IT’S A RUM LIFE

Apr 25, 2010 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

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Some noises are once again being made in official circles about alcohol abuse and its relation with disease, death and a host of social problems.
The trigger this time was a soon-to-be-launched PAHO survey to quantify the nexus between alcohol and injuries and alcohol and gender.
Not that studies are not necessary when public health issues are sought to be tackled but really, one has to be completely out of it not to accept that alcohol abuse and alcoholism are endemic in Guyana. And have been so for most of our history.
One of the major products that justified the formation of our country, after all, was rum – a by-product of the process to extract sugar from sugar-cane.
Two of our largest corporations still garner most of their revenues from the production and distribution of alcohol. Sugar for us has not only been bitter – it was also toxic. Drinking rum – and later other alcoholic beverages – was, and remains, a veritable rite of passage for Guyanese men – especially on the sugar plantations.
I remember taking my first drink of rum when I was only fourteen. My friends and I had just heard the announcement of the College of Preceptors (taken at the end of Third Form) results and it seemed natural that we (eleven of us in my village) should celebrate by downing a “half” – with copious addition of Coke as the “chaser”.
And from then on, there was no turning back. With ever-increasing frequency and volume – especially after “O” Levels – the drinking sessions, at first furtively in hideaways but soon publicly in the rum shops, became a weekly event. We were big men.The real adult men, of course, all drank – and the more one could drink and not go under, the more respect he received. I cannot recollect a single adult in my youth who abstained from alcohol.
My grandfather (Nana) who raised me would send me to the local Chinese rum-shop to purchase a “flattie” – the smallest bottle of rum sold – every Saturday afternoon.
He would down this before the Saturday “special dinner”. Through the side-window that I sidled up to make the purchase, I would see most of the men from the village hunkered around the tables, laughing and gaffing after their week of backbreaking labour in the cane fields.
My Nana, though, born in 1896, would rail against these rum-shops. He said the “Bakra” allowed them to be set up outside the plantations’ pay offices so that the workers could fritter away their wages to ensure that they had to return to work the following Monday.
I never saw him in a rum-shop. Only a few women in my village drank – and generally this was done out of sight at weddings and other celebrations and festivals.
I never saw a woman drunk – but for the men, this was the general norm, not only at the aforementioned events but every Saturday night.
There was one particularly notorious individual who, as a matter of fact, lived right opposite my home. He was a cane-cutter with a long suffering wife and eight children – none born more than a year apart.
He never ever came home with his pay-packet but via the rum shop. It became a standard routine.
Aware that his wife would rail at him spending the greater part of his wages on rum, he adopted the posture that offence was the best defence.
He would begin cursing as soon as he staggered off the public road and into the street where we lived.
Threatening grievous bodily harm to anyone who stood in his way, he would demand chicken curry food, which the poor wife never had the money to secure.
A brutal beating would follow – with all the children wailing piteously. My grandparents would intervene and there would be a lull until the following Saturday night.
The wife eventually resorted to selling fish so as to support the children. Several of the boys sadly ended up with severe alcoholism problems as the vicious cycle unfolded. Some of my own childhood friends went down that same path.
In addition to my grandfather’s cautions about the dangers of rum-shop drinking, what probably saved me was my dislike for the taste of rum – and later whiskey. In my youth I became adept at pretending to pour the liquor while filling the glass with coke. I loved beer, but who could afford it?
Sadly when I returned to Guyana in 1988, nothing had changed in my village – and as I discovered – indeed the entire country. If anything matters had gotten worse.
The old regulations that rum-shops could only be located on the public road had been allowed to lapse and virtually every street now had two or three.
More women were now drinking – and now quite openly. The social and medical problems spawned by alcohol had inevitably exploded. After viewing the carnage close up for a year, I stopped drinking even beer in 1989. I haven’t touched a drop since.
So what do we do about this monstrous problem that’s gnawing away at the innards of our society? From my own experience, we have to embark on a massive program to educate our people about the destructive impact of alcohol and alcoholism.
About two years ago, the Ministry of Health announced a program to deal with alcoholism – in partnership with the two private organisations doing their bit – that would include the provision of an Alcoholics Anonymous alternative to substance rehabilitation while promoting abstinence from alcohol.
Unfortunately, the name of the institution administering the program – the “Drug Treatment and Rehabilitation Centre” – which does not mention “alcohol or alcoholism” appears to symbolise the Ministry’s approach to dealing with the problem: as an afterthought. We have to do better. The publicity given to say, AIDS, should be the yardstick. Alcoholism is, after all, as much, if not a more pervasive and insidious disease than AIDS. Most Guyanese still are unaware that it is a disease.
In addition to the modern methods of medical treatment and therapies that have increased the success rate of alcoholism treatment, there must be an expansion of the Alcoholics Anonymous approach.
This provides a supportive environment that is crucial for the alcoholic not to relapse. The Ministries of Housing and Home Affairs must also enforce the laws on where rum-shops can be located.
The most crucial intervention, however, must be made by the leaders and institutions of society.
Abstinence and restraint can only come with example from the big ones. We have to discredit the notion that drinking alcohol is a rite of passage for males – and now increasingly, females.

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