Dogs eat corpse while Guyana saves the world’s ecology

Nov 27, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

A few months back, an ugly episode occurred in Essequibo. Relatives of a deceased person came in from the US to cremate their dead. They found a rotting, smelly corpse and had to bury it right on the spot there and then.
Now this was not a newspaper article from 1984. In 1984, Guyana’s economy had collapsed. Food shortage was the order of the day and that involved unbearably long queues. There was no electricity. There was hardly water and when it came it had the hue of coffee. But Guyana limped along. Water was free. Education was free. Electricity was cheap
Twenty-five years after that economic disaster, Guyana appears deceptive to the eyes. There are huge buildings going up, and fast food outlets are spreading. But how much has Guyana changed since 1984 (I deliberately chose that year because that is the name of a fantastic book on dictatorship by the famous George Orwell)?
The body in Essequibo was rotting because the mortuary was not functioning. The relatives were incensed to find their loved one in a state of decomposition. Two weeks ago, the relatives of a dead man turned up at the mortuary at Le Repentir cemetery to bury him, only to find his corpse lying in the grass and stray dogs feasting on him.
Should this happen in any country in the world in 2009? It has occurred twice in Guyana in 2009. Have the Norwegian officials that want Guyana to conserve its forests read about these corpses. Does this kind of social pathology happen in Norway? When the AFC and PNC met with the Norwegian delegation, did they bring up these unbearable semi-civilized occurrences in Guyana? Shouldn’t they?
I am writing this article at a time when President Jagdeo is in Trinidad pushing climate change. He will travel next month to Copenhagen where he will promise the world that Guyana will participate in saving Planet Earth by preserving its forest
Here is a country that wants to save the world and cannot save itself. It has to be a horrible memory that will forever be psychologically destabilizing in that you travel from the United States to bury your father in Guyana, the person who brought you on to this earth together with your mother and there he is in front of you rotting in the grass. Could you live with that memory?
Each time I read about these horror stories, I wished I was in the spot to ask the relatives how they voted. I always do that when East Indians come up to me and complain about the cruelties they suffer at the hands of the Guyana Government. Two distressed mothers told me that they went to the Minister of Education to request that he stop Mae’s Secondary School from expelling their daughters for the mere possession of a cell phone.
They told me the Minister indicated that he cannot intervene. I wrote a column challenging the Minister on that. I said to both mothers – “Did you vote for the PPP in the last election?” I was then told that they will never do that again. I hope so. I know them. I am going to their homes when election time comes around next year (we will have a general elections before August 2011).
I did ask one of the owners whose façade of their hotel was demolished by Robeson Benn’s Ministry last month at East Bank Essequibo if he voted for the PPP the last time; he said no. I hope he told me the truth.
So Guyana will chip in to save the world but sewage flows on the street. Isn’t that a contradiction? A few months ago, I did a column titled, “One of the worst days in my life.” It was about the collapsed sewage system in Georgetown. When the occupants upstairs flushed the toilet, it comes up in the tenant’s toilet downstairs. I will never forget the look on that woman’s face. Since the central sewage system of Georgetown is in disrepair, the only outlet from upstairs is the lady’s toilet downstairs.
Do you know that for over twenty years a part of the sewage flow of St. Joseph Mercy Hospital goes onto the grass? This is at the section where employees are housed. Sewage still flows on the pavement in front of the entrance of the High Court.
So Guyana has to be the most caricatured county in the world. We want to save the world’s environment but sewage on the streets, rotting corpses on the grass and alley-ways that look like jungles, the Guyanese people have to put up with. How are you voting next year?

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Dogs eat corpse while Guyana saves the world’s ecology

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