The sweet bird of youth soon flies away

Dec 31, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The caption of this article is the title of one of Nat “King” Cole’s most haunting melodies; one of his songs I like best. “Sweet Bird of Youth” of course is one of the greatest literary masterpieces written by that American genius, Tennessee Williams.
It remains for me his best work though literary critics would reject my choice when comparing “A Street Car Named Desire,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” and “The Glass Menagerie,” to this particular play.
The theme of “The Sweet Bird of Youth” is that when youth is gone, it is gone; trying to search for it brings enormous psychological damage to its pursuer. For those who took an interest in the evolving lives of celebrities like Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor, they would know that reclamation of youth leads to self-destruction.
In Guyana, youth has no future. This is a sad indictment of a nation that has been independent for 43 years.
In a World Bank report Guyana is listed as a country that suffers 80 percent of migration of its holders of a tertiary education. This, in case you don’t know, is the highest in the world. This means that we lose our young people because over ninety percent of UG students are between 17 and 30 years of age.
Government’s propagandists love to tell us that migration is a global fact. What they never do is to offer you the comparisons with other states. For example, far less than eighty percent of Jamaica’s university graduates leave the island
One of the hidden disasters resulting from the exodus of young trained minds in this country is the abandonment of viable business operations when parents get old but their children refuse to come back to Guyana to hold the reins.
I can name you six, yes six, top class entrepreneurial outfits that have become household names in this country that may go down in the future because the owners’ children are not coming back.
Two insurmountable factors prevent the re-migration process. One is the Guyanese offspring when they go abroad to study meet foreign citizens that don’t know where Guyana is, see Guyana as a backward Third World country and have no interest in living in Guyana with their children. I know of two situations where the wives of two Guyanese brothers will not live in Guyana.
The second factor is training. Rich Guyanese, the privileged middle class, the nouveau riche, and the kleptocratic political elites do not send their children to UG, and justifyingly so. They see UG as a run-down institution whose standards are not credible. Often we see in the newspapers, announcements of the graduation news of the children of the business folks. There are pictures of them in their graduation gowns. The trouble is many of these kids major in subjects other than business studies, economics and accountancy.
Some of them go into disciplines for which there are no prospects in Guyana. One of Guyana’s leading investors has three children abroad that have not done studies even distantly related to business. One of them is into film-making.
Another equally powerful industrialist has two boys, both of whom graduated in medicine and aren’t coming back
In a year’s time, hundreds of effervescent youths that will fill the party halls tonight will be not be around to contribute to the search for a future for Guyana. They will enjoy themselves this evening way into the morning hours. They should. Youth never comes back. While you have it, enjoy it.
So I would suggest to those who aren’t going anyway but have to stay in Guyana, you too should have a splendid time this evening. No one knows, no one can predict, what this country will bring in 2010.
As I wrote last year on this very day, dance to Sarah Brightman’s inviting song, “The Perfect Year.” I haven’t heard a composition about New Year that can match this song. And maybe you can ask the DJ to play the pop version of that classical tune, “I Could Have Danced All Night” taken from the classical Audrey Hepburn movie, “My Fair Lady.” Here are the opening lines
I could have danced all night
I could have danced all night
And still have begged for more
I could have spread my wings
And done a thousands things
I’ve never done before
I’ll never know
What made it so exciting
So dance the night away this evening, and dance even more as the music plays. Spread your wings and do a million things because the sweet bird of youth will soon fly away and when it does, unlike Tennessee Williams’s characters, you’ll have no regrets.

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The sweet bird of youth soon flies away

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