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BILL COTTON/REFORM… ‘WHEN ARE YOU LEAVING..?’

May 31, 2011 News

It’s a Guyanese tradition…as Vieira’s Evening News used to say. As soon as you arrive they ask you ‘When are you leaving?’ What sort of perverse logic is that? Don’t they like you? Don’t they value your presence in our mother’s land? Do they want to see the back of you? It makes you paranoid.
Bill has always been perplexed by this. What can possibly be the explanation?
So many Guyanese have left in the last fifty years that I guess leaving is now a part of everyday life. You all have relatives abroad-in the UK,USA and Canada and have probably grown up with them going and coming back especially for high days and holidays.
The diasporae are just that. So when they come you expect them to leave. The temporary is the norm for many Guyanese families.
It could be that more and more of you are going abroad to visit dem relatives so leaving is a part of your life. There is that wonderful phrase you hear when you try to track an individual or an official down, ‘Sorry he is out of the country’.
No indication of where they might be –Miami, The Moon or Mars. It covers a multitude of sins. At least the secretary does not resort to my other unfavourite ‘I wouldn’t be able to say’.  Why not!!
Or perhaps Guyana’s burgeoning tourism industry (copyright Guyana Tourism Authority) with the hordes thronging  Georgetown’s tree-lined  avenues means you have all got used to the comings and goings of the international tourist swarm. Perhaps.
Bill thinks not; he has yet to see the swarms of humanity coming to visit his mother’s land.
Perhaps as a nation you have collective ADHD–attention deficit syndrome— and you can only tolerate people (or is it Just Bill?) for a short while before your attention wanders elsewhere .Understandable. It is possible that in the future or the present, we will all be famous or concentrate for just fifteen seconds!
Bill is still really perplexed at that opening gambit. Maybe he should have a card prepared with the date to show and tell when asked?
But, as you are curious by now, I am leaving on June 1, for Trinidad. Bill just hopes when he gets there his hosts at UWI don’t open the conversation by asking, “When are you leaving?”
If they do, he will scream!! Pip!pip!

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