A world long gone

Jul 10, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

On Monday, July 4, I walked out of the Waterchris Restaurant on Waterloo Street with business woman, Allison Butters-Grant and Dr. David Hinds. Allison’s car was nearest to the entrance, so we all stood by her vehicle for the customary chat all humans do when they leave a dining place. A little chap about twelve to fourteen years came to us begging.
I took out 20 dollars and gave him. He refused it, told me he wanted a hundred dollars, then, asked Allison for a hundred dollars. Allison said, “Freddie, you have something to write about.”
This is not the Guyana I knew growing up in Wortmanville over sixty years ago. Back in those days, a beggar would never refuse what you offered. In today’s Guyana, a beggar would cuss you down if you ignore their pleas. I could never recall such an incident in my childhood days. That is a world long gone. When you read about the horrific crime stories in Guyana today, it gives you goose bumps when you think of tranquil life in Georgetown sixty years ago.
I have seen photographs in all the newspapers where squatters’ huts were invaded by robbers and the victims were shot dead or chopped to death for their money and other things that hardly came up to five thousand dollars.
These things are really frightening when you think of the relative safety we had sixty years ago.
What you are about to read in the next few lines, you may not believe, but it is the gospel truth.
I grew up in Durban Street, between Haley and Hardina Streets, in a home that had no lock on the front door. My dad put a chair to brace the door and when we came in late we would push the door. None of the windows had locks. My mom and dad put bottles on the top of them so if the bottle fell we would know someone was pushing the window open.
The kitchen window was the push-out type that would be kept open by a stick. When we closed it, it could have been pulled apart, because there was no bolt. Our house was never ever burglarized on Durban Street, and our home sat next to the alleyway that separated Durban Street from Bent Street
That would be a virtual impossibility in Guyana from 2000 onwards. No parent with girl children on Durban Street in 2016 dare sleep in a home without locks on the doors and windows. Between Hardina and Haley Streets on Durban Street, none of the shops ever experienced a burglary. My knowledge of this goes up to the late seventies when I left to study abroad.
We travelled down to town by taking the well-known yellow buses whose final stop was the Stabroek Market Square. Those drivers are angels from the past long gone. These men’s courteous attitude to passengers is a thing of the past.
Vic Insanally, Marc Matthews, Ron Sanders rented a bottom flat six houses from where I lived on the opposite side of the street.
Their apartment was never broken into, although they were never at home. Eddie Boyer’s father had a bond next to his home, three houses from where Insanally, Matthews and Sanders lived, and I cannot recall a break-in.
This was what Durban Street, Wortmanville, was like sixty years ago.
But if you think Georgetown was placid and safe and life was pleasant, you had to be a student at UG in the seventies The state-run cafeteria opened at 9 a.m. and closed at 11 p.m. There was food, snacks and soup available anytime, from morning to night. The last state-owned bus service left the campus at just around 11:40 p.m.
All the drivers were mannerly people. One driver, the late-night guy, we nicknamed “Pumpkin.” As they say in local lingo, he was like an old car that only responds to cranking. You could say the most innocuous thing to “Pumpkin” and trouble would break out. If you yelled from the back to tell “Pumpkin” he was driving too slowly, “Pumpkin” would stop the bus and pull out his big stick. We all knew he was bluffing
I will conclude with a tiny description of a certain part of clean Georgetown. The Botanic Gardens was beautiful. The zoo had a live-in zoologist. His residence was in the zoo compound itself.
His ethnicity was Portuguese, but he had a Chinese name, “Lee.” Mr. Lee was pleasant and had the longest beard I ever saw on a human. As Mary Hopkin sang in her international hit, “Those were the days, my friend.”

2 thoughts on “A world long gone”

Ashley Singh July 10, 2016 at 6:23 am

Good morning Freddie, have a nice day.
Surujpaul Rampersaud July 10, 2016 at 11:00 am

Nostalgia! Nostalgia! Freddie, tears ran from my eyes reading your piece. In those days we did not have much but we were civil, contented and happy. Shakespeare was correct when he wrote ” Fair is foul and foul is fair” meaning there will come the time when the negative things will be seen as correct and the true things will be seen as wrong”. However, we just have to work to turn things around.