Many stayed and endured; that is sacrifice

Apr 29, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I don’t know if you’ve heard of the name Dr. Mark Kirton, but we were contemporary students at UG in the mid-seventies. Dr. Kirton and I graduated at the same time. We went abroad to do higher studies. Mark Kirton worked at UG for 31 consecutive years as an academic. I did 26. Mark and I were not the only ones that stayed and worked in Guyana; there are many of us.
I don’t know when Mark retired what his salary was. Mine was $182,000. And this was for a UG academic that spent three years in the doctoral programme at the University of Toronto. The agronomist who attempted to rob Republic Bank and was shot dead, at the time of his demise was earning my salary and he had a first degree.
In this deadly, dried-out, mashed up, unimaginative, selfish land, if you do not beat your own drum, no one will know your contribution to keeping Guyanese children alive so they can grow up and keep Guyana alive. I worked with many at UG like Mark Kirton, and I saw the commitment to keep UG floating. Others had the same higher degrees like me and Kirton, but they were serving other universities and other countries. So you have to beat your own drum, and I will beat mine and don’t give a damn if others disapprove of my own drum-beating.
Yesu Persaud is a household name. It was Mr. Persaud who arranged for me to fill a vacancy at the United Nations Development Programme in Guyana in November 1992. It was the position of head of the local office, next to the Resident Representative, who at the time was Juan Luis Larrabure. All papers were completed and just days before I assumed duty, I confessed to Mr. Persaud that UG was in my heart; that UG was more important than the money.
I stayed at UG and after 26 years of consecutive service my last pay check was $182,000. There are clowns and fools in power in this country. They do not know and want to know of the sacrifice of so many. This is why you have to beat your own drum and beat it loudly so these clowns and fools can hear the reverberations.
It was Dr. David Hinds who wrote in one of his Guyana Chronicle columns before he was ousted, that if the APNU+AFC coalition falls at the next election, many of the diaspora people who came back to work with the government will pack up and leave.
Where will they pack up and go? Obviously where they were before the May 2015 elections. And those places are powerfully rich states – US, Canada, UK, etc. The University of Guyana opened a diaspora liaison office and the man in charge of it was Dr. Wasir Mohamed. Mohamed told the media he was willing to come back and serve Guyana if things improve. What did he mean? Some of us never looked for things to improve; we stayed and served our land of birth.
In the discussion of the value of the diaspora and the need to welcome them in Guyana, missing are three dimensions which I am yet to see ventilated in the debate. But there isn‘t really a debate. The locals who remained during the hard and bad times do not join the polemic. We only hear the diaspora’s defence. Those three aspects are a description of the sacrifice diaspora members went through in their adopted homeland; educational opportunities the families that the diaspora enjoyed when they lived in better off economies; medical facilities in the developed world.
Let’s discuss these three factors. The question of sacrifice cannot be answered because the diaspora people do not describe what they have gone through when they lived abroad. We here in Guyana have no knowledge of the disadvantages they endured, but they know of ours. Today, when you run into diaspora members who left Guyana long, long ago, they tell you about their wonderful qualifications and how educated their children are.
In Guyana, only 25 places are allocated for those who want to become practicing lawyers. In the UK, there are more than 25 universities offering law degrees. So in Guyana, if your kid didn’t make the list of 25, he/she is out. In the UK, you can easily choose which university to send your child to become a lawyer.
Do you know how many of us who stayed over the long years in Guyana, have died because excellent medical treatment was and is still missing? How ironic! Those Guyanese who returned, when they become ill, they go back to their adopted home for treatment.

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