a child, the three-foot wide gutter appeared to be as big as a trench to me, especially when after a heavy rain and it overflows into our yard.

I'll let you into a secret, as I grew older nearing the end of my primary-school days, I would often buy the sweets we called 'long sweeties.'
Guess what, the girls noticed this and started teasing with the nickname: "Daddy, long sweety!" So I'd make out like I was annoyed and chase after them as they ran off. I wish I had that energy to run after girls like that now. ;-)

More games

The oringinal posting starts here.
We boys played Kush (or cush?) and holes. Girls played at making mud pies and with their dolls. Some dolls were made from straw or dried grass. Boys and girls played at hop-scotch and skipping.

I hope I get this right, kush was played by drawing a small circle 6 to 8 inches diameter, with oche line tangential to the top of the circle. About six to ten feet away another line was drawn. The distance varied according to the skill of the players.
Players took turns to throw a button at the far line, the order in which a player threw his button closest to, or on the line determined the order of play. Buttons are all collected by the first player which are thrown from the line to the circle.
The buttons inside the circle were kept by the thrower. The remaining buttons are then available to the next player to thrwo into the circle and he keeps any that are inside the circle.

The sequnce is repeated until there are no buttons remaining. There are variations on the rules, for example, deciding what to do when a button touches the edge of the circle from the inside.
The elder lads used coins instead of buttons, and sometimes there were fierce arguments over whether a coin was 'in' or not.

Holes was played with marbles, usually glass ones. It was a big advantage to get a steel ball-bearing the size of a marble as its weight would hit glass marbles a fair distance outside the line of play. Steel bearings were hard to come by, as these were only available from the wheels or other parts of the trains. There were smaller ones available from cars too, but the 'train' ones were better.

The game was played by digging three holes about four inches in diameter about six to ten feet apart. A line was drawn six to ten feet away from the first hole. Play started by each player throwing his marble from the first hole to the line, to determine order of play.
The first player then threw or rolled his marble at the first hole, if the marbled settled into the hole, he was allowed to have a throw at the next hole. If his marble didn't enter the hole, play passed to the next player.
The game was won by the first player to go down to the third hole and return back up to enterring his marble into the first hole. There are other rules to the game, such as if an opponent's marble is with a hand's span of your marble, you wer allowed to hit it away with yours. Gosh! I've forgotten the scoring system for the skilled players; all I can recall is that it was 20 points for entering your marble into a hole.

28June, 2009. Adding a game called "Litty" (hope I spelt it correctly)
As I was sitting on a wall waiting for the bus to arrive, I gazed down at the small pebbles under my feet. And to my amusement, I remembered how as children we played Litty.
Have you forgotten or don't know how to play it? Well, you need seven small pebbles, each about the size of a finger-nail.
You start by throwing all seven pebbles on the floor. You now have to make a judgement based on the layout of the pebbles, as to which pebble to throw up about 18 inches off the floor. While the thrown pebble is in orbit, you must pick up another pebble off the floor put it into the palm of your other hand, then catch the descending thrown pebble.
You continue to choose, throw, pick and place in your other hand, then catch. Repeat for each remaining pebble. Should you fail to complete the sequence, play passes to someone else.

After "ones" has been completed you start with throwing one (always one thrown,) pick two and place in your other hand, then catch the thrown, until all the pebbles have been picked up (twos.) I think if you failed at completing twos say, when your turn comes around, you must restart with twos and progress on to threes and so on. The first player to complete sixes is the winner!
Experienced players know how to throw the pebbles in certain 'patterns' to make picking up easier rather than just throwing them anyhow on the floor.
Sadly the game lost favour to "Jacks." Nine five-sided spiky thingies were used instead of pebbles and a small rubber ball was thrown and caught off the rebound on the floor. I don't think Litty or Jacks is played anymore, dexterity is exercised by finger-work on gamepads, keyboards and Wii wands or whatever they're called.

Other games.

There were other games we played.
These are: London bridge is broken down, ring-a-ring of roses, brown-girl in the ring, I've come to mend the water works, simple simon.
I have to admit I can hardly recall the actual words and body movements for the first three.

The last two are pretty straight forward. I've come to mend the water works is like a game of charades but more to do with activities rather than words.
Simple Simon is chosen from the group, and the rest are to follow his/her commands and actions but only when he begins with "Simple Simon says...."
Were there variations on this game, for example, what if SS commanded "SS says put your hand on your head, but he rubbed his stomach instead?