Apples-and-oranges conversation from Florida to Georgetown!

Jun 26, 2016 Countryman, Features / Columnists

By Dennis Nichols

It’s Monday morning, June 20th 2016. Joe Moody, the patriot, is at the computer reading the daily news and browsing the internet. He is in Guyana, glorious land of rivers, radiance, and rum. He has just returned from a couple of weeks in the United States, and although he knows he shouldn’t, he can’t help but compare places and events in the two ‘apples and oranges’ countries. Putting a twist on that comparison he observes that while America has both, Guyana grows only oranges.

He pauses in his internet search to reflect on these similarities and differences, and question why they exist, not only in those two nations, but everywhere else. He starts with infrastructure and ends with stories that make the news in a big way and those that don’t, like why the Charlie Hebdo attack with 17 victims made big international headlines last year, while the contemporaneous Borno Nigeria massacre with about 2,000 casualties didn’t. Both were deemed terrorist attacks.

For the time being he thinks back on his recent sojourn. Traversing the I-95 highway in Florida last week, from Miami to Palm Coast, he observed and marveled at skyscrapers, parks, shopping malls, multi-lane highways, and bridges that make Guyana look like the infrastructurally-challenged country people say it is. Like a novice tourist, he was blown away by the fact that the state has four international airports, but spares the comparison with CJIA through embarrassment. And this isn’t the first time he’s been there.

Yet Joe Moody is fascinated by our country’s vast and potential wealth, even though he’s heard those adjectives overused to the point of absurdity. He’s also impressed by our Giftland Mall, or rather was, until he heard that someone had estimated the value of all the items in one large, multi-store mall in Florida, to be roughly equal to the 12-month GDP of a small Caribbean nation.

While in America, a female Guyanese friend told him that school teachers, police officers, and nurses over there work for between $50,000 and $100,000 a year, or about $4,000 to $8,000 monthly, and that plumbers and air condition repair men can earn at twice as much. And certain medical officers/doctors and ‘bank people’ may earn up to $400,000 in one year plus great perks, she added. Joe told her she had to be exaggerating, because only people like Donald Trump and Oprah Winfrey make that kind of money. She replied sarcastically, “Yeah, in one week.”

Since Guyanese politicians have fallen in love with the word ‘disingenuous’ and before she could get to the comparison, Joe Moody told her that’s just the word to use in matching American salaries with those of their Guyanese counterparts, (mostly in public service) who average somewhere around US$3,000 annually in an economy like ours. Not apples and oranges anymore but chalk and cheese, he declared.

He added that the US is, in its own eyes, the world’s greatest nation, but that while Guyana may appear to be among the most dotish or goatish (he didn’t say what he meant by the word) it is in fact a nation getting ready for a rocket-like take off that would make someone like her eager to return to this land of abundance – of gold, rice, and sugar; bora, pumpkin, bhajee, and banga-mary; water coconut, mango, and genip, Banks, XM and El Dorado, curry goat – and now the ‘O’ word – oil.

The American-Guyanese smiled. She said that if she cared, she could work for $1,000 a week, collect food stamps, shop at Walmart, the Dollar Store, and Goodwill, pay her rent, utility bills and transportation costs, send $200 every month back home, and still save $20,000 in a year. In a couple of years, she boasted, she could return and buy a Jagdeo-type mansion, rent it to a ‘foreigner’ go back to America and do it all over. The Guyanese smiled, but thought it better to keep his mouth shut.

He’d just remembered something his sister had told him several years ago. She was returning from New York and the plane was about to descend at Timehri. She casually mentioned to an American man nearby that they were about to land, pointing through the window at some specks of light below. The man looked, saw only darkness, and with panic in his voice exclaimed, “My gawd, there’s nothing there!”

Joe Moody chuckled to himself and decided to move on. He wanted to know why some Americans got so worked up about the killing of a zoo gorilla and a couple of alligators recently, and the murder of Cecil the lion last year, but not about the massacre of students in Kenya and villagers in Nigeria, and the slaughter of dolphins in Japan and Denmark. The latter, they agreed, were worryingly downplayed, but not the Charlie Hebdo attack, the Orlando mass shooting, and the ‘gator-attack drowning of the two-year-old at a Disney resort.

Surprisingly, he and the lady agreed in their response. They both lamented that some people and some animals seem more expendable than others depending on their economic and social value to the United States, and to countries which either tolerate or oppose their annihilation. Joe sagely admitted that here in Guyana also, it appeared that too many people are more concerned about the protection of the jaguar and arapaima than the vulnerability of spouses and girlfriends to domestic violence.

Before leaving Florida, Joe remarked to his friend that it was hotter in Florida (102 degrees that day) than it ever is in Guyana. His friend was adamant that it wasn’t so. Joe said that figures don’t lie and that Guyana never reached 100 degrees. She said if that was the case, it had to be something causing it that she’d never heard of. Then Joe remembered and told her. It was the tradewinds.

She laughed at what she thought was a silly joke, but when Joe told her it was actually true and looked at her in a funny way, she exploded. Joe could not believe what he was hearing. She asked him if she looked like a ‘schupidy’ woman, and how Dave Martins and his band could have anything to do with Guyana not being as hot as Florida! For the second time in the conversation Joe smiled and kept his mouth shut.

I may or may not be Joe Moody, but I was in the United States, and returned home a week ago.

Anyway here’s a nice little only-in-GT cameo to finish off. On Monday I was at a Stabroek Market food stall where I met and befriended Diane and Albert. Diane, the waitress, was smilingly courteous while serving me. Albert, a weather-bronzed retired seaman also having a meal, said I resembled Countryman from Kaieteur News. He all but leapt from his chair when I said I was he, elatedly stating that he has read all of my stories.

In a few minutes the three of us were gaffing like old friends. Diane is a fan of K.N’s Michael Jordan and his murder tales, and wanted to know when he would be publishing his book. I told her I’d ask him. Albert is originally from the North West where I had lived and worked, and it turned out we have mutual acquaintances there. We talked and laughed; exchanged bush memories and phone numbers.

I left, feeling really good to be back home, acknowledging the merits of good conversation and the folksy flavour of an only-in-GT moment.