Buxton born writer and professor Pauline Baird is dedicated to keeping Guyanese creole alive

University of the Southern Caribbean in Trinidad as she was a Seventh-day Adventist at the time. She worked in the library, as a reader and even graded papers as she was already a trained teacher, to pay her tuition fee through credit and with the help of her younger sister.

“When you see me done with library and grading, when you see me guh to the business office me get one list you know, so many hours for grading papers,” she recounted. “I used to grade 150 papers a week, I get me hours, I get so much for the library, me hand them the paper them mark off me credit… “This was how I pay for school. Me never pay money. Me never, never see one bill. When you see summer come, me a clean toilet, me wuk at broom factory. When you see me wuk a broom factory till me hand suh stiff me never see thing like duh. All dem fibre come up all me hand, scratch! It scratch suh till me had to hang me hand off de bed suh [she demonstrated the action].”

Their meals included countless mangoes.

A missionary

It was there that the seed of becoming a student missionary was birthed following a conversation with a visiting pastor. While it looked impossible she eventually got a librarian opening in Palau, but when she got there she was given the position of third grade teacher because of her qualifications.

“I had an experience there that was very, very different. I felt like it was God’s way of giving me something for all the trauma and stress I had been through,” she said.

She left after the agreed year but after graduation from CUC was offered another position in the country where she had a great experience for nine years. During that period as well she started a master’s programme at Saint Michael’s College in Vermont and attended classes during the summer. Eventually she got a scholarship because of her missionary work.

At that point she left the Adventist church because of myriad reasons and she got her first job in Japan in 2002 where she worked as a professor for six years.

“Then I left, went to Guam, set up shop there, built a home,” she shared and it was from there she applied for the PhD programme.

She studied women, the rhetoric of women “and not just any women, village women from Guyana, Buxton village women,” she said.

“I wanted to know how women tell stories and to what effect. I was going to look at the mechanism but then it emerged in another direction where I wanted to do stories as a methodology for passing on information, for preserving information, for culture continuity. And that was something I could use the Buxton stories as a way to show the academy how we can bring those stories in we raw Creolese voices…because those voices aren’t heard…”

Her dissertation was titled ‘Towards a Culture of Rhetoric Approach to Caribbean Rhetoric African Guyanese Transforming Oral Histories’ for which she interviewed African Guyanese women. It was in the form of five letters which was very unconventional and it began, ‘Dear Buxtonian Wah Dih Story seh’. She chronicled the “ultimate sacrifice” of Buxton women placing their bodies on the track to stop the train that was transporting the governor at the time. It was their effort to stop the atrocities in the village.

During her PhD studies she continued teaching at the university in Guam, sometimes virtually and while she returned after her studies a short period later she was hired in her present position in Japan.

Book It

An ardent reader, Baird developed an idea, which came alive following the advent of COVID-19, where she allows stories written by mostly Guyanese authors to be shared and those who join in on Zoom are given an opportunity to share how they resonate with them. The authors are given the opportunity to share about themselves and their motivation behind the book and their journey while writing. Authors are recommended mostly and they also appear on the platform where they read excerpts from their books before discussions begin. However, the entire story is not told. She encourages people to buy the book as she wants to develop a culture where Guyanese read what they write.

But the idea was really born out of her wanting to share the fountain of information she got from books she read by Japanese authors. “I thought, ‘Oh gosh I wish I could share some of these things I am learning about with my own people’,” she said. One of the things she learnt was about employees cleaning their work space every day, giving themselves a fresh daily start, which helps in respecting their space and work.

She teamed up with another Guyanese, Melva Archer-Percival, and ‘Book It’ became a thing. It took off just about the time of COVID-19. She holds one event a month for ten months in a year, but if she has no book and author for a month then that month is skipped.

Talking about herself as an author, Baird said she focuses on telling stories about Guyana.

“My books, all of them, they are about Guyana, Guyanese and the village because I feel like when I was growing up I didn’t have those stories to read. It may sound very clichéd, but I didn’t read about us,” she said.

She also provides the service of assisting people to write their books if they need it.

The upcoming Book It event will focus on two authors, with whom Baird has been working; one is an Australian and the other a Guyanese living in St Lucia. But interestingly as well, she is going to be a subject for the first time as “Dave and the Lime Tree”, a book written by her will be featured. The next ‘Book It’ event is this Saturday (November 26) from 5:30 pm. Interested persons can join by using the Zoom link /mcmaster.zoom.us/j/96806704786?pwd= SUJzY2lUZU9pZWhCUXV4SUI3TUdp UT09

The passcode is 358874.

Baird is married to an American and their home is in Guam.