You cannot and will not win in this country

Aug 27, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

When a country is blighted and has gone far beyond the boundary of irrationality and nihilism, the affliction permeates the entire country, not just the political and social hierarchy. The psychic disease overcomes the entire society taking in all classes, all types.
Political and legal leadership make decisions that affect the formal and personal life of the citizenry. We tend then to direct our anger at such sections and we find such compartments of society wanting. But it affects the entire society, not just the entire polity.
Something happened to this country a long time ago that has rendered the action, character, personality and ontology of its people, illogical, exasperating, inexplicable, inscrutable and self-destructive. I saw the coolant dripping from the top of the radiator cork on Friday morning as I was about to drive off with my dog to the National Park for my matutinal exercises. I figured out that since it would take less than five minutes to get a cork on Sheriff Street, I would buy one, and after the radiator cooled down while I was exercising, I would change it.
I went to one of the longest serving auto-spares shops in Guyana. Here is how the conversation went; “I need a radiator cork for my car.” “What car do you have?” I told him I have a Toyota Rav 4, the older model. He said; “All Toyotas carry the same cork.” This did not make sense to me. I just instantly didn’t feel comfortable with that, so I said; “are you sure?” to which he answered in the affirmative. There were two attendants and from patronizing that place, I knew them a long time, so I figured they must know their thing. But there was this nagging doubt.
He brought the cork in a plastic folder and please believe me when I said three times, I repeat, three times before I paid and walked away; “are you sure this one will work?” He insisted it would. I had a long walk and a long run with my dog, pulled up the bonnet to change the cork; it would not fit. My guess if I fastened it on the radiator mouth and drive from the National Park to Sheriff Street back to the shop to show him what type of cork I used, my car would not overheat.
I told him he sold me the wrong stuff and I showed him my old cork. “Oh, you need the regular one,” he exclaimed. Anger descended over my entire physical and mental being. I spouted out; “man, I asked you three times if that will work, all you had to do is tell me and show me the other type you had.” He gave me the regular one, came out of the shop and placed it on my radiator.
If my car had overheated with my dog inside, it would have been due to a silly man who in seconds could have showed me or told me he had two types of radiator corks. I believe very deeply in my soul that such an encounter would never have taken place in another country, even with a semi-literate attendant. Only in Guyana man, only in Guyana.
On Thursday afternoon, I called the National Library. I asked the voice on the other line, if the library officials had seen that there is a ruptured pipe under the road right in front the library’s entrance and if they had informed GWI. She said she didn’t know about it. I told her it is on Church Street right in front the entrance. “Maybe it is water from the canal,” she uttered. I said; “but the road is way above the canal.”
I had no time for her, so I called the water waste section of GWI. After describing what I had seen the past month, the lady said she would pass on the information. Then she asked for my name and number. That stumped me. My daughter and wife were right there when I made the call, and they couldn’t understand why she wanted my name and number. I simply said; “lady, I am a public-spirited citizen telling you about water wastage, just get your people to look into it, forget about my name and number,” and I hung up the phone.
Those two incidents are just a drop in the ocean of encounters I have in this country. Like the day I spent the entire morning looking for the lost dog of my daughter’s friend in South Ruimveldt, and it was the wrong place the caller said she saw the dog. Only in Guyana, man!

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