Latest update April 23rd, 2024 12:59 AM
Sep 14, 2014 News
By Michael Jordan
“Makantali was coming down from Bartica with enough diamonds, gold, and raw cash to make him far richer than
Frederick Mahaica was. When he reach Bartica landing, he sent a message by telegraph to the Booker’s Garage people in Town—that he wanted a white DeSoto taxi waiting at Parika Stelling—and while it waiting for the steamer to pull in from Bartica, he wanted the horn of the car to keep blowing, ‘Kurupung, Kurupung, Kurupung!’ God knows how the horn would have done that. … He also wanted the engine to keep running too, for money was no abject.”
“So the engine was running, and the horn was blowing—pa-pa-paa, pa-pa-paa, pa-pa-paa! —and soon the whole of Parika found out what was happening—
Big crowd gather to see the arrival of Makantali—BIG CROWD! At last!—the steamer arrive, and Makantali—dressed in white from head to toe—stepped off the first-class gangplank! Men say Makantali looked like a Black King—like Selassie! Then Makantali started throwing money in the air…..and the stelling turn into a festival of dollars!—‘tali bare his teeth in a grin of triumph and laughed! … and entered the taxi with Ezme Jacobs in a red dress on his arm…
This woman was the most beautiful thing on Bartica Landing—I don’t think there was a man in the fields who never dream of a night-sleep with Ezme Jacobs—a touch o’ Black, a touch of East Indian, a bit of Brazilian, some Amerindian—a little of everything, GOD! She was a beauty.
I remember a Porkknocker we used to call ‘Gold Dawg’ who sit down in camp one night and boasted: “I IS A PROGRESSIVE NEGRO MAN!—I GOING HOME TO ME WIFE AND CHILDREN!—I GOING BE THE FIRST NEGRO MAN TO OWN CAR IN ME VILLAGE!—THE FIRST BLACK MAN TO HAVE CHAUFFEUR AND SERVANTS!—I GOING BE THE FIRST BLACK MAN IN ME VILLAGE TO OPEN A BUSINESS!. And I live to see Gold Dawg strike it rich and forget all them plans after he come out from the gold fields to Eping Landing and see Ezme in Joseph shop. … She sleep with he that night, and after that, ‘Gold Dawg’ never did go back to he wife and children in West Coast Berbice. … ‘Gold Dawg’ blow every cent he make on Ezme. … And I live to see that chap return to the gold fields broken… go back to he death…”
And so begins the tale of Makantali, a porkknocker born in poverty and having an uncanny luck for finding gold, but who crashes back down to poverty because of his obsession with the beautiful but ruthless prostitute, Esme, ‘the nicest thing on the landing.’
But Makantali is more than that. It’s a love story, and a ghost story about a man, legendary porkknocker Makantali, whose spirit is cursed to remain in a purgatory-like world called Porkknocker’s Past. Surrounded by other wretched spirits, including his nagging wife and the sensuous ‘perai’, Esme, Makantali is forced to reenact the mistakes he made while alive, until he can somehow influence another porkknocker like himself to turn his life around.
Makantali won the 1996 Guyana Prize for Literature, and was performed at the most recent Caribbean Festival of Arts (CARIFESTA) celebrations held in Paramaribo, Suriname. It is the play that its creator, three-time Guyana Prize-winning playwright Harold Bascom, cherishes the most out of the 15 other full-length plays he has written; partly because Makantali pays homage to Bascom’s late father, Harold Adolphus Bascom (Snr).
“I wrote Makantali back in 1995, back in Hadfield Street, Lodge, before migrating to the USA in 1996. This play was inspired by the bush stories my father told me from his experiences as a young porkknocker himself. He hailed from Vergenoegen on the East Bank of Essequibo where I was born. In my play there’s the character, Kenrick Barker (who becomes Makantali); Barker was the embodiment of my father in many ways. The painful domestic circumstances that confront Kenrick Barker and his wife Lillian, were the actual domestic dilemma that confronted my own father, Harold Bascom (Snr.) and his wife (my mother) Lillian Bascom after he was retrenched from his job as an estate constable.
My dad had to make the difficult choice of leaving us and going to the ‘bush’ to try his luck. The play, Makantali, has a ton of biographical things running through it. I especially enjoyed the bush-camp stories my father told about Captain Bob, his crew chief in the interior; and I have actually used the name Captain Bob as a key narrator in the play.
“Quite a few of the stories my parents told have ended up in my fictional and dramatic works. My father even features in my first novel, ‘APATA: The Story of a Reluctant Criminal’ (Heinemann, 1986), as a skillful metal worker.
“I will add that though my father hadn’t the benefit of formal education, in my mind he was a SUPERMAN! This was a man of raw, impressive talent. He was the guy who made ALL of the furniture in our house; this was the man who, for me, was the epitome of wisdom drawn from the street—from a hard life that included living on the streets with his brother and having to use their wits to survive. And as I said above Harold Bascom, senior, created the bush-story interest in me for having been a porkknocker himself. But above all, I will continue to honour my father because of what he has imparted to me through blood: his talent and his determination to keep trying until I succeed.”
“Because of the foundation provided by my father and mother’s bush stories (yes, my mother told bush stories also) creating background for the story was easy. The challenge was the plotting of a story that played between the dimension of the afterlife and running it parallel with a present life. Of course the biggest challenge of all was finding an ending—which I did with much discussion with an old friend, who was my Devil’s Advocate of sorts as I wrote this complex drama that yet had to read and play simply.”
How would his father have reacted to the success of Makantali?
“He would have been that guy walking with newspapers bragging about his son who wrote the Guyana Prize-Winning play based on stories he told him. I know this because after the very first supplementary reading books that I illustrated for the Ministry of Education like ‘Our First Village’, ‘Balram’s New Home’, ‘The Moco Moco tree: Old Higue Story’, and ‘Cumfa Drums are Calling’, my father was showing them to all who would look. He used to brag about his son the artist; even though if it was for him, I would have been a doctor or lawyer or something like that. It was my mother, Lillian Bascom, who wanted me to be whatever I chose to be, and protected me from my father’s disappointed tirades for me wanting to be in the field of the creative arts.”
And was he still alive, the senior Bascom would have been even more proud to know that his son’s play, Makantali (along with Dr. Paloma Mohamed’s 1991 Guyana Prize winning play, Duenne) have been included in the new Performing Arts Syllabus recently introduced by the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) for its Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE), which will commence next year.
Students from at least six secondary schools will be participating in this new CAPE course.
But how significant does Bascom believe this achievement is for Guyana and how important is this decision to introduce the Performing Arts as part of the CAPE syllabus?
“For me, drama is important in nation-identity. Why should people place an emphasis on the dramatic art form as a subject? It is through a nation’s drama resources that new and relevant stage plays, radio serials, and TV shows are created, produced and disseminated to a national audience swamped, unfortunately, by foreign-based offerings that are often not in sync with the local culture and the needs of that local culture.
With the introduction of drama at the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE) level of the CXC, Guyana and the wider Caribbean stand to benefit from an outcropping of new playwrights, stage directors, actors and actresses, nation-relevant stage plays, radio serials, and multiple TV shows that stand to be accepted more easily by audiences in Guyana and the wider Caribbean. I believe that all of the latter will take place through drama at the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations level of the CXC.”
Bascom explained that the four-act drama play, Makantali, is currently only available as an eBook that parents will have to purchase online.
“The only difference between a regular book and an eBook is in the form the buyer receives it. Let’s look at how a regular book (soft or hard covered) is delivered to you.
“With the eBook, all you do is find out where the title can be found online, (and in Makantali’s case, you find the link where you can click and buy it). Once you find that link on your computer or smart phone screen, you click on the ‘I-want-this’ button, provide your email where it must be sent, and then you pay with your debit or credit card details. Once the transaction goes through, the book is immediately emailed to you. At that point you download your eBook from your email onto your PC, laptop, smart phone, or whatever reading devices you own; or ‘send’ it to your Kindle or whatever e-Reader device you need to send it to. And please note: Every time you buy the eBook, Makantali, you ALWAYS receive an email immediately after from me with clear instructions on how to download and open your eBook in order to start reading. It’s easy as kissing hands.”
The eBook Makantali by Harold A. Bascom, costs $14.95 (U.S), and can be purchased directly from the following website: www.makantali.com
NOTE: The above link can be copied and pasted into your computer’s browser.
ALSO: Anyone, wishing read more about this play in book form, can check it out on the Makantali Facebook page: www.facebook.com/makantali
Anyone who would like to speak directly to Mr. Bascom can contact him through any of the following email addresses: [email protected], or [email protected].
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