Dr. Benjie Singh and Bevon Currie: Death came much too soon

Dec 18, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Last week, the pool of philosophical souls in Guyana got thinner with the loss of Dr. Benjie Singh, of the medical profession, and Bevon Currie of the political society. Benjie was part of my psychic existence.
Bevon was a friend who I wanted to mould after who I think I am – a multi-racial Guyanese who loved his people and country and wanted them to see and judge each other as humans not as ethnic numbers.
I have known Benjie for forty-one years. My wife knew him for forty-two. It was through my wife that I got to know him. They worked together as teenage lab technicians at the state-owned Guyana Pharmaceutical Corporation on where now stands the Marriott Hotel. As I waited on the seawall at the abandoned Luckhoo Swimming Pool for my girlfriend to come off of work, there would be Benjie coming out pushing his “Big Bertha.”
In my boyhood days growing up on Durban Street in Wortmanville, it was more possible to see an elephant playing in the street than a teenager riding a Big Bertha. That was a large bicycle that was always used by older folks. Benjie was an exception in such a situation. He was doctor to me, my wife, daughter and mother-in-law.
I have sent countless impoverished souls who couldn’t afford to pay a private doctor, to Benjie. Always the instruction was; “Tell Dr. Singh, Freddie Kissoon sent you.” On all those occasions, not once did Benjie give them a prescription to fill at the pharmacy. He gave them the drugs himself.
Not Guyana, not the Caribbean but the world has lost one of the most professional medical doctors, medicine ever graduated. In my long career as media operative, social activist and academic, I can tell you that I know there are doctors in Guyana who are unfit to be professionals. They have a larger income than the profits of DDL and Banks DIH. That is what drives them – money.
Benjamin Singh never operated like that. Benjie died leaving his old pick-up truck. He never possessed a heavily tinted, expensive SUV. Don’t take my word for it; just do a check on the types of vehicles lawyers and doctors drive. Those people would starve if they had to live in Canada, Europe and the USA.
If there was a doctor that knew what his role had to be in relating to a patient, it was Benjie. He made a patient feel that the doctor personally cared. The clowns and jokers who you have today practising medicine make you sick at how they relate to their patients.
On two occasions at the Georgetown Public Hospital, I told doctors that they were unfit to be doctors. I plan to do so again when next I visit the Georgetown Hospital. A mild mannered, modest human, Benjie was liked by all the other humans whose lives he touched. Guyana will not easily find a replacement for Benjie.
I met Bevon Curie in 2011 during the election campaign. He was with the PNC. I was campaigning for the AFC. Bevon rose through the ranks of the PNC; first becoming a leader in its youth arm, the YSM. We became closer in 2012 during the campaign against the electricity hike in Linden.
It was in that year that we became good friends. We would meet once a month at his father-in-law’s hotel on Robb Street. I wanted to guide him deeper in the forestry of independent thinking.
Bevon Currie is someone Guyana’s politics will not replace soon. He was born into a multi-racial village, Annandale, and I believe that explains why he was such a different political animal. Bevon was just not your average ethnic young man who saw his ethnic party as the vanguard that must rule Guyana. His independent stand on political issues caused the PNC to alienate him.
Bevon could not find employment after the PNC government got into power. When I listened to the eulogies at the church service, I turned to David Hinds and said; “Do you know how badly the PNC treated that young man?” David said that he knows the history of the alienation and so vindictive was the PNC that David said one minister rejected his family’s request to facilitate him to Cuba. It was on the intervention of another minister that he went.
I end with two funny incidents with Benjie and Bevon. Benjie said to me; “Why don’t you run for president?” I responded, “Why don’t you?”
He replied; “What for?” I said, “Same here.”
Bevon said; “Why don’t you run for president?” I replied; “Why don’t you?”
He said; “Nah, politics dirty bad boy.”

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