My friends and I, six of us, most of us alumni of the City College of New York had agreed on a movie night. It was early January 2010, and we had choices of either seeing Precious, Sherlock Holmes or Invictus. Separately, we saw each of those movies, my friend Nadege and I saw Invictus with Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman, Warren saw Sherlock and the others Precious.
I returned home, wired and inspired by Morgan Freeman’s depiction of Nelson Mandela. I called Nadege the next morning and shared two goals with her, one of which was to start a scholarship in the name of a family member for students in Guyana and the other goal was very personal and won’t be shared here.
As an immigrant in the United States, life in New York is relatively stable and has allowed me the privileges to finish high school, achieve an undergraduate degree, pursue a masters and post-masters education. However, since 2014, there’s been a desire to do more, a nagging question on my mind, “When are you getting that scholarship going?”
It would take another five years until giant blue shipping containers were bought and filled with books from my bookshelf that I wanted to donate. Warren Hunter, Cassava Bread, Inc. cofounder, donated more books as well as four printers and a scanner and, needing to fill the crevices of the barrel, I cleaned out my closet and donated clothing as well. It would take another year and a half until the barrel was adequately filled with donated items and were shipped to Guyana to be distributed.
In early 2020, pre- SARS-CoV-2, ten years after our movie night, Warren and I sat at Nanoosh, a wonderful Mediterranean restaurant in the East Village, to begin our state and federal application to start a non-for-profit. Both applications were completed and submitted over the Summer and Winter of 2020, by March of 2021 we had our 501(c)(3) status from Uncle Sam. And if there was a national coin shortage in 2020, $900+ of them were under my bed in a suitcase, 13 years of savings, that after my parents sorted them – the bank account was opened and Cassava Bread, Inc. was officially recognized as a non-profit organization.
And now we begin anew, mere continuous contractions in the effortlessness that are known as labors of love.
