AUTHOR ROSALIENE BACCHUS


Reaching minds and hearts through storytelling



Short STORIES BY ROSALIENE BACCHUS



Whether one believes in a religion or not, and whether one believes in rebirth or not, there isn't anyone who doesn't appreciate kindness and compassion.


His Holiness Tengin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet (tibetanlife.com)



The Jumbie Tree – my first short story published in the Guyana Journal December 2007 Issue – is a story about missed opportunities, loss, and despair. It was based on the strange and tragic death of my advanced-level art teacher. (Yes, I began my journey as an artist and art teacher.) The way she died has always haunted me. Writing the story was my way of releasing those stifled emotions of impotence in the face of her struggle to overcome adversity.



In Guyana and the Caribbean, a jumbie is an evil spirit. The jumbie tree refers to the silk cotton tree, a massive tree in all aspects – height, crown, and buttress. In Guyana, as in other Caribbean countries, it is believed that jumbies reside in the silk cotton trees, hence my name, jumbie tree.



When I wrote The Ole Higue, published in July 2008, I wanted to share a little of Guyana’s folklore with the American-born children of the magazine’s Guyanese-American readers. I remembered an incidence in 1977 when I lived in the flat below a young couple with four boys. The youngest, seven years old, woke one morning with blood stains on his clothing. His parents kept watch at night for two weeks but could not discover the cause of the bleeding. Rumors spread in the neighborhood that an Ole Higue was sucking him. After seeking the help of a Hindu pandit, the bleeding stopped.



An Ole Higue is an evil spirit that takes the form of an ugly, repulsive old woman that sucks the blood of her victims.



Masacurraman: The Legendary River Monster, published in November 2008, was also written for young readers. It's about facing our fears. I drew on my experience of taking my Brazilian-raised sons to Guyana for a holiday with relatives. When researching the Amerindian (native Indian) Reservation in Guyana where the story is set, I made an uncanny discovery: A hunter in the same region had encountered and shot what he claimed was the River Monster.



Massacurraman is an Amerindian folklore figure. He is said to be a giant, hairy male monster that lives in the rivers where he destroys boats and devours his victims.



My Christmas story, Ester’s Letter to Santa, published in December 2008, was a challenging project. I love Christmas stories. There is something magical about every Christmas story filmed for TV and the cinema. Could I create such magic? I found inspiration in the foreclosures assaulting homeowners everywhere across the USA, following our financial crisis. I selected New York as the location for my story since the majority of Guyanese immigrants have settled in that city.



Rescued: An Easter Story, published in April 2009, is the only one of my published short stories set in Fortaleza, Northeast Brazil, where I lived with my two sons for seventeen years. The plot is based on events surrounding the day my ex-husband disappeared after calling me at my workplace to tell me that he had been robbed of thousands of US dollars at the cambista (foreign exchange dealer) where he worked.



CNN’s presentation, Escape from Jonestown, televised in November 2008 on the thirtieth anniversary of the Jonestown massacre, was the first time I had seen the recorded live images of the massacre that has smeared my native land with blood. In January 2009, to rid myself of the ghosts of Jonestown that haunted me, I decided to tell our side of the story. My long short story, Sly Mongoose: Caught in the Jim Jones Web of Deceit, was published in November 2009 to coincide with the anniversary of the tragedy.

The photo shows the headquarters of the Peoples Temple in Georgetown, Guyana.


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