Tremors, a hurricane and a kick aimed at politicians

Aug 28, 2011 Features / Columnists, My Column

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I have never been in a hurricane but I have been at the centre of many earth tremors. This time around as my vacation winds down I am likely to experience a hurricane and I can hasten to say that it is not something that I am looking forward to.
A hurricane is bearing down on my area and for the past three or four days I have been bombarded with what to expect. I could not help but notice the manner in which these media houses provide information about the weather.
Every television station had a weather expert and they all had up to date weather forecasts. I remember my first snow way back in the 1980s. I had gone to Moscow at the invitation of the Soviet Government. I had travelled in the Caribbean but I had never ventured further than Cuba prior to 1980 when I travelled to Libya for the anniversary of the revolution in September.
On that occasion I actually met and shook the hand of the now deposed leader Muammar Gadaffi. He was young then, still in his thirties. As an aside, I must note that nearly all of the world leaders I have met were either deposed or killed. There were Yakubu Gowan of Nigeria, Indira Gandhi of India, King Moshoeshoe of Lesotho; Sirimavo Bandaranike of Sri Lanka (her husband was assassinated) and now Gadaffi.
I met many others, not least among them the North Korean leader, Kim Il Sung and Cuba’s Fidel Castro.
However, there I was in Moscow when my birthday dawned. As if on cue there was the lightning and thunder followed by snow, a lot of it. Since then I have been snowed in and snowed under in the United States.
In Guyana there were numerous earth tremors. On one occasion I was in the Crown Street office of New Nation. It was an old building, so old, that when the tremor hit I thought that it was coming down. At the time Guyana was playing a cricket match in neighbouring Trinidad and I learnt via radio that the players halted the match. Of course no one would run up to bowl or stand up to bat under those conditions.
My most recent encounter with an earth tremor saw me sitting at a press conference hosted by President Bharrat Jagdeo. That conference was immediately halted and I distinctly remember President Jagdeo asking whether he should continue.
Some of my colleagues had jumped to their feet, but us “cool cats” maintained our seat. President Jagdeo was worried about the helicopter pad atop of Office of the President. I later learnt that Parliament, which was in session at the time, emptied. The parliamentarians went scampering outside.
The other day, I happened to be outside talking to my mother, daughter-in-law and daughter when there was this tremor. For me it was minor, very minor. In fact, they had not even felt it. However, the news media was to make this an event for some 48 hours.
They talked about damage and destruction—a few bricks fell here and there, and a crack developed in the Washington Monument.
Then there was talk about Hurricane Irene.  When I first heard of her she was ploughing through the Caribbean taking aim at some locations before changing her mind. The weather people in the United States kept looking at her and by Wednesday they were predicting that she would veer offshore, perhaps sprinkling the Tri-State area with some showers.
That was all well and good with me. A Saturday night party beckoned in Brooklyn and I was looking forward to seeing some people I had not seen in decades. Early Thursday morning someone called to say “Adam, hurricane coming.”
New York, like Guyana, is outside the hurricane and earthquake belt, perhaps slightly less so. I must have muttered something inane. But when I turned on the television I saw that instead of veering away, Irene was going to head straight for my area.
She is expected to have spent most of her fury by the time she arrives, like most women who after travelling some distance to confront a husband, would simply be simmering. However, I became worried when I saw that hospitals were moving patients, local governments were ordering mandatory evacuations; and there were many advisories about what to do “in case of”. There is talk about blackouts lasting a week.
I have decided to stay indoors. I have stocked up with my necessities—beer, other liquor and a novel. There is food.
There is something else. While there were all the forecasts, the media houses still had time to keep an eye on politics. People have not taken their eyes off their politicians. Ninety per cent of them say that they detest their Congress and that they would be voting to change their congressmen.
The reason? The recent stalling by Congress over whether to raise taxes to balance the budget.  The people say that they did not mind, especially since Wall Street reacted by falling and hurting so many of them.
I thought of Guyana, where the tremor and the hurricane would have been used as distractions. Here the people refuse to be fooled by glib-talking politicians. They know what they want; they have a say in their future; they are not content to vote and sit back to take whatever is pushed at them.
If only we can take a page out of their book, Guyana would be such a better place.

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