There, you go Freddie, yu jraa mi tong

Oct 01, 2017 Letters

Dear Editor,
In Freddie Kissoon’s characteristically pastiche style column last Wednesday, September 27, titled, David Granger: Guyana’s search for Nietzsche’s Ubermensch,” he seems to be attempting to jraa mi tong. You state that I had voiced my concerns about Vice Chancellor Carrington’s ‘shortcomings’ during his tenure at UG. I, strangely, cannot remember ever voicing any such concerns or finding any shortcomings in VC Carrington’s leadership during that short period.
On the contrary, I distinctly remember noticing how the general staff seemed happier and more confident about the future of UG. I remember him calling a think tank to interrogate the foundations of our education system after being prodded by his colleague Colin Cholmondeley to do so. I remember him being the Keynote Speaker at the historic conference in Jamaica which ushered in the Charter on Language Policy and Language Rights in the Creole Speaking Caribbean and Kencil Banwarie and I being proud travellers to that conference to hear ‘our’ Vice Chancellor.
I remember him always being faithful to due process, and I was to benefit from that particular commitment of his when I became a victim of violation of due process in my own faculty. Somehow Freddie, all my memories of that VC were all positive and uplifting.
I do clearly recall that other members of the UGSSA executive found that Prof. Carrington had some weaknesses, but I never attempted to understand their deeper analyses. I was too overjoyed at having a leader at the helm at UG who, it seemed to me, believed that leadership also happened from the ground up and had a gift of making people feel valuable.
Even now I feel his aura – the aura of a man who had no partisan political connections, no undue attachment to money, no tendencies to misuse power to promote a personal agenda, no desire to prove anything to anyone. But, who knows? It may just be a case of absence making the heart grow fonder. Oh how I long for fonder hearts and certain absences. There Freddie, yu jraa mi tong.
Charlene Wilkinson
University of Guyana

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