Life, death, and compassion in the city

Mar 08, 2015 Countryman, Features / Columnists

Countryman – Stories about life, in and out of Guyana, from a Guyanese perspective

By Dennis Nichols
Our capital city may be different things to different people, but what it’s not is stale, or predictable. Full of character, (and characters) colour, and commonness, its energy and its angst are unmistakable, unlike any other that I have visited in decades of travel, from Bridgetown to Cape Town; New York to Nassau. Life meanders towards death, and along the way, stuff happens. A few days ago I diarized a little Georgetown cameo. Here it is.

Our city hospital – symbol of life, living and death in Guyana

Monday, March 2, I was up earlier than usual for a 7:30 a.m. appointment at the Low Vision (LV) Centre of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation. (GPHC) An uneventful ride to Newmarket Street was followed by a 45-minute wait at the LV Centre, after which a clerk there gave me a come-back date one month later. Not too bad, all things considered.
While there, I and about a dozen others waiting, were tickled by an exchange between a ruffled Rasta outpatient and a female clerk at the nearby Dermatology section. It wasn’t clear what the problem was, but the suppressed laughter came when the guy loudly and expressively admonished the clerk not to ‘spoke’ before listening to what someone has to say.
It instantly reminded me of an amusing anecdote that made the rounds at The Chronicle newspaper where I worked during the late nineteen-eighties. An earthy, pragmatic photographer had missed an important handshake between then President Burnham and some visiting dignitary at a function. Intent on recapturing the moment, he hurriedly approached the pair and in inimitable fashion, advised them to ‘shook hands again’ so he could take the picture. Ah, the old days!
Before leaving the hospital compound, I spent about an hour on a bench near the main gate close to the Accident and Emergency Unit, and observed the stream of humanity passing to and fro, or milling just beyond the enclosure.
Faces showed pain, anxiety, sullenness, or resignation, and a thought struck me; how ensnared are we by our individual cares, by our ego-driven thoughts and feelings as to cocoon ourselves from anything more than a superficial acknowledgment of the pain and discomfort of others around us.
At the GPHC, I usually have a canny awareness that at any given moment in some ward there, someone could be taking his/her first or last breath, events inextricably linked, and touched, by the joy and pain of what it means to be human.
I was particularly interested in a few persons. One was the gateman on duty. Small and wiry, he moved with alacrity to open the iron gates for some vehicles to pass through, mostly ambulances and those driven by, or carrying, important-looking people. But there was a pronounced nonchalance when the driver or passenger appeared to be ordinary folk.
Minutes earlier he had been vehemently arguing with a younger man, gesticulating, and clearly pulling rank (age-wise) over the other. I couldn’t follow what the dispute was about, except for the gateman warning, “I doan deal with illiteracy; I only deal with intelligency!” He repeated the assertion at least thrice. The younger man appeared cowed, so I guess the other’s ‘intelligency’ triumphed.
Then there was the animated newspaperman, evidently relishing the idea of enticing prospective customers by announcing, “Another man get execute!” This pitch seemed to work as people began snapping up copies. A woman close to me called imperiously “Newspaper man, come here!” I thought she was rude. but then they smiled knowingly at each other. Interesting!
A fresh-faced teenage girl in school uniform hurried toward the hospital exit as another girl of approximately the same age, grim-faced, plodded laboriously in the opposite direction, hand cradling her pregnancy. They glanced at each other and I wondered if they briefly pondered the ‘education’ each was receiving.
Life meanders towards death, I declared earlier, and a few hours after leaving the GPHC, I came face to face with that reality. At about two ‘o’ clock I was passing the Square of the Revolution, on Homestretch Avenue, and observed a crowd milling, staring at a spot in the trench near the 1763 monument. Curious as any other Georgetowner, I went to investigate. In the vegetation-cluttered pond, a semi-submerged body was visible.
Immediately I was taken back 20 years to the horror of my eldest son’s accidental drowning on the Essequibo Coast; to the curiosity and the inanity of onlookers seeing his body and making ill-informed remarks about ‘some dead man’. My son was 17.
Likewise on Monday I listened to some insensitive and cavalier remarks about how and why this person died. There was intermittent laughter; little pity or reverence. A cap, a bag and several photographs lay nearby, poignant reminders that he (it was a man) had a family and friends -people who most likely cared about him, and about whom he cared. To many onlookers, though, he was simply a body, clad in a plaid shirt and khaki trousers.
Twenty minutes later, funeral parlour staff arrived and trundled that nameless soul away. Mere seconds after, the crowd dispersed. And life went on.
Later I learnt that someone, or some persons, had seen him, possibly intoxicated or disoriented, close to the spot where his body was found. Did anyone see him slipping, or floundering in the water? Could indifference or apathy have overridden compassion and a helping hand? We may never know. Then I was reminded of another incident, half a century ago, in the United States.
On Friday, March 13, 1964, a young woman named Catherine ‘Kitty’ Genovese, was attacked twice, sexually assaulted and callously murdered in Queens, New York, allegedly while several persons looked on and did nothing as she screamed for help.
The city’s police commissioner was quoted as saying that although there were 38 eyewitnesses to the crime, none had called the police during ‘a grisly half hour of stabbing and screaming’. Though some parts of the story were later debunked, the incident remains as one of the harshest indictments on the apathy and cowardice of a society. One of the eyewitnesses later told the police, “I didn’t want to get involved.”
In a city like Georgetown, and in a country like Guyana, a case could likely be made for a citizen, a regular Joe, not to get involved in helping someone being attacked or finding himself/herself in a life-and-death struggle. A Good Samaritan could easily become a dead Samaritan. Simple common sense has to prevail sometimes. Nevertheless, Guyanese often do, as do not, get involved. Some get away with it, some are injured; some die. And life goes on.
Later that afternoon, I was at Bourda Market enjoying a puri/potato ball/local juice combo at a Robb Street stand. The mood had changed. Everywhere there was ‘tantalizing’ and lively banter. Fruits, vegetables, ground provisions, and groceries spread out in a profusion of colour and variety. Across the road a push-cart music man blasted oldies. Life was good.
But somewhere else, maybe in another city, a fellow ‘life’s journey’ traveller holds a gun, and contemplates whether the bullet inside is for him or for some perceived antagonist. Maybe someone watches, wrestles with his conscience, and then walks away. The next day, the news-papers report another statistic on its death roll. Life goes on.