Night falls on Easter in Guyana

Apr 05, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

You mingle with the crowds at any event in this country – at the Theatre Guild, satirical show at the Cultural Centre, concert of a visiting artist, international cricket, World Cup football at the Stadium, Mash Day, Pagwah celebration, Christmas revelry, Easter fun (that attracts the largest picnic celebration in the calendar year) – and you find a nice nation of people that enjoy each other’s company. There isn’t even a whiff of the sentimental pessimism and melancholy resignation that have enveloped this nation since Mr. Forbes Burnham and Dr. Cheddi Jagan formed separate parties. Today different communities will laugh and enjoy each other’s company.
The next day you live in a different territory. At the rum-shop, in the office, at school, in the work place, at the dining table, the talk is about race and race discrimination. The celebratory culture that we embrace during the previous day’s adventure becomes a ubiquitous shadow of suspicion. We lived in a mirage in the moment that went by. The land reverts to the reality of who we are – a haunted, hunted people desperately seeking greener pastures to experience what it is like to live in peace and tranquility with water, electricity and food.
Today, people will take to the streets in numbers that can never be matched by any other day in the entire year. If you want to see the future of Guyana then go out today and you will have before your eyes thousands of babies in all shapes and forms from all types of ethnicities. Are they the future of Guyana? Unfortunately, they are not. Their parents will take them away, away from a land that everyone wants to run from. I remember I participated in a parent-teacher meeting at the School of the Nations when that school decided to put before the parents the idea of switching from CXC to Cambridge O’Levels. Only Roger Luncheon and I spoke up in preference of CXC. All those who supported the switch told the meeting that the Cambridge Exam will benefit the kids because they will leave Guyana anyway and the foreign countries they go to will accept the Cambridge certificate in front of CXC (not true but it was said nevertheless).
Our politicians and their supporters tell us that people migrate all the time from countries and Guyana is no exception. They are liars, barefaced, morbid, deceitful liars. Most of these people who mouth off that nasty lie have permanent visas or green cards and their spouses and children have residency permits for foreign countries and live in those lands. What they do not tell you are the facts that are as hard as concrete.
When the European countries signed the Maastricht Treat, there was now one EU visa. Only Guyana was not allowed visa free entry to EU territories. Randy Depoo, a former American Consular Officer, wrote that Guyana’s refusal rate of American visitor’s visa was the highest in the world except for Haiti. The World Bank published statistics on Guyana that revealed that 81 percent of graduates of UG degree leave the land. The next highest is Jamaica with 36 percent. Barbados and Antigua are sending back illegal migrants. The majority of them by a far way are Guyanese.
Easter is an ironic day in Guyana. Unlike the other countries in the world, Easter in Guyana is indeed an ironic day. It is the time when flight is the most conspicuous action in front of our eyes even if we aren’t sending up a kite. Flight is in the air today but flight is also in our mind. As the kite soar, like Jonathan Livingston Seagull, into the skies and climb higher and higher, the symbol of leaving takes over the holder of the string. Since I began doing newspaper commentary in 1988, I have written dozens of columns on what Easter means for the average Guyanese. It means winged impulse.
As dusk rises on this tragic nation this evening, the kites will fall to the ground but not the dreams of those who want to leave. Their hopes will continue to rise. Our population is dwindling but the politicians that created the destructive larva and the running miasma that have enveloped this nation want more power to pursue more destruction. And we let them have it. We let them put race against each other because like the kite we send up today to take flight, we believe flight will save us. We believe we will fly away and leave this unfortunate land behind.

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