Latest update September 11th, 2026 10:26 AM
Marx is dead, Jagan is dead and Boyo just died
I have had many good friends that have passed away. I count Brian Rodway (of the WPA) as one and definitely the man who raised me up, Fred Philips, the former CEO of the Georgetown Club. I have never written about Fred Philips before. He has no relatives on earth for me to talk to. If it wasn’t for Fred Phillips, I probably would have starved to death, died at a very early age or just passed life as an obscure nobody on D’Urban Street, Wortmanville, who people didn’t care about.
Fred Phillips wanted me to have an education and he bought every textbook for me that was needed to sit my O’Levels to pass to get into university. I have nothing physical to remind me of Brian and Mr. Philips. But the piano in my home is so conspicuously placed that I will see Boyo’s image in my home every moment. Boyo gave me the piano. When I am upstairs and I hear my daughter playing below, I will think of Boyo Ramsaroop.
I had my books but I was still hungry. I read the books on an empty stomach. This is where Boyo Ramsaroop came in. I met Boyo through the son of the then CEO of NBS, Mr. Jules De Cambra. Boyo took to me instantly. I took to him right away. There was a third friend; that made three of us, and Boyo made sure that the three of us became his protégés. We formed the East-German Guyana Friendship Society.
Cheddi Jagan sent his boys to take over the organization and poor Boyo couldn’t fight. The head office of the Society was in Boyo’s home on Delph Street, Campbellville. Cheddi Jagan and Freedom House had no respect for Boyo. They wanted to take over his baby. Boyo was the Society and the Society was Boyo. If he lost that, a part of him would have died. They didn’t succeed because they had to get past Boyo’s three protégés.
It was at Boyo’s house that my formal intellectual education began. I read all the books on philosophy and poetry that the Germans sent to the Society. My introduction to Russian literature began in Boyo’s house. Boyo nominated me as librarian. I used Boyo’s house as the pretext for reading but I wanted his food. Every afternoon, we landed at Boyo’s home to read books but we wanted food. Dinner was always roti with bagee and shrimps. Once we touched down, he would tell his wife, Bridgette to make more roti. I couldn’t eat shrimps (I’m allergic to that and prawns) and he would tell Bridgette to make something else for me. Bridgette made a lousy roti that we laughed at behind her back. She had just arrived from Germany and didn’t know a damn thing about roti.
The East German – Guyana Friendship Society died as one of us left for a scholarship to East Germany, I left for UG and the other of Boyo’s protégés went to seek employment in the police force. We never let the friendship with Boyo die.
I went to Canada to study and when I came back home to work at UG, I got the shock of my life: Boyo’s son Gerhard was in my class. He certainly wasn’t like his father. Gerhard had to turn out to be politically active (he’s in the AFC leadership) because he was very vocal in tutorials and in class. Boyo was too quiet and that became his downfall.
I had a long dinner with Lincoln Lewis Thursday night at Julian’s Restaurant on Cummings and Sixth Street and our conversation turned philosophical. I let Lincoln know that growing up in dirt poverty in Wortmanville was my biggest asset. It taught me how to fight, shout and defend my dignity.
If Boyo Ramsaroop knew how to fight and shout back when being shouted at, he would not have become the depressed person he was, and he was a depressed man indeed. This aspect of his life is too complex and involved to write about. Boyo gave his life and resources to the PPP because he was a fanatic (in every sense of the word) admirer of Cheddi Jagan. He loved Jagan more than he loved Boyo Ramsaroop. But he was a quiet man that couldn’t cope with the hangers-on that Jagan encouraged around him. He couldn’t fight back. I saw how the PPP demanded material things from him that were unreasonable, but he was too fearful to tell them no. He was madly in love with communism and Cheddi Jagan and yearned for the days when Cheddi was his radical hero. But time had passed and Cheddi had shown his true colour and Boyo was left behind.
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