A day in the life of a human rights activist

Sep 21, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

If I should die tomorrow, I want to make sure that I print one of the stories you are about to read in print. When you are a human rights activist, people come to you with tales that are so bizarre that even a script writer of horror movies would frown on them.
I have had my share of stories that people relate to me that I found so macabre that exasperation drives you to be insulting. But naturally you have to hold back.
I begin with the most incredible one in my twenty-six years as a human rights activist. It happened last month.
I received a call from a woman who gave her name and asked if I remembered her. She said she knows me from my days of association with Jesuit priest, Father Chira of the Catholic Church here in Guyana. I couldn’t identify her, but Father Chira and I were very close until he went back to India. He was one of the nicest Catholic priests I met in Guyana.
She solicited my help in a grave human rights situation. She asked me to make contact with a friend of hers who was being denied his rightful place by his club to play first class cricket. I made contact with him via phone and e-mail. He was angry, contending that he is being denied his entitled place because the club is going for younger men. Immediately Shivnarine Chanderpaul came to mind. He is still playing Test cricket at age forty.
I figured that this guy is in his thirties and the club is choosing players in their twenties. I suggested he speak to Khemraj Ramjattan, with the personal recommendation that Khemraj is a strong believer in justice. I sent off an email to Khemraj imploring his intervention.
Khemraj replied and informed me he knows of the gentleman’s service to the club and his contribution to first class cricket in the past. Now brace yourself for the horror story.
The gentleman still wants to represent the club in first class fixtures, even though the years have passed and he is now over sixty. Bear in mind, the first class fixture is the stage where after you prove yourself, you move on to represent Guyana, then West Indies selection is near.
This man was genuine in his complaint, but he needs to read any of the Tennessee Williams plays on the refusal of the aging to accept that youth goes. Imagine any of the world’s great sports in which a competitor over sixty is playing in a professional league. God! You meet all kinds in this world.
A few months back, I met this dapper-looking middle-aged man. Judging from the clothes he and his wife wore, they were definitely middle class. I was at the cashier’s counter at the supermarket. He and his wife were next in line. He said, “Man, I am so sorry you aren’t writing anymore.”
I looked up the ceiling, my eyes betraying my confusion; “What was he talking about?”
I do five columns a week, making it 20 a month, making it 240 a year. I looked at him, with restrained frustration, and with an intestinal smile on my bamboozled visage said, “I write a column a day, and if I know your name then tomorrow I will do a column and name you in this conversation we are having.”
His looks turned to when milk is turned and he was dead silent. I could see the embarrassment on his wife’s face.
Yes, you really meet all kinds in this world. This man liked my writings but has not picked up Kaieteur News in years, even though in those years I have been in the public eyes with a number of controversies, including two attacks on my life and the four-year- old Jagdeo libel case. Plus there are hundreds of annual letters on me between the Chronicle and the Guyana Times. Where is this guy living? Even if he doesn’t read the Kaieteur News, he must know I write often.
I met this sad-looking woman at the supermarket last week. She said that she desperately needs my help. She intoned that for four months now her tenants have not being paying their rent. I enquired of her relatives. She said that she lives with her two grandchildren and she doesn’t want her children to get involved.
I inquired of her, “Why then do you want me to get involved?” She stood in puzzled silence. She asked for directions to the law office of Moses Nagamootoo. These are just three instances of the mysteries of human nature.

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A day in the life of a human rights activist

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