The idiom that could have started a war

Aug 16, 2015 Features / Columnists, My Column

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Many a war was started because of something silly or because of something misunderstood. I happened to look at a recording of an interview fashioned by Al Jazeera. The topic was the border controversy between Guyana and Venezuela. The interviewees were Foreign Minister Carl Greenidge, Mark Benschop on the Guyana side and on the Venezuelan side, a University Professor Jesus Silva and a former Ambassador to Guyana, Sadio Garavini.
Both sides are insistent that the controversy is just what it is, a controversy that needs a peaceful resolution. However, they disagree on the path to this resolution. It was an interesting discussion, but being a Guyanese familiar with the history of the controversy, I could not help but side with the arguments put forward by Greenidge and Benschop.
There however was one thing that stood out in my mind. At the Caricom summit President David Granger described the recently surfaced controversy as “a monkey on Guyana’s back”. Lo and behold, the Venezuelan professor became angry that Granger called the Venezuelan President, Nicolás Maduro, a monkey. I was stunned at his conclusion, but then I realized that while he spoke English, that was not his native language and certain idioms would not be understood.
There was a time many years ago when I was a teacher. There I was on this course and far from being a model student in a classroom. The lecturer described me as her bête noir. Having done some French, I latched on to the literal translation—black beast. To make it even more embarrassing, the lecturer was white. Bête noir is the idiom for tormentor, but I did not know it at the time.
Many years later in the Kaieteur News newsroom, I happened to describe a reporter, Abena Rockcliffe, as a prima donna. Not knowing the idiom she got angry. In fact, she felt that I was insulting her. She was good to research it almost immediately.
So there I was listening to the broadcast and seeing the anger on the face of the Venezuelan professor. Granger never called Maduro a monkey. The idiom ‘a monkey on one’s back’ is akin to bête noir. It merely means having a problem and indeed the Venezuelan controversy is a monkey on Guyana’s back.
Of course, there are Guyanese who would conclude that Granger did call Maduro a monkey, because to many of them English is a foreign language. But when I was a boy I was taught that English was my native tongue and that I should be able to speak it fluently. Back then there were teachers who insisted that nothing but English was spoken in the classroom.
How could I forget my primary school head teacher, Wilfred George, now deceased, who accosted me for saying “Didn’t I told you…?” The fact that I never forgot would suggest that I learnt, and I was no more than nine years old. Today I hear the clash of tenses so often that I would not doubt that it is now a subject being taught in schools.
It is no consolation that we hear bad English spoken by people in England or America. Those are the people from the lower echelons in the society. Those who go to school speak very well and it shows when you speak with them on the streets.
It is not unusual for me to talk to people in these countries and hear them say that I speak so well. I would smile and tell them that English is the only language I know, coming from Guyana. That is not entirely true. I also speak some Spanish, but they don’t to know that.
I just read the results of the recent external examinations, and of course I saw that we are still struggling with English. Way back then it was a given that passing English was a must. Many of my colleagues who did not get the required five subjects at one sitting passed English.
There are old people who never went to a secondary school that would put many of today’s university students to shame. But that is beside the point. The real issue is avoiding the problems that the Venezuelan professor encountered. I suppose that even Maduro believed that Granger called him a monkey. At least that would have been an initial belief.
He, however, would have advisors who would have explained the idiom to him. We had to learn idioms in school. The solution to such a problem rests with reading, which seems to be a dying art. Young people frown at reading to the extent that they are susceptible to nonsense that leaders dish out to them.
I got a phone call from a woman who was angry that Bharrat Jagdeo, at a recent press conference, mouthed some things that any reporter worth his salt would have challenged, merely by referring to background.
My employer, Glenn Lall, made it his duty to tell reporters that before they go to a press conference they should be prepared. Preparation involves reading up on those issues that would have been pronounced on by Jagdeo and any other leader. But reporters these days merely turn up to report on what is said to them.
The result is that people who know better would sit and fume while misinformation is peddled by the very reporters who should know better. This will have to change.
And I just noticed that President Bharrat Jagdeo in a press statement said, “The person fired amounts to almost three percent of the population of indigenous people living in our country.”
This is a glorious day when one person is equal to three per cent of the population.

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