Sunday 17 November 2019

SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA 135 YEARS LATER





On November 15-1884, one hundred and thirty-five years ago, the “Scramble for Africa” began with a diabolic meeting of the minds when representatives from 14 European nations met to carve up the African continent. This infamous “Berlin Conference” lasted until February 26-1885 and when the dust cleared the African continent had been carved up and colonized by several European nations. Decades of colonization of the African continent followed, along with theft of African land, the disenfranchisement of Africans on their land and the underdevelopment of Africa. The masterminds of this atrocity included representatives of Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden-Norway (unified from 1814-1905), Turkey and the USA, who decided to carve up the African continent for their benefit. At the time Britain, France, Germany and Portugal had colonies on the African continent, so the other European tribes wanted the opportunity to exploit Africans and Africa. Chattel slavery, the 400-year European plunder and brutalization of Africans was almost at an end (at least on paper) so these parasites were seeking another method of leeching off of the human and other resources of Africa. With no regard for African culture or history, no consultation with any African, this group of White men drew borders that separated families and forced together groups that traditionally lived separately with a delicate balance of keeping peaceful relations by their living arrangements.






His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, the late Emperor of Ethiopia spoke about the European ravishment of Africa and the effects, at the launch of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) on May 25-1963: “The events of the past hundred and fifty years require no extended recitation from Us. Africa was a physical resource to be exploited and Africans were chattels to be purchased bodily or, at best, peoples to be reduced to vassalage and lackeyhood. Africa was the market for the produce of other nations and the source of the raw materials with which their factories were fed.” In his 1972 published book “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa,” African Guyanese scholar Walter Rodney wrote: “Colonised Africans, like pre-colonial African chattel slaves, were pushed around into positions which suited European interests and which were damaging to the African continent and its peoples.”




For decades after the infamous “Scramble for Africa” the continent was occupied by Europeans who stole African land and not only kept the most fertile land for their use by displacing the Africans but they also passed laws forcing Africans to provide cheap labour on the farms/plantations the Europeans established. Africans were brutalized by Europeans who were protected by well-armed European military personnel provided by the various European nations. The White farmers needed cheap labour for the large-scale farming that enriched the minority White population but the Africans refused to work on the farms. In Kenya, for example, to ensure that Africans were a cheap source of labour for the White colonial settler population, the British government passed laws which forced the Africans to work for the White people who now occupied their land. The British army was on hand to ensure that White farmers and the stolen African land they occupied were protected. The passing and enforcing of the “Masters and Servants Act” (1906) ensured that a caste system of all White people as masters and all Africans as servants was firmly in place. In his 1974 published book “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” Guyanese scholar and historian Walter Rodney wrote: “From the beginning, Europe assumed the power to make decisions within the international trading system. An excellent illustration of that is the fact that the so-called international law which governed the conduct of nations on the high seas was nothing else but European law. Africans did not participate in its making, and in many instances, African people were simply the victims, for the law recognized them only as transportable merchandise. If the African slave was thrown overboard at sea, the only legal problem that arose was whether or not the slave ship could claim compensation from the insurers! Above all, European decision-making power was exercised in selecting what Africa should export – in accordance with European needs.” Much of the wealth that gives European dominated nations the status of “developed” countries was derived from the unpaid labour of generations of enslaved Africans who were routinely worked to death so that the Europeans could accumulate undeserved wealth.




The “Scramble for Africa” was powered by the invention of the machine gun. The invention of the Gatling gun (1861) gave Europeans an advantage of superior firepower to slaughter Africans who resisted their encroachment. The Gatling gun and later the Maxim gun (1884) were used to steal and occupy African land and subjugate Africans on the continent. The Africans armed with spears and a few rifles were no match for these machine guns. Richard Jordan Gatling received a patent for his machine gun on November 4-1862 just in time for Europeans who had mostly ended the enslavement of Africans (the Portuguese in Brazil were the last in 1888) in the “New World” to turn their attention to possessing and exploiting the African continent and those Africans who lived there. Not being content with brutally robbing the continent of its people and their talents for centuries these evil, covetous, unconscionable people left their homes in Europe to invade and seize vast amounts of African land. Africans did not sit quietly and allow the White interlopers to reign supreme. There were several acts of African resistance.





One of the most famous acts of resistance was led by an African woman in Ghana. Nana Yaa Asantewaa is considered an African freedom fighter who led her people in resistance to the oppression of the colonizing British. Following the “Scramble for Africa” where members representing 14 white tribes decided to carve up the African continent to colonize and exploit the people living in those places (Ethiopia being the sole African country they were unsuccessful in colonizing) the British tried to subdue the Ashanti nation of Ghana. In the first Ashanti/British war in 1823, the British were soundly thrashed by the Ashanti warriors. Keeping in mind that there was no invasion of Britain by the Ashanti or any other African nation, the British were at an advantage because they could keep importing soldiers from a country where people lived in virtual peace while the Ashanti and other African nations were in a constant state of turmoil with Europeans invading their territories, slaughtering, kidnapping and enslaving their citizens. The British driven to extreme greed by the knowledge of gold in the Ashanti Empire (which they later named the Gold Coast) attacked the Ashanti in 1826, 1873, 1893-1894 and 1895-1896. In 1896, the British government annexed the territories of the Ashanti after the 24-year-old Asantehene (king) Prempeh I, supposedly directed his people not to resist, which is hardly surprising since by this time the Ashanti had been resisting British attacks for 73 years. In 1900 not only did the British exile the kidnapped Asantehene to the Seychelles islands, the British governor demanded that he be allowed to sit on the sacred Golden Stool of the Ashanti, which not even the Asantehene was allowed to sit on. This was the final insult and after the meeting with the British governor (which supposedly took place on March 28, 1900) when some of the chiefs of the Ashanti were reluctant to fight the British to rescue their king, Nana Yaa Asantewaa took matters into her own hands. She is credited with rallying the men of Asante with this speech: “Now I have seen that some of you fear to go forward to fight for our king. If it were in the brave days of, the days of Osei Tutu, Okomfo Anokye, and Opoku Ware, chiefs would not sit down to see their king taken away without firing a shot. No White man could have dared to speak to chief of the Ashanti in the way the Governor spoke to you chiefs this morning. Is it true that the bravery of the Ashanti is no more? I cannot believe it. It cannot be! I must say this: if you the men of Ashanti will not go forward, then we will. We the women will. I shall call upon my fellow women. We will fight the White men. We will fight till the last of us falls in the battlefields.”



The struggle for decolonization gained momentum after the second European tribal conflict which lasted from 1939 to 1945. Many Africans were forced to fight in what was a battle between mostly European nations at war with each other. Following that conflict which was mostly fought in Europe, the Africans who returned to their continent realised that White men were not all powerful or immortal and died from bullet wounds just like the Africans the Europeans routinely killed. His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I said on May 25, 1963 in his greetings to the delegates of the first gathering of the independent African nation states at the launch of the OAU: “We seek, at this meeting, to determine whither we are going and to chart the course of our destiny. It is no less important that we know whence we came. An awareness of our past is essential to the establishment of our personality and our identity as Africans. This world was not created piecemeal. Africa was born no later and no earlier than any other geographical area on this globe. Africans, no more and no less than other men, possess all human attributes, talents and deficiencies, virtues and faults. Thousands of years ago, civilizations flourished in Africa which suffer not at all by comparison with those of other continents. In those centuries, Africans were politically free and economically independent. Their social patterns were their own and their cultures truly indigenous. The obscurity which enshrouds the centuries which elapsed between those earliest days and the rediscovery of Africa are being gradually dispersed. What is certain is that during those long years Africans were born, lived and died. Men on other parts of this Earth occupied themselves with their own concerns and, in their conceit, proclaimed that the world began and ended at their horizons. All unknown to them, Africa developed in its own pattern, growing in its own life and, in the nineteenth century, finally re-emerged into the world's consciousness.”





In the 21st century the struggle continues when egregious acts of brutality against African people are committed by White police officers or others powered by White skin privilege in White supremacist cultures/societies. The brutal, vicious attack on African Canadian youth Dafonte Miller is an example. The orbital bones (eye socket) of Dafonte Miller’s left eye were broken (among several other serious injuries; broken nose, jaw, wrist and damaged right eye) and his left eye burst and fell out of its socket, during the vicious, barbaric attack by two white men on December 28-2016. The attackers of Dafonte Miller are Michael Theriault (off duty member of the Toronto police force) and his civilian brother Christian Theriault. Not surprisingly, it took six months, the intervention of a lawyer, several community members and organizations to get information of this attack made public and for the authorities to seek justice for Dafonte Miller. This is the 21st century, 135 years after the Scramble for Africa and we continue to struggle against white supremacy.  https://blacklivesmatter.com/news/ Black Lives Matter!


Murphy Browne © November 12-2019

Friday 8 November 2019

VIOLA DESMOND NOVEMBER 8-1946


VIOLA DESMOND NOVEMBER 8-1946

Seventy-three years ago, on Friday, November 8- 1946 Viola Davis Desmond a 32-year-old

(July 6, 1914 – February 7, 1965) African Canadian businesswoman was arrested at the Roseland Theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. She was harassed, injured, arrested and incarcerated for resisting Nova Scotia’s white supremacist system. She was found guilty of breaking the law and the guilty verdict remained in place until April 15, 2010 when a posthumous pardon was granted. While Desmond did not win her battle, she inspired others including her youngest sibling Wanda Robson. Robson’s advocacy on her sister’s behalf has resulted in Desmond being honoured with a Canadian postage stamp, her name on a ship and in 2018 her image on the Canadian 10-dollar bill.


 

Murphy Browne © Wednesday, November 14, 2012



VIOLA DESMOND NOVEMBER 8 - 1946



"On behalf of the Nova Scotia government, I sincerely apologize to Mrs. Viola Desmond’s family and to all African-Nova Scotians for the racial discrimination she was subjected to by the justice system in November 1946. The arrest, detainment, and conviction of Viola Desmond is an example in our history where the law was used to perpetuate racism and racial segregation - this is contrary to the values of Canadian society. We recognize today that the act for which Viola Desmond was arrested, was an act of courage, not an offence."



Excerpt from official apology by Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter on April 15, 2010





On November 8, 1946 Viola Davis Desmond a 32-year-old African Canadian businesswoman was arrested at the Roseland Theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. At 32 years old Viola Desmond was a successful entrepreneur and owner of a beauty parlour and beauty school. This kind of business success was almost unheard of for women in Canada at the time and especially for African Canadian women. On November 8, 1946, Desmond was traveling on business from her Halifax, Nova Scotia home when she experienced car trouble in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. She took her car to a garage and while the car was being repaired, she decided to see a movie at the Roseland Theatre. She bought a ticket for the main floor of the theatre, went in and sat down. She was unaware of the theatre’s policy that the main floor was a “Whites only” seating area because unlike the blatant White supremacist Jim Crow laws of the USA, there were no “Whites” and “Colored” signs posted and she did not know that African Canadians were relegated to the balcony. When Desmond was ordered to move, she replied that she could not see from the balcony, that she had paid to sit on the main floor and that she would not move. The manager left the theatre and came back with a policeman. Together, the two burly white men dragged the slim, 4’ 11” Desmond into the street, injuring her in the process. The White supremacist culture in Canada is much more subtle than in the USA and Desmond was charged with defrauding the government of one cent instead of the reality which was “sitting in the White people’s section” of the cinema.



Desmond spent the night in jail in the same block as male prisoners. Next morning, she was tried and found guilty of tax evasion. She was found guilty of not having paid the entertainment tax (one cent) that was the difference between the “White” section and the “Colored” section of the cinema. The White woman who sold her the ticket refused to sell her a ticket for the first floor which she had requested but instead had sold her a ticket for the balcony. The sentence was 30 days in jail or a fine of $20, plus $6 to the manager of the theatre, one of the two men who had injured her as he dragged her out of the cinema the night before. She paid the fine and then challenged the guilty verdict in the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia. Desmond was supported in her struggle for justice by fellow African Canadian and civil rights activist Carrie Best who publicized the case in The Clarion newspaper. The Clarion was established in 1946 by Best and was the first African Canadian owned and published newspaper in Nova Scotia.







In spite of their efforts and the support of the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NSAACP) the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia upheld the guilty verdict. Desmond remained guilty of defrauding the government of 1 cent until April 15, 2010 when she was granted a posthumous pardon. A press release from the Nova Scotia Premiere’s office read in part: “The province has granted an official apology and free pardon to the late Viola Desmond. Mrs. Desmond, of Halifax, was an African Canadian wrongfully jailed and fined in 1946 for sitting in the white peoples' section of a New Glasgow movie theatre. Mrs. Desmond passed away in 1965. On the advice of the Executive Council, the lieutenant governor has exercised the Royal Prerogative of Mercy to grant a Free Pardon. A free pardon is based on innocence and recognizes that a conviction was in error. A free pardon is an extraordinary remedy and is considered only in the rarest of circumstances. This is the first time a free pardon has been posthumously granted in Canada.” What the press release of Desmond’s eventual pardon did not include was the fact that Desmond left Nova Scotia and eventually settled in New York where she transitioned on February 7, 1965 just 5 months before her 51st birthday.





After 64 years, the government of Nova Scotia acknowledged what had been hinted at by one of the judges who dismissed Desmond’s appeal to the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia in April 1947. Justice William Hall is quoted in April 1947: “One wonders if the manager of the theatre … was so zealous because of a bona fide belief there had been an attempt to defraud the Province of Nova Scotia of the sum of one cent, or was it a surreptitious endeavour to enforce a Jim Crow rule by misuse of a public statute.” The White supremacist seating policy of the Roseland Theatre was never acknowledged which is typical Canadian racism at work; instead of signs indicating segregated seats in the theatre, tax laws were used to disguise bona fide segregation. The Nova Scotia government at the time insisted on arguing that the Viola Desmond case was a case of tax evasion.





Viola Desmond’s case did not receive much publicity outside of Nova Scotia, unlike the similar case of Rosa Parks to whom she is compared although her struggle took place more than 9 years before Parks’ case. Since then Desmond’s story has been told in several books including “Sister to Courage” published in 2010 by Desmond’s younger sister Wanda Robson. Her story is also told in the “Long Road to Justice - The Viola Desmond Story” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI00i9BtsQ8






In 2012 Desmond was honoured with a Canadian postage stamp. In spite of this most Canadians know more about Rosa Parks than they do about Viola Desmond. This is due in part to the covert/undercover nature of Canada’s White supremacist culture with the myth of a successful Canadian multiculturalism. The history that is taught in the education system is Eurocentric not multicultural. We know about the enslavement of Africans in the USA since it is well documented but in Canada a discussion about the enslavement of Africans is mostly about those who fled slavery in the USA and sought refuge in Canada. We do know the names of some of the Africans who resisted their enslavement in Canada including Chloe Cooley, Marie Joseph Angelique, Peggy Pompadour and others whose names appear in “for sale” advertisements and bounty hunter type advertisements. Some of those Africans enslaved in Canada fled south of the border to states in the USA where slavery was abolished (e.g. Vermont 1777) before slavery was abolished in Canada on August 1, 1834. The resistance of enslaved Africans contributed significantly to the abolition of slavery. Viola Desmond did not win her case but her fight encouraged successive generations to continue the fight. In the 21st century the struggle continues on various fronts and freedom fighters emerge regularly. Like Desmond they may not win their battle but they inspire successive generations to continue the struggle.









Murphy Browne © Wednesday, November 14, 2012




Tuesday 5 November 2019

SHIRLEY ANITA ST HILL CHISHOLM




Murphy Browne © Tuesday, November 6-2012

SHIRLEY ANITA ST HILL CHISHOLM

"I stand before you today as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency of the United States. I am not the candidate of Black America, although I am Black and proud. I am not the candidate of the women's movement of this country, although I am a woman, and I am equally proud of that. I am not the candidate of any political bosses or special interests. I am the candidate of the people."

Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm (January 25, 1972)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU0jtxf7-vo



On November 5, 1968 Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm became the first African American woman elected to the United States House of Representatives. She served 7 terms (re-elected 6 times) until 1982 when she retired. Shirley Anita St. Hill was born on November 30, 1924 in Brooklyn, New York. Her parents Charles St Hill and Ruby Seale St Hill were immigrants from British Guiana (father) and Barbados (mother.) The St Hill family struggled financially even with both parents working which eventually prompted Charles and Ruby to send their three little girls to live in the Caribbean. In 1927, the St. Hill children were sent to Barbados to live with their maternal grandmother Emaline Seale and returned to live with their parents in Brooklyn seven years later. On their return to Brooklyn in 1934 the St Hill children - now 4 since there was an addition to the family while the three older girls were living in Barbados - were academically ahead of their classmates as a result of the education they received in Barbados. In her 1970 published autobiography "Unbought and Unbossed” Chisholm stated: "Years later I would know what an important gift my parents had given me by seeing to it that I had my early education in the strict, traditional, British-style schools of Barbados. If I speak and write easily now, that early education is the main reason." Graduating from Girls’ High School in Brooklyn, New York she received scholarship offers to study at Vassar and Oberlin Colleges but choose to attend Brooklyn College. She earned her BA (Sociology) from Brooklyn College in 1946 and her MA in elementary education from Columbia University in 1952. She was director of the Hamilton-Madison Child Care Center in New York City from 1953 to 1959 and educational consultant for the Division of Day Care from 1959 to 1964. In 1964 Chisholm began her political career when she was elected to the New York State Legislature. In 1968, she ran as the Democratic candidate for New York's 12th District congressional seat and was elected to the House of Representatives defeating Republican candidate James Farmer. In 1971 she was one of the founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus. 

Chisholm would eventually make a bid to run for the position of President of the United States in 1972, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjIzxFL98Hg) becoming the first African American to do so. During her campaigns to be elected to the New York State Legislature, as Congresswoman and her Presidential bid Chisholm’s campaign manager and chief of staff was Guyanese born Wesley McDonald Holder (June 24, 1897- March 17, 1993) fondly known as the “Dean of Black Politics” in Brooklyn. Chisholm first met Holder during her student days in the 1950s. Not surprising since Chisholm’s father and Holder were both Garveyites (members of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association.) Holder was born in Buxton on the East Coast of Demerara in 1897 and immigrated to the USA in 1920. In an interesting coincidence, like Chisholm he had a Barbadian grandparent. His grandfather Samuel Holder (1827-1912) was born in Barbados and migrated to British Guiana as a young man. Holder was so much a part of the Brooklyn political scene (managing the campaigns of several politicians from the 1930s onwards) that in 1995 part of Schenectady Avenue between Lincoln Place and Park Place in Bedford-Stuyvesant was renamed "Dr. Wesley McDonald Holder Avenue." 



Chisholm and Holder were obviously an unbeatable combination, probably that combined African/Barbadian/Guyanese work ethic and intelligence. Chisholm achieved several firsts and published two autobiographies both yielding many memorable quotes. In her autobiography “The Good Fight” published in 1973, she wrote: “In this country everybody is supposed to be able to run for President, but that's never been really true. I ran because most people think the country is not ready for a black candidate, not ready for a woman candidate. The next time a woman runs, or a black (person), a Jew or anyone from a group that the country is 'not ready' to elect to its highest office, I believe he or she will be taken seriously from the start. The door is not open yet, but it is ajar." That was the case in 1972 and we marveled and celebrated when Barack Hussein Obama was elected the first African American President of the USA in 2008. The door was no longer just “ajar” it was “wide open” or so we thought. Mistakenly many of us thought it was the beginning of a post-racial American society. No such luck as we have witnessed the constant White supremacist attacks on the American First family including the attacks by the Tea Partiers and the Birthers. On November 6, 2012 America may re-elect its first African American President to a second term. Shirley Chisholm pushed the door in 1972 and left it “ajar.” Here we are 40 years later and it seems that it may need a battering ram to ensure that it is finally left open and not just “ajar” for future generations of those who do not fit the description Chisholm gave in one of her famous quotes: “The United States was said not to be ready to elect a Catholic to the Presidency when Al Smith ran in the 1920's. But Smith's nomination may have helped pave the way for the successful campaign John F. Kennedy waged in 1960. Who can tell? What I hope most is that now there will be others who will feel themselves as capable of running for high political office as any wealthy, good-looking white male.” Past Presidential candidates may have been “wealthy” but seriously if Americans were really using the criteria of “good-looking white males” to elect as Presidents many of those who have been seeking to run in this election would be laughed out of the place and many who served as Presidents would not even have been nominated.




Murphy Browne © Tuesday, November 6-2012

Sunday 3 November 2019

HALLOWEEN 2019

HALLOWEEN 2019

Murphy Browne © October 31-2019




Halloween is celebrated in Canada on October 31 as part of an ancient pagan Celtic tradition. The Celts, of the British Isles, before they were Christianized, believed that spirits and ghosts visited the world of the living on the night of October 31. They believed that the spirits could harm the living or take them to the “spirit world.” On October 31, if the Celts left their homes, they would dress as they imagined ghosts and spirits looked. They hoped that their disguises would confuse the ghosts and spirits. In the 21st century, many people celebrating Halloween, decorate their homes and surroundings with various “ghostly” themes on October 31. Halloween parties are held in homes, nightclubs, restaurants, and bars, while children and some adults, go trick-or-treating in their neighbourhood, dressed in various costumes. Every year without fail there is always the dreaded and dreadful “Blackface,” where people who are not “Black” or African, paint their faces black as part of their costume. Mocking and ridiculing racialized people is nothing new for White Canadians. Even the Prime Minister has been guilty of this egregious offense, as a student and as a teacher. Speaking about the “Blackface scandal” African Canadian art history professor at McGill University, Charmaine Nelson, said: “I'm disappointed, but not surprised. One thing that happens every Halloween is that we have an incident of blackface on a university campus or college campus in Canada.” 








 



The celebration of Halloween in North America (Canada and the USA) has become big business. According to an article published in the “Financial Post” on October 25-2014, “Canadians have become so wild about Halloween we now spend more per capita on costumes, candy and décor than our U.S. counterparts do, with holiday-related spending that is second only to Christmas.” In an article published on “CTV News” website (October 26, 2018) Diane Brisebois, President and CEO of the Retail Council of Canada is quoted: “We estimate that the Halloween market is between 900 million to a billion dollars.”


Online shopping for Halloween has grown in Canada, because of aggressive and shrewd marketing. Jeffrey Schwartz, Executive Director of Consolidated Credit Counseling Services of Canada, said: “Halloween has quickly become one of the largest shopping seasons of the year, with individuals spending upwards of $60 just on their costumes.” According to a 2018 Value Village survey, 44% of Canadians say Halloween is their favourite holiday. The Retail Council of Canada, estimates that Canada’s Halloween economy is worth $1-billion – double the size it was less than a decade ago.






The celebration of Halloween has spread its tentacles as far south as Guyana, on the South American continent. As a child, growing up in Guyana, I had merely read about Halloween. My first experience with the celebration of Halloween was as a 13-year-old, living in Lethem, Rupununi in Guyana’s interior, when a group of White Christian American missionaries were celebrating Halloween. The group, led by the resident preacher James Rader Hawkins and his wife Ann, were members of the Unevangelized Fields Mission and had been in the interior of Guyana for decades. These missionaries had decorated a “haunted house” and invited the local population to share the experience.


With some trepidation and curiosity, we entered the haunted house. There was Dr. Frank Davis, (the missionaries had their own doctor,) lying deathly still, in a coffin, covered in blood (ketchup.) I remember the panic, the screams of fright, these many decades later! Some adult Guyanese were unimpressed and declared the good White Christian Americans “heathens” and refused to believe that they were genuine Christians. Most of the Amerindian population in the Rupununi at the time were Catholic and many African Guyanese, like my family were Anglicans. We did not “do” Halloween. Today Guyanese are familiar with Halloween even though many do not know the history of what they are celebrating. Halloween in Guyana is now popular because of the influence of American television on the Guyanese population. American soap operas and sit-coms glorify American culture and since the celebration of Halloween is seen as American culture, Guyanese have swallowed it, “hook, line and sinker.” They organize Halloween parties in homes or attend Halloween parties in restaurants, bars and hotels.






“Curiouser and curiouser!” as the character Alice in the book “Alice in Wonderland” exclaimed, in Guyana we have many otherworldly characters of our own that we never celebrated. As a child, just the mention of “jumbie story” would have us diving into bed, with covers drawn over our heads. Yes, we had our own jumbie stories, bacoo stories, moongazer, choorile and oldhigue stories but no one encouraged the creatures to be a part of our lives by dressing up like them or celebrating them! But now, with the advent and influence of American culture, Guyanese seem to have lost the fear of those other worldly creatures and perhaps unknowingly, revel in encouraging them, at least on October 31. So far, I have not had the heart, or the gall to ask anyone celebrating Halloween in Guyana, if they know that during their Halloween celebrations, they are inviting into their parties and homes during their revelries on October 31, the creatures that (traditionally,) had their elders backing through the front door after dark.


Murphy Browne © October 31-2019