The death of communities and today’s unrealistic expectations

May 25, 2018 Features / Columnists, Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
Today in Guyana, with a seemingly fair amount of frustration and resignation, both government and non-governmental agencies plead for communities to shoulder what is seen as their responsibilities.
The Ministry of Education calls on the community and parents to play a more active role in their children’s development; the police call for the community to be more involved in the lives of at-risk youths; Government and NGOs are working with the elderly, and the differently able cry out to the community for its assistance in providing care for these groups. And the justice system appeals to the community to provide all manner of support for its members who have run-ins with the law.
But, even as we note the frustration, first we need to consider what has brought us to this?
There was the time in Guyana, especially in our villages, when a sense of community existed (my letter of 12th August 2007, deals with the characteristics of a community). Members of any specific village or sometimes ward lived in a state of obvious mutual dependency – we took care of each other’s children and sick, we shared food.
In the villages, at harvesting time we worked in each other’s field, etc. Village leaders were the elders and nurses, pastors, the headmasters, postal workers, police men/women were respected and held up to children as persons to emulate.
These persons carried themselves with dignity and it was to them that a parent would turn to for a recommendation for a son or daughter leaving school and seeking employment. Further, people stayed in their villages, they grew into adulthood, got married (usually to a fellow villager), grew old and died in their village. In short, the two and perhaps most essential features of the geographic ‘community’ – mutual dependency and emotional attachment – were present.
With the coming of independence in 1966 all that is stated above died in Guyana. After 1966, it was the political party’s representative who assumed the role of most important person in the village. Almost anything you wanted – Letters of recommendation, request for a house lot, permission to open a little shop etc, had to have the stamp of approval of the party representative.
So, with the loss of status the village elders’ authority and respectability was undermined. The priest, postmaster, the nurse etc., all suffered the same fate. Now the party representative was king, and even thought so in many instances. His behaviour was not exemplary, but out of need, villagers publicly showed him respect, while privately despising him.
The death of community in Guyana started with the dismantling of the indigenous village leadership structure we inherited from our ancestors. With this destruction, we were faced with a need to devise some structure to take the place of community.
As the sociologically defined community began to disappear, societies began to turn more attention to institutions and agencies to take over the functions previously undertaken by community. Hence, focus turned to improving and increasing the number of day care centres, homes for the differently able, the elders, and juvenile correctional centres etc. These now bore the responsibility for doing work previously done by the community. However, these organizations and agencies have been found to be inadequate replacements.
Studies have shown that elderly citizens live more satisfying and longer lives if they live in their communities and are taken care of by family and community. The justice system the world over is turning to community-based preventative and rehabilitative programmes, since institutionalization, outside of being costly, tends to give rise to high levels of recidivism.
It is for these reasons that in both the developed and developing world there is the plea for a return to community-based intervention. But, it is not easy and perhaps not even possible to put the genie back into the bottle.
While all the above dealt the early blow to a sense of community and the presence of the community spirit, lately, communication and technology seem to have dealt the final death blow. Today in Guyana, with the building of roadways and the increase in motor transportation, rural people could and many do, work away from their homes and return at evenings or at weekends. Also, transportation meant that outsiders were in the village more. Soon by way of marriages and other relationships people were leaving the villages and strangers were coming in. And based upon the permanency or lack of same of relationships and living choices couples make, people were constantly moving in and out of the villages. This constant movement undermines the building-up of emotional attachment.
Further, today harvesting time is no longer a community activity, harvesting is now a mechanical undertaking. One either owns one’s own machinery or hires same. Thus the bonding that harvesting previously ensured is lost. This lack of visible display of dependency on each other that working the fields together gave rise to, undermines the maintenance of a sense of community.
It should be noted that while I have been focusing on the village to make my point, it in no way suggests that these developments have not also affected a sense of community in the various wards of the city. Among city dwellers, the movement from one ward to another in search of lower rent, closeness to workplace coupled with outward migration, have the same effect of diminishing any sense of community.
Editor, mass society is the term used to describe a society in which community is weak or absent. I would suggest this term best describes Guyana today. If I am correct, it would seem to make no sense government and well-meaning NGOs appealing to what does not exist (communities) for help.
It would seem to me that more thought should be directed to what can be reasonably expected from citizens of mass societies. How our new reality can be manipulated so as to create possibilities for citizens to offer more support, especially to those needy groups that government and NGOs are saddled with the responsibility of providing for.
Yours respectfully,
Claudius Prince

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