MY mother and her tribe are from Georgetown, Werk-en-Rust, and my father was born in Bartica. His tribe is wide: Bartica, Buxton and Georgetown.
After the rumble and tumble of their separation, I can’t complain. I got a reasonable deal. I grew up with my godfather and his wife, my godmother, on the East Coast until their passing. My siblings went to folk in Georgetown; some went with her when mom left the country.

I can’t account for what transpired everywhere, even if I knew I wouldn’t write about it in this column. Cause, it ain’t nobody interest. It’s just the introduction to a sad incident that unintentionally led to a positive influence.
I lived with my godparents next to a family of three on the coast at Mahaica. I had just started school. Back then, starter classes were called ABC and there were ‘lil’ ABC and big ABC. I may have even been in 1st or 2nd standard when an unusual thing happened. I was attracted by what seemed to be a quarrel next door.

Though training insisted that I should not perch myself on the window to mind other people’s business, I looked out because the young lady next door often walked me to school and, though older than I was, listened to me, shared jokes and looking back within all innocence, was kind of my first girlfriend. So I stared as her step-grandfather, Sonny, was throwing her school books out of her bedroom window. I was transfixed, so I quietly stepped downstairs, tip-toed over and began to pick up what I knew were her reading books. They had burgundy red covers, ‘Nelson Readers’. I looked up and quietly called her name, “Sheila.” The blind was moved. She was crying, and I asked her if I could bring the books upstairs. She replied “No, Barry, You take them,” and I heard Ma calling me, so I hurriedly tip-toed up the back steps with my treasures.

One of the books fascinated me more than the others, and I think it was Book 5. There was a chapter that covered the story of ‘Port Royal’ 17th century Jamaica, and a telling painting that accompanied the chapter sank deep into me. Of course, knowledge of Morgan the Pirate and piracy was active in movies and books we read back then. My godparents encouraged me to read and to experiment with my watercolours. It was pure experimentation without tutoring, around my First-Standard days. It took me years to understand the tragedy I had witnessed. Sheila left the area first. I know she got married, and I left after, and I never saw her again.

It was in the mid-1990s that Port Royal came into focus after the Jamaican comedian Oliver Samuels came to Guyana at the National Cultural Centre. I was part of the support for the local team, and so far, I trusted the promoter enough to suggest to him a graphic concept I was playing around with for some time, that would include Oliver Samuels. He was supportive and excited but needed to know how long it would take. I told him several months. He didn’t issue an MoU, so I developed one, in both of our interests, and I told him he would have to deal with Oliver’s blessing of the project when the time came. We agreed, though he didn’t sign the MoU.

Upon completing the project the following year, I travelled to New York and carried the artwork. I left it with him in Harlem and returned two days later. He was not at his business location but asked me to wait. This brother arrived and mournfully enquired, “You copyrighted it ?” I responded, “Yes, what’s wrong with that?” he complained that he went to a pal at DREAMWORKS, and he said that it was copyrighted. I concluded that I came up with the Idea, I scripted and illustrated it, and the next natural step was to register it.

Well, we didn’t publish as planned. We did start with a one-1 plan, but when we parted, though we stayed in touch, I remained with the original plan. However, the brother went through some other portal and ended up with another objective.
The lesson of this article is twofold: watch your back legally. But the most important reality is that a little boy obtained a school book beyond his age that he would have never read in school, and as a grown man, brought into being a concept inspired by that significant chapter he read. With the painting that accompanied the true but tragic story of ‘Port Royal.’ Then, from the mental records of memory. With a desire to make it live beyond its tragedy, some 300 years later with less of its horror. Perhaps it was too tragic to be interpreted otherwise, but the memory invoked the child’s enquiry, and the man made the book live, if just for a mysterious beginning, to be put aside until another day; such are the mysteries of the mind.