migrant labour

Chris Stewart's "The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society" is worth reading, if only for his discription of a short stay with a Moroccan Berber family.

Rabbit on

The flowers on the kitchen table
looked happy and fresh,
white, yellow and blue.
Sunlight streamed through
the basement window.

Harriet, only five but
with an eye for pretty things
stood and admired but
said nothing.

A few days later those flowers
drooped, wrinkled.
"What happened to the flowers?"
"They don't last long when
they've been cut - especially
in the kitchen".

Harriet was stunned. She
looked at me, stared,
"I don't want to die!"

What could I say? It was easier
for her brother - well at least
he and I watched Star Trek
with its occasional sense of
cosmic recycled dust

Months later, in the heat
of Summer,
we were in the garden. Still
hot dusty bare earth. Just
their old swing. And a hutch
for Bandit, the white rabbit.
At our old house he used to
come in the kitchen and sit
watching television, we said.

'Uncle' came round with his
sledgehammer. To drive metal
stake holders for a new fence
- Bandit liked to jump the brick
walls as well.
THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP
in the dusty heat of the sunny
day. And the rabbit stretched
out, quivered. "There's something
wrong". "He's not well, dying,
dead".

Harriet had disappeared. I looked
downstairs, upstairs, in her room.
Back in the garden, there she was,
kneeling in the dusty earth,
beside the rabbit,
stroking it very gently. She looked
at me, stared, calm.
"See, I'm not afraid any more".

So we buried Bandit, the rabbit,
by the wall, where the apple
trees grow now, and the lawn with
visiting foxes. And the newted
lily pond where the swing used to be.

note

Did someone say
Art, Religion and Science
make up an important
- triangle?
Philosophy is a much
nicer word then Religion
- well, I think so.

two hundred years

slavery
a slide show
boom boom pictures up there

greeks
gladiators
galleys

road to timbuktu
woman with grinding stone
blacksmith craftsman sits on the sand
relative calm before the maelstrom

gold coast stone cannoned fort
fort fort christiansborg elmina
fresh captives neck and foot
chained branded neck rings
leg irons masks collars spurs

oil painting handsome
liverpool ship under sail
loading diagram spoon fashion
slaves on wildfire deck
girl hanging from foot
sick thrown overboard
to avoid import tax
arise sir john hawkins

posters slave stores
auctions inspecting the goods
separating families

plantations big houses
wooden shacks
cotton gins 'n sugar
rum punches whipped
scarred back five generations
solemn faced posed photograph
distilled fermented pulped
held out to dry smokey fire

black nursemaid white children
college servant with broom
starched maid amuses starched girl
mulatto clothing styles separate
male female brazil havana peru

tubman ferry house fugitive slaves
run away jack advert
underground railway map
site 1 site 2 slave picture
bundled belongings on back

abolition opposition
commemorative plaque
coin mug medal lincolned
freed slave couple
emancipated workworn hands

bill passed houses built
dynasties founded honours
allocated bristol liverpool
britain united states

more modern photos sex
people traffic new enslaved
child sex abused carpets
bricks footballs trainers
shirts fair trade markets
new bonded labour
profit money
honours for sale
legacy dead in the water

I learn; You know; We teach; They educate

those who can
do
those who can't should learn
or do something else
those who can should teach
if they can

you can tell
you are a teacher
if someone else
learns how to from you

sometimes teaching is
easy peasy
sometimes it
is boring hurts or can't do

go on
give it a little go
you have probably
taught someone
something
already

grumpy old men

they don't want to listen
to grumpy old men
asking irritating questions.

they want to hear
something sweet
with a turn of the hips
'n a bit of a - wow!

ok we can't
turn back the clock
but we can still
remember to smile...

I told you so

Saying "I told you so"
Is not good;
It does not help intelligent
debate.
You may as well start
"Now. Are you stupid? Or
is it just that you don't listen..."