From the Diaspora … LOVE THY NEIGHBOR AS THY SELF, EVEN THE NEIGHBOR FROM HELL

Sep 07, 2014 News

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By Ralph Seeram

“You left your garage door open again” the voice on the other end of the phone said laughingly. Yes, I had done it again. Anyone could have taken things not only from my garage, but could have walked into my house and taken anything they wished.

But I had no fear of that, not with my immediate neighbor, Rose. In Guyanese terms we would say “she fast” or nosey, but for Rose that is in a good way. She is the neighborhood gossiper and “watchman”. She can tell you who sleeping with who, who going or coming, who’s sick, any every bit of the latest gossip in the neighbourhood.

I live in a very quiet dead end street; it’s safe, but I feel safer with Rose. She can tell when I leave home, when I returned home, and when I am not home for a few days I have to explain why I was away.

Fences

She must be the type of neighbour Christ was talking about, unlike the one I had where I moved from a year ago. They say that good fences make good neighbours. My former neighbour and I were not on speaking terms for about eight years because I surveyed the property.

The surveyor was working when he came out with a camera taking pictures of the guy, for only God knows what reason. Well he knew why. Turns out that he did not own the land he thought he had; he was encroaching on my property, so when the survey stick dropped he had no space at the side of his house to even run his lawn mower. I deliberately marked the dividing line to remind him where the demarcation was.

When I was a youngster in New Amsterdam our yard’s drain separated our neighbor. We were not living on the property, but over the years that drain kept moving towards my house. A car could have driven on the side of the neighbor. Some years later when I moved on the property I decided to fence the yard, so I had it surveyed to make sure I did not encroach on anybody’s property.

My friendship ceased that day. As I was putting up my fence, I was on the receiving end of a real Guyanese “cuss out” because I was “tekking away” dem land.

Some time ago I visited a friend in the Queenstown area of New Amsterdam, and could not help noticing a lovely row of coconut trees bordering the fence between her and her neighbor. As I pointed out this to her she informed me that the trees were on her property and that they are in court.

The greedy neighbor, in spite of a survey showing the demarcation of the property, went ahead and planted the coconut trees hoping that would lay claim to about two feet of land. The court eventually gave him ten days to remove his fence; my friend got the coconut trees.

If you live in an apartment building or on the bottom flat of a house you will probably know what I am about to say. The upstairs neighbor’s music would be booming at three in the morning when you want to sleep, or there would be the constant running of kids, fighting screaming, all at the time you want to take a rest. Sometimes there would be the sounds from a noisy bed when they were making love.

Speaking of making love, I had a neighbor who was very loud in her love making. Houses in Guyana have thin walls. Back in my bachelor days in Guyana, I had one on the best neighbors. Since my house was the “bachee” all the drinking took place at my home after the bars closed in the wee hours of the morning.

My neighbor downstairs, Egan Morgan, was a fish vendor in New Amsterdam market. Anyway, if we were making too much noise as we usually did, he would come upstairs and join us. “If I can’t sleep I might as well drink alyou rum.”

Egan always had a pot of pepper pot going year round and always had fish curry on his stove. He gave me an open invitation to help myself anytime and this came in handy when I came home with some “drinks” in the late hours of the night.

Now how often will you find a neighbor that gave you full permission to go take or eat anything you want? Because of that invitation I ended up eating food I never ate before, like turtle, gilbacka curry and iguana. When you are a little tipsy and hungry you really don’t care what you eat; everything tastes delicious.

Guyanese are unpredictable. Sometimes, two neighbors would have a great “cuss down”. Most of you know what a Guyanese cuss down is like– who mining another man child, who sleeping with who, who get “blows” who giving “blows” and the list goes on.

Then the next day you see these two people together laughing and talking as if nothing had happened the previous day, which prompted neighbors to say, “Don’t put yuh mouth in dem two story”. You intervene and the two will turn around and cuss you.

One time two of my neighbors had a cuss out so one of the neighbor was asking the other how come she got a “Chinee child with coolie man”. Her explanation was great. The child, she explained, “draw the Chinee by staying by her Chinee uncle (the real father).”

Yes neighbors can be amusing also.

By the way, she did try to get child support from her then husband (who was very dark) in court, but the magistrate took one look at the father and child and told her to go find the real father.

I am sure you my readers have a story to tell about neighbors, feel free to email me at [email protected]

 

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