The week was one of smiles and frowns

Mar 13, 2016 Features / Columnists, My Column

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I have been smiling a lot these past few days. For one, I enjoyed some interesting occasions, one of them the birth anniversary of my boss, Glenn Lall. He shared the same birthdate as the late Desmond Hoyte. In days gone by he would track the party Congress Place hosted for Mr Hoyte and enjoy himself as much as anyone there.
He would say that the drinks tasted better than when he bought and of course, it was cheaper. Then Hoyte died and Glenn was left to fund his own parties. If the truth be told they were bigger and better affairs than those hosted for Mr Hoyte. Glenn had many friends and it seemed as if each of them had the date, March 9, set down in stone somewhere, because these days people don’t use diaries much. Smart phones have put paid to that.
This year Glenn jumped on a plane out of Miami. He said that he enjoyed his birthdays better when he is in Guyana. And what a party he had. Forget the liquor; that flowed better than Venezuela could pump oil. The fun came from the people who turned up outside the offices of the Kaieteur News.
One friend was heading to work when she stopped to extend a birthday wish. Somebody offered her and her friend she had come with a drink and something to nibble. Her friend had more resolve. The woman stayed on and became bleary-eyed. A police patrol had to drop her off to her place of work.
Then there was a man who professed to be a one-man band. What a band it was. He produced songs that lampooned every member of the sporting party, much to the amusement of the people around. That was when I turned to Glenn and asked him about getting old.
“Who getting old?”
Then I reminded him of the time when I was his age and he called me an old man ready to go out to pasture. That was when he came up with a gem. He said that times have changed and that these days people were getting younger, everyone else except me.
Then came Saturday night. My friend David Coates was enjoying a birthday. It was a surprise that brought his nieces from overseas. Who says one can’t hide in Guyana? He has friends all over the place but none of them happened to be at the airport either Friday or Saturday. If they were, they surely did not know his nieces.
Coates, I call him Lammy, was told that he was going to a family dinner that night. He was going to be joined by his children. Imagine his surprise when he walked in and found that there was more than family. And there were his nieces, one of whom he swore he spoke with in Canada that morning. Such is the nature of the telephone service these days.
I smiled, too, at what came out of the commission of inquiry set up to investigate Guyana’s worst prison riots. One prisoner testified that the prison wardens went too far when they conducted a search. The man had the nerve to tell the commissioners that if the wardens had found ten cell phones, they could have taken six. The ganja should have been left alone because that is what helps the prisoner pass his time.
Then there was the prisoner who said that he was sleeping when water from a fire extinguisher woke him up. Imagine a man sleeping in a tiny cell amidst all the confusion, including burning mattresses and very vocal prisoners.
Because of his sleep he could not see who started the fire. Neither could he say who began the riotous behaviour. It just goes to show that prisoners have a closely knit society, although from time to time they would turn on each other.
Then there was the story of a former soldier, because he is now dead, insisting on standing by his fellow incarcerated men. A prison warden invited him out of his cell. This warden even reminded the man that they were joint services colleagues. “Eastman come out.” The man declined. “Lance corporal Eastman step out.”
Eastman reportedly said, “I doing jail.” Then he walked back into the cell and to his death by fire. Such was the situation that a prisoner who was on remand for an airport robbery—people who tail arrivals and pounce on them when they reach home—dies of a heart attack. That has not been made public until now.
But there is a horror story in all this. Former Director of Prisons, Dale Erskine, told the media that ten prison wardens are there to guard 1,000 prisoners. It is no fun. They can’t supervise recreation, so the prisoners must remain in their cell for much longer.
One commissioner who visited the prisons spoke of entering a war zone occupied by “the wretched of the earth” and their oppressors. This was not a good depiction and I could understand when he said that he saw prison wardens who looked as though they had not slept in three days.
The descriptions of what goes on inside the prison walls should be a deterrent to anyone contemplating a life of crime, but that seems not to be the case. In broad daylight a man uses a gun not far from the prison to rob another. He shot a man who went to the aid of the victim, then escaped.
People just take chances in the belief that they are different and will not have to go to prison.

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