My country is slipping down the drain

Aug 08, 2010 Features / Columnists, My Column

---

By Adam Harris

Every year I get a chance to look at Guyana from the outside and every year the same thoughts run through my head. Do I really live there? How could I live there and not feel threatened?
The truth is that from a distance everything looks either so much better or much grimmer than they actually are. The United States looks appealing to many in Guyana until they get here. Jobs are scarce and there is the lament of many who say that they are going to head home where, in their eyes, life is less stressful.
Yet one cannot help but be horrified at some of the events in Guyana. For example, I was home when three young men in a car went speeding around a turn. They snapped a lamp post and ended in a canal. Two of them died. One day before, a drunk driver slammed into a minibus killing himself and seriously injuring the driver.
There was also the smash-up on East Bank Demerara that left two dead.
Then there were the reports of the hit-and-run accidents, the other fatalities and of course the bizarre killings. For its population, Guyana is not doing well.
Gunmen are not known to focus their attacks on women but here we had a case of a woman going home from church (according to the reports) and getting shot in the head outside her gate. This was horrifying, to say the least.
The next day I got a phone call. It is a costly thing to use one’s cell phone in the United States where I happen to be so when the phone rang I hesitated. The persistence of the caller caused me to answer. I explained my position but what he had to tell me was worth every cent.
If the woman was killed because of her victory in the court over a property then we have sunk to the depths. If however, her husband is behind it as the police also believe then something has to be horribly wrong with male-female relationship.
Even more shocking was the death of a gun-toting robber. Eyewitnesses said that he had just executed a robbery and was crossing a bridge with a “bag of money” when he was shot in the head.
That should tell us something about the people carrying guns these days. It means that the people who hold guns are indiscriminate users of firearms. They could kill anyone even if their intention was never to kill. This is frightening and without a doubt, the government should take some blame.
I am convinced that the drastic decline in literacy is responsible for what is going on today and unless something is done to reverse the trend then the situation would only get worse.
Word on the street is that anyone can buy a handgun for $10,000. This is a revelation. That is the kind of money some people spend when a foreign singer comes to Guyana. It is the equivalent of US$50—the cost of a meal for two at a restaurant or the cost of a Chinese buffet meal for five in New Jersey.
It was the money the government gave people affected by the flood of 2005.
It is less than a month’s rent for most and certainly enough to buy ration for the poorest of the poor for two weeks.
I blame the government because it is focusing on the exotic rather than on the basic. Spend money on sporting activities rather than on a green hotel; rather than trying to bring in a communication cable that would serve precious little since Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company has already done that and has so much surplus capacity that it can accommodate whatever the government wants to pursue in the field of communication.
Imagine that a country like Guyana turned its back on its cricketers who lifted the regional T20 cricket competition. When the team arrived, only Chetram Singh was there as the welcoming delegation. There was no transportation, to the extent that Ramnaresh Sarwan boarded a minibus and headed for home.
If there is a focus on sport then there would be a reduced focus on crime. There must also be a focus on education. I was heartened when the Education Ministry got teachers to use their vacation to teach slow learners for the August holidays.
But even then there were parents who did not grasp the opportunity to send their children, choosing instead to let them run wild, perhaps to later join the ranks of those already on the streets.
Morale is low in the country and this needs not be. One man, a contractor, once said to me that Guyana is the easiest place to make money honestly, because there are so many things a person can do. One can farm, but then again many of us see hard work as anathema.
I appreciate those young women who open beauty salons or those who take to the streets to sell things.
There are still communities that undertake to do things for themselves. I see some young men going about with these grass cutters and making money because there are those of us who do not want to save a dollar so we hire people.
And so I return to the shady side of life. I fathered five children and all of them ended up walking the straight and narrow and I did not have to be cruel. Simple things like sharing quality time with them did the trick. Supervision was the other.
I am going to read the online edition of the papers tomorrow and I am going to see more killings. I have already read about the refusal of the police to go to the aid of a woman who lost her home because some angry man was cruel enough to knock the home off the blocks.
I am going to read about more motorists killing themselves and I am going to ask the same question that I ask every year. What is wrong with Guyana?

---

---