neena maiya

And when you give them the books, you can say:

BOOOOOOKS and laugh like Count Drac from Sesame Street.

Maaan, I was so judgemental of the dog food man!!

Grab a cuppa, and listen to my odd little email about this here:

My mother is 87 today.

Here we are, in the living room, spending time together, sunshine spilling through the windows, silence sitting with us. I am scribbling notes, I can hear a soft murmuring from her as she reads to herself.

Life truly is a gift. Don't let anyone fool you that you have to be doing something exciting to appreciate it.

Mr. Dog Food Man! I send you my deepest, most sincere, humblest humble apologies. You de Maaan, Mr. Dog Food Man!!

Note to self & to anyone fighting against those “You Should” people in your life...

…y'know, those people who don't know you well but they think it’s okay to bug you with “you should” advice.

I discovered fusic in the book, The Lonely Londoners, written in the 1950s. A character in it, Big City, insisted on pronouncing music this way.

Fusic saved me. My then-not-so-Aged P. and I were going through the anger stage of grief after my father’s death. When I played fusic, calm flowed into the spaces in our big, ole family home.

Want to check out my fusic playlist? Go here, neenamaiya.substack.com.

Good morning, I hope you slept well and were not interrupted by ole higue sneaking into your room to slurp your blood.

Hehe.

I laugh but I’ve met people in my lovely native land who insist that ole higue is a living, breathing creature. Doesn’t matter how I try to convince anyone that that ball of fire in the night sky ain’t no darn human-thing, he / she is adamant that it is an old blood-sucking higue shooting through the dark to sneak into someone’s home.

“One night, me and some friends say we go pick coconut from this man coconut-walk,” a chap once told me. “As we reach near the tree-them, one big ball o’ fire pass through so. If you see run!! We dash out from deh mo’ fast than lion.”

I sucked my teeth with the most mocking suck-teeth sound I could make. “Y’all musta see a meteorite!” I laughed.

Of course, chappie would have none of that. “Is a’ ole higue, I telling you!!”

“Y’ever see she shedding she skin?” I asked. “Ever find the calabash that she hide she skin in? You know which tree she hang the calabash in?”

Maaan, me nah got to see all o’ that. Me see the fire. Ee been big-big so, and red-red-red, ee go round-round-round and roll like a ball and shoot straight through.”

At that point, I was cracking up with laughter. “That should teach you a lesson…don’t go teefing people t’ings, or ole higue gon come to teef you’ blood,” I hooted.

Writing this now, it has occurred to me that the owner of the coconut trees had probably shot some fireworks into his farm to scare off the wanna-be thieves. Which brings me back to what I was thinking about originally because of a recent news item…

…those t’iefing thieves, breaking into innocent people’s homes, and when they are injured by the residents, oh, the unfairness, look what’s happened to the 79-year old granny in Suriname, east of us, across the Berbice River.

It was around midnight when granny heard a sound in her home. Bravely, she went to check. Braaps. Face to face she came with the teef! She grabbed her weapon and…bladam…into his chest went the bullet. That bleddy burglar is now safe and sound, nursing his wounds in the hospital, probably being fed warm food and nourishment, whilst granny’s been arrested for having an illegal weapon.

Poor granny. I hope she’s okay. I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if she had thrown a bottle of blazing-hot sauce, made from the ball o’ fire pepper, into the eyes of the vulture. Would the police have arrested her then?

Praises after praises have been heaped upon granny via Guyana’s social media. I am not a proponent of guns but I understand where the citizens are coming from. They are tired of these crasses invading homes. They still remember old news from past years about young men robbing, raping, murdering grannies in Guyana.

Do you see the irony, friend?

Old higue, an ancient woman, it is said, invades homes to steal your blood, and the blood of newborn babies. No one, to date, has ever caught sight of even the shadow of one ancient woman invading a single home.

Who then are the real blood-suckers in this lovely land of ours, pray tell? Think about it, tell me what you think. More about this another time.

I’ve got a bagful of stories to tell in a far-away but not-too-far land.

To all the creatives out there, keep on drawing, colouring, painting, singing, dancing, designing, cooking, writing, speaking up.

Your work has reminded us, entertained us, kept us going, made us think, has brought us joy, light, knowledge, ease when life gets tough.

I was thinking about Sunday, Mothers Day in this part of the world, when I remembered writing this:

And just like that, a news item popped up about a man whose parents hadn’t heard from him in 3 years, then he turned up alive and well in the interior.

In the comments section of the news item, people were discussing how wrong it was of him to have done this. Someone tried to excuse his behaviour but, immediately, he was told, “You’d better pray it doesn’t happen to you.”

I know two parents whose son was angry with them and he divorced them. The parents used to tell me about the awful pain.

Y’all ever been bush-cooking? Like…cooking outdoors but in a rough setting, and not with fancy equipment? We love to bush-cook in Guyana (St. America). Iron pots, wood for fire near some canal, fish pond, creek. Best food evah!! 


And don’t forget de 🔥 red-hot peppa sauce! 🔥

Are you in a foodie-adventurous mood?

Have a look here > Ball o’ fire.