Trail of the Lost Jaguar

By Godfrey Brandt

Trail of the Lost Jaguar is about two young British men who are in search of their ‘jaguar’ in the land of the jaguar, Guyana, South America, with no previous acquaintance with each other. While following their individual trails, they meet in Georgetown with explosive results. Guyana-born, Darren Young is returning to Guyana to pay tribute to and to bury his mum. Steve Everett, from County Durham, UK, is in Guyana for different purposes, including finding the ‘biggest diamond’. Both are searching for a destination that is undefined but sincerely sought. In his quest to find the biggest diamond he meets Ian, Darren’s relation, a fellow explorer in the bush. Much of the narrative is generated in the mind of Darren, including the story of ‘jaguar man’, a British man of Irish background who takes his ‘jaguarness’ to another level.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Apr 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781528977814

Godfrey Brandt

Godfrey Brandt FRSA. In addition to his RSA and RSL memberships, Godfrey Brandt is a fellow of the British American Project. As an academic, he has worked for the University of London (Institute of Education and Birkbeck). He is visiting professor of English at the Godfrey Okoye University. Godfrey was responsible for the establishment of the Arts Management Programme at Birkbeck, University of London and its now well-established MA programme. On the literary front, Brandt is the author of the poetry anthologies Madiba and Other Poems and Barbara Al Sole. As a playwright, he has written Conversation Tree, Miriam and Miss Eloise, which are available for production. Streetwise is his forthcoming poetry anthology suited to younger audiences. His forthcoming novel is Unravelling Beauty. Brandt also directs plays. His most recent project was The Bear by Anton Chekhov, which he directed in High Wycombe for the Masque Players. Godfrey and Pauline, his wife, recently completed building their own house as featured on Grand Designs: The Street.

Book preview

Trail of the

Lost Jaguar

Godfrey Brandt

Austin Macauley Publishers

Trail of the

Lost Jaguar

About the Author

Dedication

Copyright Information ©

Acknowledgement

Jaguar – A Poem by Godfrey Brandt

Chapter 1: Recalling Baramita

Chapter 2: Miss Hamilton

Chapter 3: Leaving Home for the First Time

Chapter 4: Induction into Teaching

Chapter 5: The Sound of Silence

Chapter 6: Adventure

Chapter 7: Discovering Away

Chapter 8: The Jaguar

Chapter 9: The Call

Chapter 10: ‘Wite bai’

Chapter 11: Recounting Darren’s journey to Georgetown and his mum’s interment

Chapter 12: The Funeral

Chapter 13: Promenade Gardens

Chapter 14: The Jaguar and the Deer

Chapter 15: Ten Days of the Jaguar: Countdown to take-off

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19: Visiting Linden

Chapter 20: Shonas's

Chapter 21: Botanical Gardens

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

About the Author

Godfrey Brandt FRSA. In addition to his RSA and RSL memberships, Godfrey Brandt is a fellow of the British American Project.

As an academic, he has worked for the University of London (Institute of Education and Birkbeck). He is visiting professor of English at the Godfrey Okoye University. Godfrey was responsible for the establishment of the Arts Management Programme at Birkbeck, University of London and its now well-established MA programme. On the literary front, Brandt is the author of the poetry anthologies Madiba and Other Poems and Barbara Al Sole.

As a playwright, he has written Conversation Tree, Miriam and Miss Eloise, which are available for production.

Streetwise is his forthcoming poetry anthology suited to younger audiences. His forthcoming novel is Unravelling Beauty. Brandt also directs plays. His most recent project was The Bear by Anton Chekhov, which he directed in High Wycombe for the Masque Players. Godfrey and Pauline, his wife, recently completed building their own house as featured on Grand Designs: The Street.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to Stephanie and Tom.

Copyright Information ©

Godfrey Brandt (2021)

The right of Godfrey Brandt to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528977791 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528977814 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2021)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LQ

Acknowledgement

Thanks to my wife, Pauline, for suggesting the jaguar as an icon of the novel. This is where the story started.

Jaguar – A Poem by

Godfrey Brandt

– Panthera Onca

– El tigre

– Tigre Americano

Icon of Olmec Art and Culture

You stand proud

with your kin on Guyana’s coat of Arms

Weaving your way through history – to the present – the

now – you have it!

You lurk in the forests – up a tree – bathing in the river –

in the shade of a large leafy tree

Still you will not be found!

You would be forgotten but for your beauty

spot in spot – unique pattern

each one different in tone, feel and detail

Your smile is like a scowl,

your sigh like a bark

and your pleasure

is threatening to humans,

But not to me.

I know it’s OK to trace you

but not to trade your beautiful parts

As you are now officially at risk

of extinction

Victim of your own beauty

In my heart you traverse with confident stride

– non threatening

– camouflaged by the forests about you but

– easy to see to those eyes that love you

Your solitary amble

is not a gamble

but an intentional expression of your confidence and self

sufficiency

One day, hungry

You lurked behind a tree waiting for a meal,

I thought you were waiting for me.

I approached you

Your eyes said,

You were glad to see me – but not then!

You wanted food,

I sensed your disquiet and

moved steadily but swiftly into the

car and closed the door.

You are feared by all

but not by me

not by this one who loves your

soft soul,

your grisly soft soul.

On a totally different day,

and a long time after,

after your feed,

I approached you, and you came running towards me

and I stood still

and waited for your approach.

I reached out to greet you and,

and you seemed to reciprocate

with a low purr

some might say a growl;

you bounded towards me

with unknown intent

and stretched out your huge paws

and bared your teeth

in a jaguar smile.

And I hugged you

and you hugged me and

we enjoyed each other’s embrace

and

You whimpered

and I cried

and you sighed your warmth and your welcome.

A welcome back to the forests

we had inhabited together,

(where I nursed you back to life)

first in actuality and

then, in my mind.

Like parent and child,

Like long lost brothers, sisters…friends

trepidations about the first meeting after a long time apart,

but full of anticipation, felicitation, joy

And still, you navigate the forests of my mind

Strong

Silent

Enigmatic

and beautiful to the last spot –

forever transferring your strength to me.

Godfrey Brandt (24 January 2014)

Part one

My name is Darren Young, a Guyanese Brit (not British Guyanese, that combination of words carries too many post-colonial resonances). For serious family reasons, I was visiting Georgetown again, after years away, and this put me in a very reflective mode. How did I get to this point in my life and where was it headed?

Case in point, there was this man when I was a child, growing up in Georgetown, and he walked around the city wearing a well-worn, white cork hat and a weathered and very jaded safari suit.

Walker (that was his name, I believe) was mixed race. His features were black and his complexion white (or light skinned anyway). I imagined, as a child, that he had grown-up feeling a little confused in a rather racially polarised society and was unable to handle the contradictions in a society that could, on the one hand, allow him to exist but without the privileges he felt ‘due’ to him as a ‘partly white’ citizen. Despite his background, he was simply perceived by the system as Black and that meant a certain lack of status.

He was obviously mentally disturbed or challenged, as one might say today. Then, the kids simply called him mad.

He walked about never saying anything except occasionally, he said aloud and assertively, for all to hear, ‘Walker the British’ and then went on his way.

As this practice by Walker developed, as he made his assertion, there was an inevitable response. In fact, it became a bit of an antiphonal game. He would make the call and the children of the neighbourhood would respond.

He would say aloud, ‘Walker the British,’ and in response kids around and about would retort, or sometimes, they would initiate the dialogue if they saw him first. Their refrain was, ‘Walker the nigger.’

He would then respond, with the perfect timing of a comedian, ‘British, you fool.’

The kids’ words were always the same as was his response.

‘Walker the Nigger.’

‘British you fool.’

I never took part in these games which, even as a kid, I felt they were unnecessarily cruel (even if just at a personal level).

Six months before the day I set out from London for Georgetown, another young man, Steve, also set out to, eventually, arrive at Timheri International. He travelled from Durham to London by rail and then to Heathrow by the Heathrow Express for his international flight to Georgetown via the Grantley Adams Airport in Bridgetown, Barbados. Steve was a white Brit with no previous known link with the country and had arrived at his decision in a totally different way. Our link, in a way, beyond our immediate conscious business, was our mutual, coterminous search for something that was missing in our persona – that we were unwittingly seeking.

Steve Everett was a recent graduate of the almost brand-new Teesside University, which was converted from the polytechnic it was until 1992. As one of the first of the new universities, Teesside University was an important addition to the North and had been busy enhancing its reputation over the last few years.

Steve had had some difficulty getting through the rigours of a first degree since, in his view, (and one shared by his father) he was not academically bright. Having got a third-class degree in General Studies (which comprised a few courses in Sociology, half units in both Media Studies and English, plus half a unit in Social Anthropology], he felt that, though he was better educated than he was previously, he was not qualified for anything in particular. Above all, he was tired of the rigours of study and of the formalities of the academy. Therefore, he was preparing to go and seek his fortune abroad – just like the old days, he thought.

He was preparing to travel to the Guyana interior via Georgetown. He had only stumbled on Guyana as a destination by chance when reading an article in the library. He discovered, amongst other things, that it was the only English-speaking country on the South American mainland. That made it that bit more appealing to him – no hassles about learning a new language. It was also useful that it used to be British. He had a context.

The advice that he had received from most people he had spoken to, who knew anything about the country, was to ‘Avoid Georgetown altogether, there is nothing there for visitors,’ they had said. ‘Go into the forests, they are truly amazing, mostly virgin forests and there is wild life. Though not as spectacular as in Africa, but still pretty special,’ someone said to him. ‘It lacks the big five but it has other compensatory fauna including the rather elusive jaguar, the most powerful of the big cats – other than the lion. It would be worth your while if all you did was catch a glimpse of the jaguar.’

This advice was just as well, he thought, since he had his own secret plan forming in his head, his private mission to pursue: a mission that would set him up for life. He couldn’t depend on his parents forever.

The mission he had decided on was that of the pursuit of the largest diamond he could find, in the Guyana bush. According to his research, he needed to get somewhere near the Cuyuni and Puruni rivers, close to the border with Brazil. He had read somewhere that someone had found the biggest diamond recorded, in these forests. If he were lucky enough to get a diamond half that size, it could change his life forever. So, as far as he was concerned, he had to go. His future – his fortune depended on it.

This young man was an ordinary middle-class lad but a man with a mission. His mission he hoped would become clear in time. He was a complex person with many genuine fears and wishes but driven by this wish to be rich…to be well off…to want for nothing. Why not? Why not him?

My own story begins, I guess, with those same rainforests. It begins with my odyssey to South America; to Guyana. Guyana that is the birthplace of a dwindling number of people (called Guyanese, as opposed to Guyanans; the latter being what they are still sometimes called by some British diehards. It still amuses me that the use of this non-existent word, Guyanan, is still prevalent in its use by many in the British media; with many journalists insisting on inventing and re-inventing this phantom word.

Though I was born in Georgetown and spent my early teens there, my really formative years, my mid-teens began with the boarding of a plane to Baramita. My first awakening was linguistic. I was enthralled that the first language of these people was Carib – not English, not even Creolese, not Caribbean English – it was Carib, a language unknown and, therefore, not even thought about by coastal Guyanese, who simply thought that Guyana was English speaking.

The word that stands out in my memory is Jupfwa’lolipo.It was one of the first Carib words taught to me by the miner’s son, alongside words like,te yasecole, amoro te paleanale, a’oo and capaci… The latter word was probably the very first Carib word I encountered and became probably one of the most significant ones for me. Capaci (or armadillo) – smoked – was destined to become a staple part of my bush diet. The Capaci was a creature I had only ever seen in the national museum in Georgetown, which I used to frequent with my brother, speaking Spanish to each other for the hell of it (and for the practice). We also enjoyed making other visitors wonder who we were. Were we foreign or not. Which Latin American country were we from?

Befittingly, my first active engagement with trying to speak the Carib language was using the word Jupfwa’lolipo. In Spanish, it would have been buenos días or que onda? in Portuguese ‘Bom dia’ in Igbo Ututu oma, in Zulu, Sawubona, in Turkish Gunaydindin or in Irish-English, maybe, just top of the mornin’ I thought, as I practiced my smattering of those languages in my head.

Jupfwa’lolipo, I was told, could mean almost anything from good morning to what’s up or what’s happening, wah ‘apnin’, bannah? in Guyanese or maybe just hi… One’s response would simply be Jupfwa.

As I peered through the window of the aeroplane flying into Georgetown several years after my sojourn in Baramita, it was the thought of this word that helped to transport me back to a different time and a different place. It took me back to my first flight to Baramita, where, as a city boy, 16 years old, born in Georgetown, the capital of this English speaking South American Country – the only one as I discovered – I found myself in the forests of Baramita: a location very near the disputed border with Venezuela, close to where Steve, unknown to him and unknown to me, would end up visiting several years later.

There was I, still nursing dreams of University and a degree in psychology but in the middle of the forests of Northern Guyana, without any education institution more advanced than the primary school at which I would be one of three teachers.

Having grown up with only photographs of my prematurely demised dad, I felt obliged to leave the Georgetown school in the fifth form. This wasn’t what I had planned but I left school and found work to gain the freedom a pay cheque gives.

So, there I stood, with a few O Levels in hand but with a bundle of ambition. This was, at least in part, my story. But, moreover, it was a story about an unfolding search for what I could only now describe as my inner jaguar. But then I was ignorant of what was to be. How often had I imagined the brass plate on the front of my offices in Georgetown or wherever: Dr Darren Young, Consultant Psychologist. Fate had other plans, at least for now. Who knew what lay ahead?

I arrived in Baramita with no real preparation for what I was about to find… Living in a simple, single room on the domestic wing of a wooden, unpainted building. Divided into two parts: one a trade store, the other the domestic residence for the teaching staff of that miniscule state primary school for local Carib kids, kids who turned adult at about the age of 11 or 12, when their schooling ended and life in the real world began. This meant getting their own hammock in their own house and their own sexual partner – however arranged.

The trade store, which adjoined the teachers’ living quarters was slightly larger than the living quarters. In the trade store, rum was exchanged for capaci (a drink for a meal); as it seemed, residents were paid by drink – mostly! This place seemed to me to be the hub of local civilisation.

I had never seen an armadillo before, except in the museum in Georgetown and so, little did I know that I would end up eating it – everyday! The locals traded cassava bread for rice and, having racked up a lot of debt, they got credit in exchange for a weekend-long state of further inebriation…spirit filled bliss – the flavour of extra matured rum.

Just fresh from being a secondary school student myself, I was now a pupil teacher, teaching a group of young, Amerindian boys and girls, most of whom fluently, spoke only Carib and very little English or any other language for that