Latest update September 20th, 2024 12:59 AM
Dec 25, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
Many moons ago, I did a column with the title; “What are you doing the rest of your life?” As I searched for the meaning and message for this year’s Christmas column, the idea just hit me that I should ask that question once more in another column. In a country like Guyana, that question is as perennial as the grass.
I cannot count the number of Christmas Day articles I have done, but I know this particular one for 2013 makes me feel uneasy. I have turned over and over in my mind why I am so peculiar about Christmas 2013. After all, Guyana has not changed since the fifties. Yes, large buildings are going up, but that literally is all that is happening, and the reason is commonsensical.
You have space on the ground. A person buys that space and puts up a five-storey building. One other change can be seen as distinct from the fifties. We have a growing Brazilian population. I have not included the Chinese, because in the fifties they were in Guyana. Basically then when you look at Guyana, these are two differences.
What else has happened to make you feel that for the rest of your life, if you stay in this land, Guyana will be better?
There was a little news item tucked away in an unnoticed part of the newspaper. I doubt anyone paid much attention to it, but it tells the story of how unchanging we are as a nation since the fifties. The item is about bringing recorders to the judges’ tables so they won’t have to write the hundreds of thousands of spoken words every day in each court case before them.
Do you know how long the practice of judges writing down what witnesses and lawyers say in court cases has gone out? We are nearing fifty years of Independence and we are about to introduce recorders, and given the way government moves in this country we may have to wait another few years.
Do you know the speed gun was introduced in Guyana four years ago? And do you know how it happened? The British High Commission presented the police force with six of them. If there wasn’t that donation, we would never have seen such items in the hands of traffic cops.
Do you know in small Guyana, the number engaged in banking is extremely small, given our population of just about 800,000 of which sixty percent is under 21 years. Do you know Guyana has less than a dozen public companies making our stock exchange one of the smallest in the world?
Yet, I repeat, yet it takes four days before a cheque deposited in your account from an institution or business place can be recorded in your account so you can withdraw cash.
The large buildings and the influx of Brazilians could and should be regarded as positive developments though most, yes, most citizens would tell you that some of that money that is behind those structures may not be from legitimate sources.
So apart from these two positive sources, are there anymore? And even if there are at this Christmas, are there competing negative images?
Never before in any Christmas season, have I seen Georgetown so garbage-laden. Georgetown has experienced its worst ugliness at Christmas 2013 than in previous years. But the most heart-breaking of these negative features is the widening gap between the rich and poor. It is at a demonic level and Guyana cannot have a stable future if this horror story continues.
That is why I ask you; “What are you doing the rest of your life?”
Here is my Christmas gift to my wife on this day. It is a song titled; “What are you doing the rest of your life.” Here are the lyrics:
What are you doing the rest of your life?
North and south, east and west of your life
I have only one request of your life
That you spend it all with me
All the seasons and the times of your days
All the nickels and the dimes of your days
Let the seasons and the rhymes of your days
All begin and end with me
I want to see your face in every kind of light
In the fields of dawn and forests of the night
And when you stand before the candles on a cake
Let me be the silent wish that you make
Those tomorrows waiting deep in your eyes
In the world of love you keep in your eyes
I’ll awaken what’s asleep in your eyes
It may take a kiss or two
Through all of my life
Summer, Winter, Spring and Fall of my life
All I ever recall of my life
Is all of my life with you.
Is this oil a blessing or a curse?
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