Desecration at Port Kaituma

Apr 13, 2014 News

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COUNTRYMAN – Stories about life in and out of Guyana, from a Guyanese perspective…

By Dennis Nichols
My last story set in Guyana’s North West rainforest, only scratches the surface of the region’s indigenous peoples, its fauna, flora and supernature. Even as a writer, I find the English language wholly inadequate to describe what I saw and heard, and especially what I felt in the eight years I spent there. Words like rugged, beautiful, severe, enchanting, impoverished, primitive and magical tell only part of the story.

For how do I describe the sensation of perfect equilibrium I feel seeing a full moon rising at dusk from behind the ‘wild mango’ trees, reflecting burnished silver on the river’s darkening mirror-surface, or paddling a canoe on a still, starlit night, the silence of which is broken only by the haunting cry of some nocturnal forest creature? And how do you communicate to someone the mixture of excitement and dread you feel when listening to tales about ‘Buck Bena’, ghost birds, mysterious apparitions and natives morphing into jaguars?
Into this land of harsh beauty and mystery came a group of strangers from the north, led by a charismatic delusionist, who in 1978, precipitated a horror, the likes of which there was no precedent for, and which to this day many find impossible to wrap their minds around. It was the desecration of a piece of jungle land near the settlement of Port Kaituma, (recently making disaster headlines again) defiled by the blood and shattered hopes of nearly a thousand men, women and children who had trusted and believed, almost to the end, in ‘Reverend’ Jimmy Jones and his inner circle of cohorts.
There are a hundred theories and mysteries surrounding the events of November 1978, many of them filled with political intrigue, but as I said in my first article, I am not versed enough in this arena to comment in any comprehensive way, and will stick mainly to the human interest aspect of what has become known as ‘The Guyana Tragedy.’ It must be noted though, paradoxically, that Jones’ followers were lured to Guyana with promises of a better, even utopian, life, far removed from the so-called rat-race, capitalistic nature of American society.
I never met Jim Jones, but in mid-1978, I became acquainted with some members of his People’s Temple (PT) group who managed a small shop in Kumaka, Mabaruma, about 70 miles from Port Kaituma. I later found out that most of the items sold there were the second-hand belongings of ‘church’ members, sold to supplement the organization’s income. I remember buying from them several items including a Polaroid camera and a thickly-lined jacket which proved useful during some of the colder, windier evenings on the river.
One of the most noticeable things about the PT members I met was their ethnic make-up. Some were White; some clearly bi-racial, and many obviously Black. Two I remember well – Tommy, a gregarious six-foot Black teenager, and Chuck, a baleful-looking White man who dressed in camouflage, carried a wicked-looking knife and, incongruously, made great fudge. And whoever was responsible for selecting the shop staff, made sure they got some of the friendliest and most attractive girls (Black and White} to entice customers in parting with their most likely hard-earned cash.

But not everyone was taken in by this shrewd entrepreneurship. I remember someone had written (or painted) in large, crude letters on the wall of one of the bonds in the Kumaka market, “JIM JONES STOP ROBBING POOR BUCK PEOPLE!” I was impressed, if only because I had secretly held, or at least speculated about, similar sentiments, acutely aware of previous and subtle attempts to exploit and manipulate some of our hinterland Amerindian kin.
Such speculation turned to suspicion after, on at least two occasions, my wife and I (married for just over a year) were asked by two of the shop attendants if we would consider having our one year-old son, my firstborn, Kwesi, adopted by the People’s Temple and taken to Jonestown.
I guess we were supposed to understand that he would have a better life, maybe because we’d told them that he had been born deaf, or maybe because of the adorability factor; he looked like a ‘little Muhammad Ali.’ Perhaps they were simply empathizing, knowing somehow that as teachers, we were struggling to get by on a combined monthly salary of about $600. We graciously refused, thank God!
I later heard, though this was never substantiated, that a pupil of mine at St. Dominic’s School, whose name I don’t remember, was adopted by the ‘Jonestowners’, and died with them several months after. I particularly remember this child because he was the only one I knew there who was not shy in teaching me some Warrau words, the pronunciation of which I recall fairly well; but not the meanings, except for ‘Bowkiya’ which I’m pretty sure means “Good morning’ or ‘Good day.”
No doubt November 20th, 1978, a spanking-new Monday morning, was a good day, that is, until my headmaster and friend, Leslie Phang, informed me in that question/statement kind of way, of the news that ‘over 100 people’ had died at Jonestown over the weekend. I cannot recall what I said, but it must have been something akin to the kind of shock-and-awe response that was to be expected when the U.S hit Iraq in 2003. Then the crazy math began.
By that afternoon the count had risen to nearly 200, and a day later another 200 had been added. Four hundred people? This was not happening! Not in Guyana; not right here in the North West! News reports by radio were sketchy. As can be imagined, Kumaka/Mabaruma was abuzz with talk, especially since it was market day, and the boat from Georgetown had arrived bringing with it fresh news from the capital including the Georgetown killings (Chuck, the fudge-maker was implicated in this) and stories about drugs, large quantities of U.S. currency spirited out of Jonestown, and the number of dead doubling to 800. It would eventually surpass 900 and make headlines around the world.

By Friday, November 24, the full scale of the tragedy had unfolded – nine hundred and fourteen souls lost in a deadly haze of paranoid rhetoric, poisoned Kool-Aid, lethal injections, automatic weapon fire and Jones’ overriding exhortation to commit ‘revolutionary suicide.’ Bodies had ended up stacked three and four deep, hence the initial miscounts. Parents and other adults covered their children and babies underneath, the first to die. And from the Port Kaituma airstrip, the body of U.S. Congressman, Leo Ryan had already been flown home, the first such representative to die in the line of duty
The following Tuesday I went to Kumaka and stared in solemn perplexity at the little store that now stood there as a question mark, amidst a sea of exclamations. “Why?” “It don’t mek sense!” “Jim Jones musee di crazy!” Everywhere in Kumaka and Mabaruma people were talking; at the stelling, in the shops, at the Regional office, the hospital, even in Joe Pierre’s rum shop where the usual market day brawls were replaced by more sober reflection. And the rumour mill turned.
Someone said that a couple of Guyanese had perished in the massacre. Another declared that the first persons who turned up in Port Kaituma after the killings had carted off hundreds of thousands, if not millions, in U.S currency. A boat captain was rumoured to have been murdered trying to escape to Venezuela with a quantity of Jonestown cash. And so, in the aftermath of disaster, the talk went on. In the United States and across the globe, Guyana, Port Kaituma and Jonestown gained instant notoriety.
Back on the Aruka, nothing much had changed. The leisurely tenor of life continued as school activities at St. Dominic’s began to wind down for the Christmas holidays. Along the river, farmers went back to their yams and corn, hunters prepared for the next perfect moonless night, children swam and played by the river’s edge oblivious to tragedy, and the denizens of the forests continued to play out their endless cycle of predation, life and death.
But near Port Kaituma, on a piece of earth hallowed over the centuries by the Amerindians’ reverence for nature, the desecration at Jonestown would likely never be forgotten.

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(N.b.: In my last ‘Countryman’ story, I inadvertently stated that Guyana’s North West Region stretches in part from the Orinoco River to the Moruka. Lest I provoke a war with our western neighbour, let me state that I meant the Amakura River (though some may argue that our colonial ruler, the U.K. on behalf of British Guiana, had claimed as much in the 19th century.)
(Dennis Nichols is a teacher, journalist, creative writer, and winner of the 2000 International Short Story Competition, run by the U.K – based Commonwealth Broadcasting Association)

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