Guyana: Journey into the chasm of Dantean darkness

Aug 24, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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This land of just over 700,000 souls of which a large percentage are children, is a quiet country with not even the hint of civil war, not even a small sign of violent unrest, and a tranquil people who couldn’t be bothered if their ruler whips his wife in public.
Contrast this nation with many other territories where stability threatens the very existence of the society yet people show emotion, anger and rejection about life’s crass unfairness.
It is not that Guyana is a political and social cemetery but it seems that life itself is so bizarre, grotesque, contorted, caricatured that this nation can be labeled a semi-civilized, primitive outpost. There seems to be no logic and coherence in this country. Life just seems to be out of a Gothic horror novel. Nothing makes sense in this outpost.
The facts about this country just leave you numb and psychologically drained. The facts about Guyana are unbelievable. In Guyana, a second hand-car costs more than the latest Japanese model just off the line?  A brand new Japanese model, outside of a special luxury vehicle, costs less than an old, ordinary family car. In Guyana, the cheapest Japanese reconditioned car starts from US$10,000. A good model that is about seven years old goes around US$15,000. No brand new Japanese car sells for US$15,000.
A majority of people in Guyana are afraid of the police? A majority of young women drivers live in fear of the average traffic cop in this land? The fear is real because the oppressing behaviour of the uniformed officer is real. School children in many public schools have to contribute to purchasing the paper on which their annual test is printed?  The headmaster of one Berbice school told me that is the decision of his school, and his school is not the only one.
None of the commercial banks and insurance companies in this country have washroom facilities for their customers? Go to even the smallest financial house in Georgetown and they are overcrowded with customers. This country’s stock exchange is almost comical, because Guyana has less than twelve public companies and the daily financial transactions in this country are nothing compared to what takes place in Jamaica, Trinidad and Barbados. Yet a cheque takes four consecutive days before it can be credited to your account.
There is hardly a public school anywhere in the entire Guyana that has a clean washroom? A former colleague of mine told me her niece at Queen’s College was appalled at what she saw and it affected the little girl. The Faculty of Technology at UG has not had at least one functioning lab, not one, the past twenty years?
Ninety-five percent of the traffic signals are dead? Since the beginning of the 20th century to August 2014, the major streets here do not have lamp lights?  The two Georgetown fire service buildings look like abandoned shacks a hundred years ago. The zoo in the Botanical Gardens is a torture chamber for the dying animals. Guyana has one of the world’s highest murder rates, but does not do DNA lab testing. The Georgetown Hospital must be the only medical institution in the world where you die from a bullet wound in your buttocks.
Guyana is one of the most difficult countries in the world to travel to and from? It is far easier to get a normal flight to Iraq or Pakistan or Afghanistan than one from Guyana to North America and the Caribbean. A ticket from Guyana on Caribbean Airlines (I have no knowledge of what other locally based airlines cost) is one of the most expensive tickets in the world in terms of distance.
I spent G$90,000 last August for two tickets for three days in Trinidad. Each ticket was G$45,000. This is about US$225. Do you know that is the cost of a Transatlantic flight between North America and Europe? Do you know in the 21st century the police stations in the entire country do not operate with a database system?
If John Jones is wanted for ten murders and the police stop him for reckless driving in Enmore, he is booked at the station, put on station bail, and is gone. They cannot run his name through the computer, because there are no computers at the stations.
A policeman is caught on camera whipping a little boy and his mother as they lay on the ground. And he happily remains in the police force. Three policemen tortured an under-age youth and burned his reproductive parts and they are still on the job. A prosecutor tells a magistrate the accused was wrongly charged but the magistrate still remands her to jail. The magistrate is still on the job.
In Guyana when it rains very hard continuously for three hours, the commercial stores and the streets in the downtown areas are inundated? So the helpless owners clean the stores, then the rains come the next week and its evacuation time again. Such a country actually has citizens living in it. But what kind of citizens are they? Are they humans?

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