Some people are causing me grief

Nov 29, 2009 Features / Columnists, My Column

By Adam Harris
Some time last year, I had cause to go to the doctor. As people start to get old, all manner of things surface. In my case it was that my blood pressure had begun to rise. I am indisciplined so I would forget to take any medication. Up until recently I would boast that I have never been sick, never had cause to run to a doctor, never spent a day in hospital and don’t take medication.
The man suddenly told me that anyone who lives in Guyana must suffer from high blood pressure because of the daily stress and worrying about things like slow police action and things governmental. I walked off and examined myself. I rarely lose my temper, don’t take on (at least so I believed until I took a good look at everyday things) and don’t exercise anymore.
I did not realize that the problems of the people who seek help actually affect me. Last week I spoke about the sexual predators and indeed they affect me in a bad way. There are the missing persons. Some are little girls who believe that the world is running away.
But there are also the grown women, many of them running from abusive spouses. There is this man who beats the living daylights out of the woman with whom he shares a bed and sexual favours. But the woman annoys him and all hell breaks loose. In the end she runs away but after too many beatings. The man now has the nerve to turn up at my office to place an advertisement.
I ask him whether he ever beat the woman and he would lie. On one occasion I lied. I told him that a woman had come in to the office to complain of domestic abuse and that his name sounded vaguely familiar. That is when the son of a gun would admit that he “gie she one, one slap”.
It is for this reason I caution the people in the advertising department about accepting missing person adverts. The photograph of the missing person could lead others to call the telephone number offered and who knows, death may follow.
I knew of women who ran from one man to live with another whom she believed was better until he too turned up the heat. Sometimes, men do the best they could, especially if their work keeps them away from home. This must be the reason why there is the saying that long distance relationships do not last.
Stories of men sending money home and expecting the best abound. They come home and find that the wife enjoyed other interests; the money went to others and into partying. There have been deaths and while I do not support the idea of beating the woman or killing her, I can understand.
But it is the case of the young girls who run away that fascinates me. Many of them are from good homes where discipline may be strict, others from poor homes where parents try their damnedest to share what little there is. Up comes some man with promises and the girl runs away.
I went to a government-run institution and I had a chat with some of them who ran away. These girls can lie. Two of them told me that they could not explain why they ran away; one actually ran away to help some enterprising young man with his drug trade and another was a decoy for smuggling guns.
The latter results from the fact that policemen scarcely pay attention to young girls at crime scenes. I remember when Norris John and Chancey got killed in Norton Street, Lodge, in 1979. The police there, and one of them was Paul Slowe, allowed the women to pass through the cordon on their way out. These women fetched the guns that were in the house.
I cannot tolerate grown women accepting young girls into their homes without asking them from whence they came. And these women are never prosecuted when caught. As mothers they must have been disasters.
As a boy, I could not bring myself to leave the comforts of a home to sleep in unknown conditions. Even now, whenever I travel I have a problem adjusting to my surroundings for the first night at least. In a strange bed I toss and turn and pray for sunrise. Perhaps the children who run away are a different breed.

Perhaps parenting skills have all but disappeared. Some make excuses that they are too busy to properly supervise their children. Utter rubbish. It does not take much to check homework or to check on children from time to time. In these days of cellular phones it is so much easier but even this is hardly done.
A few years ago a school in Lodge reported that a schoolgirl was “living home” with a man and going to school. When the authorities contacted the mother she simply told them that the girl needed things and that she was big enough. This is unfortunate because the relationship based on needs is doomed to failure.
I can only hope that things change for the better because I am tired of having to deal with people who come to me in tears seeking a runaway. I am affected and this must have been one of the contributory factors to my high blood pressure.