Colin Smith: Freud, cow-dung and oceanic memories

Oct 19, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – When my daughter heard the news that Colin Smith had died, she rang and said, “I knew him from a baby.” Indeed she did. By the time she was born, one of her father’s closet friends who visited our home almost daily was Colin.
I became friends with Colin in 1989 and he became like a family member. He is one of the closet friends that have died over the past decades. I have had extraordinary memories of Colin that are only matched by very few person in my life.
Our relationship was personal but started out with our experience in working closely in journalism. There was no official deputy editor at the Catholic Standard but Colin was seen as such. As the columnist with the paper, we developed a neat working relation that evolved into a bond of friendship.
Before I describe a snippet of memory, first, a little philosophical outlay on Colin. He died the day before I was explaining to my wife at the lunch table what Sigmund Freud meant when he observed that there is no such thing as human nature. If human nature exists, then there is a basket of variables that we humans possess some in varying degrees.
Freud stated that if there is human nature then all humans have a set of common psychological traits. But Freud noted there are traits in each one of us that are not reproduced in others, thus contradicting the cluster of variables. Colin Smith may have proven Freud right.
I don’t think civilisation often produces templates of the Colin Smiths of this world. This gentleman was a different version of Homo sapiens. Colin was warm, civilised, and trusting. He demanded nothing from the world but he felt that the world must be served.
I worked with him from 1989 to 1994 at the Catholic Standard, and though the paper changed course when Father Morrison and I left, I still went in and helped him with journalistic scoops after he took over from Father.
He was training in Spain to be a Jesuit priest and thus took a vow of poverty and believe me; although he didn’t complete the priesthood, he embodied that vow in deep ways I haven’t seen in many Catholic priests here and in other countries. Colin made no demands on his family, friends and workplace and he went about his life without any longing for any material things.
I cannot say I agree with the way he shaped his life. I admired his philosophical approach but as a husband, father and human rights activist, my life had to be different from his though I shared his lack of desire for accumulating material things.
A newspaper column cannot do justice to the life of Colin Smith so I will get right into some memories. When Father was away from Guyana, Colin ran the Catholic Standard and I looked for the journalistic scoops. It was difficult to fill the papers with hard news when Father was away because Guyanese loved Father and gave him information non-stop.
One week, it was a lean time trying to find news. I was driving on Middleton Street in Campbellville and at that street and Drury Lane I stumbled on something. The City Council right at that junction had a pound where they held stray cows. The place was dirty and the cow litter was all over the two streets. The stench was unbearable.
I took a photograph, wrote the story and gave it the headline. It was one of the paper’s leads and the caption went like this, “Cowdown in the city.” I spelt “dung” wrongly. The next day, Colin called me to inform me about the misspelling. A few connected people in the Catholic Church called Colin and let their disappointment be known.
I was sad about that because a few persons didn’t want Colin to be the deputy editor (for reasons that will have to wait for another time) and I got him into trouble. But that incident went in a direction that lasted until his death. Both Colin and I were highly amused at the event and from that day in the early 1990s until his death a few days ago, Colin and I would refer to each other as “cowdown.” I would call him and when he answered, I would say, “cowdown, you going to the office?” When he call, and I pick up the phone, he would say, “cowdown, you find the book?” There were some more wonderful memories, some of which would make you crack up. Father is gone, Colin is gone but their lives have changed Guyana for the better.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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