Guyana: Beyond the incredibility of absurdity

Sep 07, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Recently, there has emerged a trend in the letter sections of the newspapers where citizens are showing increasing pessimism about the preservation of the moral and ontological fulcrums of Guyana. The centre of attention seems to include not only governmental inertia and mediocrity, but the emotional and psychological inertia and resignation of the average Guyanese.

Those letter-writers are right. The average Guyanese of late has been exhibiting tendencies of insensitivity, harness towards their fellow humans and a nonchalant approach to living. It is not a pleasant sight to behold and it is being written about, as I wrote above, with increasing frequency in the letter pages of the newspapers.

What you are about to read in the paragraphs below is not a story that will irritate you, but make you sad, because it shows the deepening level of nihilism among the Guyanese people. What I am about to describe has absolutely nothing to do with the Government of Guyana itself or its Ministers. This is the story of how the average Guyanese behaves. There are folks out there that I know will find it hard to believe, but deep down in their hearts they know that the incident happened. Here it is.

Schools have been in recess since July. Schools reopened on Monday, September 5. On Monday at around 3.30 p.m., I was driving east on South Road. As I approached Shiv Chanderpaul Drive where the Office of the President is located, the line of cars had stopped. And it was a long line. The line got longer as the minutes ticked away. Would you believe what taking place at South Road and Shiv Chanderpaul Drive? Workmen were painting lane signs and pedestrian crossings. They had their pumpkin coloured, plastic cones all over the streets.

I was about the fifteenth car in the queue. I reckoned that most of the drivers had their children they had just picked up from school. At least I saw about four cars with school children. One lady was furious and it seems her anger was becoming uncontrollable. It was the most horrible time of the day to paint signs on the roads. It was the rush hour on the first day of the school term. Who could be so moronic and asinine to do that?

Why at that particular time on that particular day? What happened to dead Sunday the day before?

The day before, Sunday that is, I drove west on Homestretch Avenue with my dog in the car at 11 a.m. and crossed over into Croal Street. So I passed the junction of South Road and Shiv Chanderpaul Drive. There was absolutely no traffic. It is unbelievable how this country has become a barren land without thinking humans. Those signs could have been painted the day before and the workmen would have had full control of the streets. The sign painting could have been done the Saturday. But no! Someone who is a congenital fool made the decision for a crew to go out at rush hour on the first day of the re-opening of school and stop the traffic.

Now mind you; not stop the traffic at 10 a.m. when the children are in school and their parents are at work and the minibuses are waiting for school to finish, but at 3 p.m. when the roadways become clogged with traffic. When it was my turn to move, as I passed them I said, “Good God, at rush hour! One of them shouted back, “Alright! Alright!” When I reached the Railway Embankment, I pulled over and called Carlyle Goring of the Prime Minister’s Office to go out and ascertain for me where these workmen came from – City Hall or the Ministry of Public Infrastructure.

Goring called back to say when he went out there, they were gone. My bet is that they came from the Ministry of Public Infrastructure. I don’t believe for a moment Minister David Patterson had anything to do with this idiocy. Someone in David Patterson’s Ministry is a blatant fool. I consider myself one of the world’s most liberal humans, but I am asking the Minister through this column to identify the person who made that decision and suspend him/her.

How can any human be so recklessly stupid? At rush time on the first day of school, at the hour when classes are finished for the day, workmen brought rush hour traffic to a halt in blazingly tropical heat to paint signs on the road. If there is a God, why is he not helping this country by infusing commonsense into its people? Or has God given up on this land?

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