Moving along before leaving The Trail To Rupununi,I want to return briefly to that member of the team Harban Singh, mainly because looking back, I’ve decided he’s a character – yeah, Harban Singh is definitely a character. I always visualize him… hands akimbo standing below my cabin (…was my first cabin at Yukuriba Heights, built high off the ground with steps visitors from the city called ”the ship’s ladder” while Amerindians, first time they saw it, always questioned: “Ms Joan, you frighten tiger or wuh?); that’s how I remember Harban Singh… looking up at me, declaring, “we going to make a movie, Joan”.

…happens that we are going to make a movie; it was promised since 1989 in the final paragraph of the obituary I wrote following Capt Roy Bowen’s death that year: “a video film entitled “the Life & Times of Capt. Roy is expected to be released in 1990.” Looking back on it, that claim at the time was over ambitious. However, without the attrition and irritation of so many years battling to withstand the erstwhile PPPC government in court, as well as their affiliated land grabbers, we could’ve made that movie by now. Finally, the movie will be made and Harban Singh naturally, will be featured in this film as will be the Trail To Rupununi; Before The Road To Brazil.
Fortuitously, Yukuriba Heights’ Media and Communications Representative Amanda Wilson, happens to be a filmmaker.
I distinctly remember Capt Roy’s alarm…his words to me after I put on the siren in my throat and screamed to discourage settlement of the Trail to Rupununi ‘s advance guard –
“Camo?” (Capt. called me Camo…short for Cambridge)
“You gone mad?”
…can’t remember my response, but had I thought of it at the time the response would’ve been – No, Capt. Roy, I’ve not gone mad, but it seems to me that “Capitalism” is getting ready to unleash some madness with major plans to establish an asylum right here on Yukuriba Heights.
From hindsight….can’t tell you how much I’ve thanked my maroon ancestors for the foresight to release my scream that day; chasing away Harban Singh and his confusion…. Today…am only looking forward to a sanctuary for creative minds at Yukuriba Heights, even though…can’t help wondering from time to time, WHAT IF…?
However, enough of all the retrospection…want to leave Terry Fletcher and that pioneering team of Trail To Rupununi adventurers, at Kurupukari , where they managed to establish a pontoon crossing and are about to move on Southward to the Rupununi and the Brazilian Border at Lethem; they’ve got a hell of a story to tell replete with pictures of that which was Before the Road to Brazil….other stories I’ve heard about Singh’s aberrations justify my description of him as “a character” but those must be left now to be told by his fellow Trail To Rupununi adventurers.
…want to deal with WHAT IS! What will be happening at Yukuriba in the future; The Maroon Sculpture Walk leading the visitor into a Yukuriba Creative Community experience.
As described before, The Maroon Sculpture Walk…first of its kind in the Caribbean and part of The Philip Moore Artists’ Retreat, will be created by artists of all ages and nationalities invited to be a part of a memorial dedicated to the Maroons Of The Americas in this United Nations Designated Decade For People Of African Descent. It will bring together a unique collection of original permanent creations that marry art, history and conservation. Every sculpture along the trail will reflect maroon life.

The Julian Mayfield Foundation is the patron of Yukuriba Creative Farming Community. Julian Mayfield, novelist , essayist, playwright and actor, was a Senior Special Political Advisor to President Forbes Burnham. The Julian Mayfield Papers are housed in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; New York Public Library, Archives & Manuscripts; archives.nypl.org/scm/20734. I am Julian Mayfield’s widow.