Guyana: To rise tomorrow to dwell among the dead

Dec 21, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

In the history of human civilization, defeat is never seen as defeat once you tried. The psyche of the loser remains intact once the battle was a well-fought contest. Humans feel that they won even if they lost, because the fight was great.
A sports team will never be psychologically traumatized if their defeat was narrow. It is a harrowing experience if in a game of international cricket a team has to make 200 to win but was bowled out for 60. It is the same in every field of endeavour, be it a school debate or frenzied political competition for high office.
In Guyana, the scariest thing about living here is that as you close the window, turn off the lights, go to bed, you know the morning will bring the same misery – the defeat was a horrible one because no one tried and it will be the same for days, months and years to come. There will be some mental comfort that when you close the window and turn off the lights, you know the loss was not all that bad because the efforts were valiant and people tried.
In Guyana no one tries. No one gets angry. No one raises a voice. And the coffins in the mental cemetery multiply. It is a depressing sight and one that defies logic and explanation. So we wake up the next morning and we hear about the little girl who had her twenty bottles of water confiscated by the Ministry of Works. Her crime was she was selling the water on the parapet. If she was not arrested, total sales for the day would have been $2000 at $100 per bottle.
We wake up the next morning and we find out that another death that should not have happened has happened at the Georgetown Hospital. And no one wants to voice an opinion that many Cuban-trained doctors are not even competent at the level of a trainee nurse. We wake up the next morning and find out that a worker dies on the job of a rich employer and there is no investigation by the relevant Ministry, no payment to the family and his young children will join the ranks of the doomed.
We wake up the next morning and we read that the future of a young, seventeen-year-old boy is exterminated forever because he will have to spend three years in prison for possession of a smoking utensil. He will meet his friend in the jail whose luck ran out when the police found him with a “joint” during a raid in a working class district.
We will wake up the next morning and read about one of the untouchables whose speeding car killed an untouchable and no police action was initiated because the driver belonged to a group of untouchables whose money and access to the power establishment put them above the law. The victim came from a different kind of untouchables – the lower caste as we know in Indian Hindu culture, whose life has no value, at least in comparison with the upper castes.
We will wake up one morning and read a decision by the constitutional court that makes no sense, perhaps has no sense at all, and no sense in law itself. We close the windows, turn the lights off, go to bed knowing when we wake up the next day, the constitutional court will provide us with more mysteries.
We will wake up once more and recoil from the fact that another birthday bash has taken place at the Convention Centre, where the music, gyrating bodies and broken beer bottles tell the story of lost civilization in the lost city of El Dorado. We will get out of bed the next morning and learn that another of the Philistines in the power-establishment has used the lawns of another respected public institution to slaughter animals for the wedding of another family member. This time it was not only goats, but pigs and cows. The blood and stench will remind us of the coffins that are piling up in the sociology of Guyana’s soul.
In life, as in sports and as in politics, you don’t mind losing once you showed grit and determination but most of all effort, yes effort, just a little of it. In Guyana, you feel a bit optimistic that as you close the window and turn off the lights and put yourself down, there was at least a little effort that went into protesting the overwhelming presence of cruelty, immorality, indecency, depravity, venality and plain semi-civilized conduct. But in Guyana, a dead society closes its blinds, locks its windows and rises tomorrow to live among the dead.

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Guyana: To rise tomorrow to dwell among the dead

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