Am I the supreme optimist?

Jan 04, 2015 Features / Columnists, My Column

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The end of every year stirs hope in the breasts of the populace, unless an individual is the most avid of pessimists. In fact, this is the trend all over the world, so people make resolutions which they do not keep.
In Guyana, we all made a lot of noise at the dawn of the new year. Some of us were with our loved ones and we became sentimental. The young among us let off hundreds of firecrackers. The noise was unnerving to many adults at times. Dogs were terrified and quite a few disappeared from their homes, running to heavens knows where.
When the sun came up, many of us were tired but happy, but there were households that were plunged into mourning almost immediately. The year is now four days old and there have been four murders. One was so cold and calculating that it begs the imagination to see the killer as a human being. Indeed there have been arrests and the suspects would be duly processed. Some may even be set free depending on the cleverness of the lawyer.
But this is not about the murders; it is about the society as a whole. For starters, politicians have not led by example. There has been so much discord in their ranks that the society could not help but take note, and in turn, used that discord in their relationships.
There were many cases of people getting into simple arguments that escalated into fisticuffs and other violent forms. There were the peacemakers, but these days when peacemakers are often the victims, more people would simply stand and shout at the protagonists.
There were other negatives during the past year, many of them at the national level. I watched the performance of the sugar industry which should have been at its peak. When we invested nearly US$200 million in a new sugar plant, the idea was to bring down the cost of production and at the same time boost production significantly. The opposite has happened.
Gold that ruled the roost suddenly became the object of concern, with the low prices and the loss of investment. The construction boom that followed the gold prices suddenly stalled and caused even more unemployment.
To crown it all, I learnt that the fishing industry is slowly dying because of overfishing. Forget the sea bob industry. Our fishermen made sure that it has reached rock bottom. People simply did not take a look at what could happen when they behave in an unscrupulous manner.
I heard managers in the industry berating those who ignored the rules that were implemented to avoid the same thing that has happened. They have fished themselves out of the crop. But nature is a wonderful thing, because with the halt, the sea bob may recover.
I watched progress in so many areas stall. The road projects seem to be going nowhere, because of what some say is the intransigence of people who must remove certain objects for the project to continue. Again, employment is involved, and we all know that when there is rampant unemployment ,the police suddenly find that they must work harder.
There were pluses. The housing project has seen hundreds become homeowners. There was a time when a previous government touted that there must be a roof over every head. I have lived to see that this is fast becoming a reality, but I now wonder how many will pay for these homes given the loss of jobs through the collapse of so many things.
But we are a resilient people. There was a time when just about everyone had a kitchen garden to supplement their income. I wonder if this is not the time for us to return to those days. There are those who would ask about the fate of the greengrocer if everyone plants.
I remember distinctly people from the region coming here to buy as much as they could of what we produce. Surprisingly, we could not supply because we were merely subsistence farmers. Imagine we still import tomatoes and potatoes.
We have produced other things, especially in the human arena. Through an arrangement with Cuba, we have been able to train so many doctors that I am hard pressed to understand why we still have a shortage. At the same time, people are questioning the quality of these doctors. Toward the end of the last year, two young women died while doing something that is as natural as putting one foot before the other—giving birth to a child.
In one case, rampant carelessness is being blamed. A 19-year-old gave birth at the Georgetown Public Hospital and died from septicemia. The word is that a piece of the placenta was not removed. That is unheard of in a health institution, and I am left to wonder whether we are happy with numbers ahead of quality.
We do not sue the hospital, because doctors will not testify, and the regulatory body is left to fight the politicians who may favour one doctor or the other. All the while the funeral homes are enjoying a steady flow of bodies.
Who can explain the influx of motor vehicles and no expansion of the road network? We therefore have impatient drivers, nervous first-time drivers and pedestrians who must always scramble out of the way of both.
There were not too many structures that were simply built and left unused because there were essentially not that many constructions. But there were the floods at the first sign of rain. The one good thing is that money was spent to remove some of the garbage and thus minimize the incidence of disease.
But with no education, people seem hell bent on maintaining the garbage piles. I don’t see so many Styrofoam boxes and plastic bottles in the drains, but I know that it is only a matter of time before these return in all their glory. Yet I hold out hope for better days. Things cannot be bad all the time. When the United States experienced its collapse a few years ago, the people held out hope for the administration and within two years there was a rapid turnaround. Guyana should be no different.

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