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I almost killed my wife two days before Independence

May 26, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I was coming off the seawall on Saturday night, traveling east on the old, seawall road. I made a right onto Camp Road and didn’t see a low bed occupying almost half of Camp Road right outside the CID office at Eve Leary. It was my wife who shouted that something is on the road. I just didn’t see that huge object. It was much too dark.
In case you don’t know; a low bed is what the excavator rests on when it is towed by a truck to reach its site of operation. There are no street lights in that area.
Start from the Immigration Office right up to where that low bed is and there are no street lights. This is the location of the nerve centre of the Guyana Police Force (GPF). In all the streets in Eve Leary where the chemistry of the GPF flows, there are no lamps. This is 43 years after this country became an independent, sovereign nation.
Only madmen, fools and clowns will watch you in the eyes and tell you that this country has taken its rightful place among post-colonial states where the people are happy and development has taken place.
Where is the happiness? Where is the development? The President of Guyana has two more years left of his twelve-year-old presidency and I say without fear of being proven wrong, that Mr. Jagdeo will never face his detractors in a live town-hall debate or in front of live television within the two years he has left.
The reason? The facts are mountainous that after 43 years of Independence, time stands still in this land; Mr. Jagdeo cannot withstand the ocean of questions about bad governance he will face.
I love this country. I will not leave it. I am a Caribbean man. I have brought up my daughter, my only child, to think like a Caribbean woman. But I know in my heart that Guyana as a post-colonial society has gone backwards. We have achieved very little as a people in terms of science, technology, economic development and human progress.
Any Guyanese, in or out of this country, who is familiar with the thousands (yes thousands) of columns that I have done since 1988 would know I hold a dear place in my heart for the University of Guyana. If it were not for UG, I would have ended up just another youthful casualty of the hopelessness and despotism of poverty in south Georgetown.
Look where we are at 43. Guyana may have the highest percentage of American visa rejection in the world; Guyana may have the highest rate of migration of skilled people in the world. Forty three years after Independence, instead of Bajans coming over here and buying Guyana off, given the potentials of wealth that we have, Guyanese are being hunted down in a territory that is only just bigger than Hogg Island. When I was very young, I never reflected on street lights.
One day, my deceased friend, UG lecturer, Theo Morris, told me that someone from The Bahamas asked him why is it that when you leave the airport from thereon all you see is darkness? That conversation many, many moons ago started me thinking that it is uncivilized for the capital of a country not to have street lights.
What has happened to Guyana that after 43 years of Independence, the main roads and streets do not have lamps? How could this be accepted in the 21st century? What happened along the way for us not to have lighted streets in Georgetown? Did we go through a war like Europe and we are only now recovering? Are we in the throes of a civil war so the opposing armies have ravished the capital? Are we still re-building after one of the world’s worst hurricanes?
The answer is yes. We did go through a war like WW2. We do have a civil war. We have been hit by a hurricane. These three disasters are not like the real ones but the effects are the same. Our wars and our hurricane are in the presence of a destructive political culture that operates through two destructive political parties.
One could not end without paying some respect to the private sector. They have kept the flame of development burning in a small way. Thanks!

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