Wallace Nurse: Darkness and Death

Jun 24, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I was a lecturer for twenty-six years at UG, and those long moments have instructed me fully into the nature of this country. In those years I have seen the resilience of a tragic, dilapidated, pessimistic and almost moribund nation. As a lecturer, your heart felt deep sadness for your students.
Here were young people desperately trying to give themselves a chance at life by pursuing that little piece of paper that holds the key to the future. But there were insurmountable pathways to cross. Their university had no functioning library, bookstore, accommodating classrooms, well qualified lecturers, a competent bureaucracy but they tried. And their efforts were stupendous. It only goes to show if this country had money, a functioning human resource base, and a democratic culture the heights Guyanese young people could achieve.
Wallace Nurse was one such student. He was a young policeman when he came into my philosophy class. The work was hard. He found it onerous and didn’t understand a thing about Aristotle, St. Aquinas, Marx and Sartre. But he came to grips with what Machiavelli was all about. He found Machiavelli the easiest philosopher to comprehend. And he was fascinated with the theories of Freud.
Wallace Nurse wanted to have a university paper and he was prepared to work hard for it. After he graduated, I ran into him at police headquarters Eve Leary. He was working in the police clearance section. From then on, I sent many persons to him to assist with the application for a clearance.
Wallace Nurse was one of my favourite UG students and one of my favourite policemen.
I was literally overflowing with anger when I read about the manner of his death last week on the Railway Embankment. In 2014, no citizen of Guyana should die the way Wallace Nurse lost his life. It was reported that he was riding his motorcycle with his wife at the back when he drove into the open door of a parked car, fell and broke his neck. Without exception, all the reports said it was too dark for him to see the objects on the road. And he had to cope with a senseless driver who opened his door into flowing traffic.
I can talk about darkness and death in the 21st century in Guyana. I live on the Railway Embankment next to the Caricom Secretariat. I see accidents and deaths often when sundown comes to the Railway Embankment. I see an accident in the dark every week in the darkness of the Railway Embankment.
Remember in the movie “Rush Hour,” Chris Tucker said to Jackie Chan, “Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?” I will now ask my readers; “Do you understand the words that are coming off my keyboard?” I see an accident in the darkness of the Railway Embankment along the section where I live every week. I hope you understand that.
Wallace Nurse’s senseless tragedy comes against the background of three factors; one last month, another two weeks ago, and one last week. Last month, the nation was told that our expensive Marriott has now acquired a manager. We can build a Marriott for God knows who, because this is one of the few countries in the world where the amount of foreigners coming will never full up even half of the rooms at the Marriott.
Who are coming to full up the Marriot each year in God forsaken Guyana where dogs scavenge through the mountains?
We can build a Marriott with the money of Guyanese taxpayers but cannot put street lamps on the only two roadways that led from Demerara to Berbice and from Berbice to Demerara. In 2014, one word describes such a country – uncivilized. Last month we celebrated forty-eight years of Independence yet in the year 2014 our highways have no lights and people senselessly lose their lives on them.
Last week, it was announced that Guyana spent ninety one million dollars on the foreign trips of President Ramotar from 2013 to now. Is anything wrong with that? Let us say you support your president spending that kind of money. But why should a country spend that amount and not have lights on its main street. Why should a policeman who served his country have to die on a highway where if there were lighted lamps, he could have plainly seen that a park vehicle had one of its doors wide open?
Life is cheap in Guyana. An uncivilized country just turns a blind eye to its slow death. Make no mistake – many more Wallace Nurses will die in the darkness of the night, but not only in the night. Arthur Koestler once wrote that darkness comes at noon.

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