At 32, Natasha Goodman is a cosmetologist who is aiming to go places. The roots of the personable young woman are in Mabaruma. That is where she was born and raised and her prolonged exposure to what we loosely describe as ‘city life’ has done nothing to dim her obvious pride in her Amerindian heritage. These days, she says, her fast-rising business, NG’s Sensation Beauty Salon on Brickdam does not allow her to visit family and relatives “back home” for more than “a few days at a time.” She is, nonetheless, a woman who understands where her roots are.
She moved to the city in 2001 and after she had completed a one-year diploma in Industrial Relations at the Critchlow Labour College she had toyed with the idea of entering the University of Guyana or the Cyril Potter College of Education. As it happened what had initially been an interest in hairdressing became an obsession. Ever since she was a child at Mabaruma, she had been the family’s unpaid hairdresser, pitching in on special occasions, weddings, parties and the like, to help ‘turn out’ the revelers.
