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Every aspect of Guyanese deteriorates into a brawl

Sep 04, 2021 Letters

Dear Editor,

I return from my now annual self-imposed 40-day retreat into the wilderness to this public service commitment of mine, and there is this unending sameness of the way things are in daily Guyanese life. We are happiest, as I assess the terrain when matters deteriorate into bawling and brawling and brutalising each other; when we summon the courage to venture forth from behind our flimsy racial partitions. Then, we are pleased with ourselves behind our barely concealed camouflages, which highlight the utter pointlessness in our puny endeavours, the endless circular and self-perpetuating nature of them.
I look around and I hear the noise. Vaccination. Education. Vaccination again. Then the health system this time. Labour is compelled into the raucous stews. And to those freshly roiled barnyards, I add oil and the environment and the sprawling canvas of governance. It is a sickening medicine to drink daily and, now with the instantaneity of technology, mostly immediately. This makes me appreciate still more my now yearly 40-day sojourn away from the national ghetto that is Guyana. I reflect and I come up with this about this Guyana, so loved and cherished, by others as they proclaim, more than me. There is vehement delight in working not towards goals which improves the texture of individual life, thereby contributing some small thread to the national tapestry into a glorious and envied sight, but this unfathomable relish in being about those internal elements that flush the sewage of ourselves right into our sorry faces.
We embarrass everyone near us, including the many newcomers now here to exploit our bounties; but declare ourselves contented with how we humiliate ourselves tirelessly. Guyana is not a nation blessed with the charms of rich physical attributes, but a place and people that damns itself with endless curses. Take a cursory analysis of leadership and governance, and there is the Cinemascope production of rottenness at the individual and across the board leadership levels; they open their mouths and the crookedness of their minds become blatantly obvious, such dangerous hissing snakes they all are. On this, I am absolute. Leaders struggle to conceal the head-to-toe decay in them, and they fail. This includes head of this, and the next one in line, all the way down the line. Leaders lie and trick and steal, knowing that the cloaks that wear work well. Citizens rush to condone their dishonourable conduct in fancy verbal homage that would make even a craftsman like me blush in shame at the pathetic mental slavishness at work. Man was made to display this kind of craven dumbness.
In something as basic as learning and schools, as alarming as a viral pandemic and vaccines, all roads ultimately lead to the court system. Welcome to the standing arbitration norm. In matters of state, those involving the management of our own domestic affairs, we are so vulgar and classless that foreigners are the best antidotes for our festering wounds. This is the wisdom of the only mediation that we will accept. Examine in passing only, and the only conversations we have are through intermediaries: the judicial system, the weight of international influence. This is the quality of the national conversation that we thrill to on everything. Amidst this individual and national sickness, we feel we are so clever when we cover-up our ugly bigotries and foul partisan character with claims of constitutional integrity and allegiance to democratic ideals weaved out of nothing for the simple utility of momentary convenience.
There is no substance to us, which is why we descend into the cesspit and paw at each other with bared teeth and unsheathed claws. Pick an issue and there is where we inevitably end: in the cesspit, and when that is one depth too low, we settle for a permanent home in the national gutter. Such is the now unconcealable and undeniable poisonous prejudices that transform every situation, regardless of how rudimentary, into the ugliest of brawls. This we love, we call democracy and nationhood and governance and responsible citizenship.

Sincerely,
GHK Lall

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