By Lakhram Bhagirat
As a child, I remember the month of October bringing a different kind of competition. It was not the typical competition to see who was more academically inclined or who would perform the best at the annual Inter-House Sports competition but who could buy the most poppies and arrange them in the most intricate designs on their uniforms.
It was a competition that both male and female students tried to dominate, but more often than not, it was dominated by the females since they had more space on their kimonos to create more intricate patterns. As a student, I would spend a whole lot of money to make sure that I was decked out in the most poppies since it meant bragging rights for the entire month. The competition would see our trousers transformed into a sea of poppies before we went to classes in the morning and after school in the afternoons, since the teachers would “fret” if we covered our trousers with poppies.
The story behind the poppy is one that we were taught from a young age. I distinctly remember my nursery school teacher, Miss Leelawattie, telling us that the red poppy symbolises all the blood of the slain soldiers. She told us that during the wars the fallen soldiers were buried in a field of poppies and by sporting a single poppy, we would honour all those fallen soldiers.
I remember with her bright red canister in one hand with a transparent bag of red poppies, she would walk around collecting our shiny $10 coins and pinning our purchase to our chests. At that age, I was proud to wear it and proudly displayed my poppy every time I saw someone without one. 
As time progressed, my pride increased and to date, I would still buy a poppy since we were always told that the proceeds would go to helping those war veterans. As I did some research on the poppy, I found out that the red poppy became familiar because of a poem titled “In Flanders Fields” written by Canadian physician Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae. After reading the poem, Moina Michael, a professor at the University of Georgia, wrote the poem “We Shall Keep the Faith”, and swore to wear a red poppy on the anniversary.
As the years went by, the custom spread throughout the world, particularly Europe and the countries that were a part of the British Empire and the Commonwealth within a short time. Poppies were worn for the first time at the 1921 anniversary ceremony. At first, real poppies were worn. These poppies bloomed across some of the worst battlefields of Flanders in World War I; their brilliant red colour became a symbol of the blood spilled in the war.
Today, the Guyana Veterans Legion still dispatches their bright red canisters with bags of poppies to the schools and the competition is still going strong. Only the price for the poppy has changed; this year, I paid $20 for mine at the La Grange Primary School. (Sunday Times Magazine)
