Two amazing moments in my election campaign for APNU-AFC

May 11, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I spoke at 25 public meetings and made four television appearances in Berbice for the APNU-AFC 2015 election campaign, some of the moments of which, I will never forget. They form a body of memories that will live forever in my mind.
Half of those meetings were urgent summons by the AFC’s logistics officer, Leonard Craig, to replace AFC personnel who couldn’t make it. The campaign is over and it is time to reminisce. The APNU-AFC performance was good but too many meetings were not advertised especially by AFC personnel in areas where that was a definite requirement.
I was about to mount the speaker’s platform in “Django Town” when a middle age housewife enquired of me, “Mr. Kissoon ya’ll have a meeting here?” She said she lived two doors from the meeting but never heard it being advertised. I didn’t know there was district in Mon Repos named “Django Town.” I got a brief history about it at the meeting from African-rights activist, Elton McCrae.
Elton said in the late sixties in that part of northern Mon Repos, the young men were violent. The area got it name from the title of the 1965 Italian spaghetti western, Django. Elton said in Django Town, one street had a group of Portuguese young men who were vicious as any band of Afro-Indo Guyanese youths from any depressed area in Georgetown. Django Town is filthy with garbage lining the entire street where the meeting was held. It has no street lights.
There were two oxymoronic emotions –hilarity and fear – I endured during my public speaking engagements. At Zeelugt Housing Scheme in Region Three, Trevor Williams of the AFC and I kept driving into miles of darkness off the main highway to find the meeting spot. We passed several dozens of houses and the journey would not end. Then we heard voices. We found the meeting.
It was placed in the middle of no man’s land. We were right in the bowels of nowhere – no houses, no lights, no moon, no attendees. The situation was both funny and dangerous. I asked the AFC organizer why that particular site. He said three women were raped at that spot and the meeting was intended to send a message. This was when the laughter came in – a message to whom?
Except for the four AFC people and Dr. Karen Cummings from APNU, only the night sky was in attendance. To whom the message was going out to?
The hilarity existed side by side with my fear. We were sitting ducks. We were surrounded by huge bushes far from civilization. The first thought came to me was that we could be shot at from far and nobody we will see the gunmen. I refused to speak but Trevor Wiliams and Dr. Cummings felt we ought to say a few words to the six persons who came to hear us.
I couldn’t believe the identical situation of Zeelugt would happen to me again on the penultimate day of the end of the 2015 election campaign, that is, Friday May 9. I was informed that I was the lead speaker with Rajendra Bissesar of the AFC at Wash Clothes, Mahaicony. Two APNU ladies from Buxton, Eunita Mendonza and Adowa Robinson accompanied me in my car.
We drove into miles of darkness off the main highway but unlike Zeelugt, there were plenty of houses including a large rice mill owned by Buddy Shivraj. Panic took over me because like Zeelugt I was in fear of my life because we reached the end of Wash Clothes, had passed civilization, and there was no meeting.
As we were about to reverse, I heard noises. The speaker was taking to himself, another AFC campaigner and the bushes. I was annoyed. I told the AFC campaigner we were in the heart of nowhere. Rajendra Bissesar drove up and told the AFC organizer that the campaign had one more day to go and asked why he was in the belly of nowhere.
Then came the laugh. He said the meeting was located at that spot because there is a little landing a few yards into the bushes where the Amerindians with their boats would come out into Wash Clothes. Like Zeelugt my fear mingled with my laughter. We were sitting ducks. I will never forget that I spoke at two public meetings in the 2015 campaign in total darkness where civilization is yet to put in an appearance.
I met some wonderful young people and heart-warming Guyanese on the campaign trail. This country has good people and it deserves a good future. I hope after May 11, it gets it.

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