He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother

Oct 16, 2023 News

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Hard truths…

“The road is long,

With many a winding turn

That leads us to who

knows where?

Who knows where?

But I am strong

Strong enough to carry him.

He ain’t heavy…

He’s my brother…”

Bharrat Jagdeo is my brother.  He may revile and defile, for it is part of his style.  My profile stays intact: I must carry him.  Through twists and turns, through the long, hard darkness. What this country needs is a little truth in its heart, what Brother Jagdeo needs is a whole lot of that truth, and something infinitely more precious and profound.

Bharrat Jagdeo needs a little light in his soul.  Whatever the smallest sliver, the largest shard, of such light is, I will continue to extend it to him, whether it is spurned or soiled, whether it is grasped and guides him to be the best that he can be.

America had all the power and the money in the world (the weapons, too).  Vietnam rendered all of that into naught.  A tiny Chinese man by the name of Ho Chi Minh (he who enlightens) made the world stop.  The world of capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism shuddered to a halt.  In the streets and schools of America -protests.

In the faces of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon -conscientious objectors.  As the mighty Mohamed Ali said: ‘I ain’t got no problem with them Viet Cong.’

Me, I have no problem with either Bharrat Jagdeo or Alistair Routledge or Exxon.  My problem is with the poverty of the many in this rich country: Indian, Black, Indigenous, and Mixed (IBIM).  If IBIM sounds like some grand American bank, start thinking again.  IBIM is the people’s bank in Guyana that is bankrupt: no money in the vault, which is what IBIM Guyanese encounter when they check their purses and their pockets.

Poverty in a country, brothers Barry and Ali, with the biggest GDP universally.  Is that what Guyanese are desecrated for when they speak to these truths on the radio, and when they write about such things in the paper, Brother Jagdeo?  Is this why the mighty arsenal of the PPP is unleashed-analysts, attack dogs, armadas of weavers and spinners, and an assembled host on social media-to bluff, then bruise, and last batter those waving pickets and pens at the injustices roaming at will in this gloriously rich land?  Oh, and one more thing, my Guyanese frater: what’s the purpose of the physical surveillance presences, which makes me wonder about the technological ones?

The more that this wayward and rowdy brother of mine attacks, the more he gives himself away.  Why?  Why is he so petrified?  Why is he so petulant and truculent and strident?  When he does so to camouflage the tortured paths he walks, all that he does is tip his hand and give himself away.  People with nothing to hide, have nothing to defend.

Yes, my brother Bharrat, the path chosen [“the road is long with many a winding turn”] has led us to here, this place of poverty and Guyanese stripped to the bones by their anguish.  By leadership stubbornness and leadership obtuseness.

Unlike the Hollies and their song, the multitudes of poor, left behind, misused Guyanese do know where the road leads.  They live it.  While there are platoons here and there in Guyana that have profited beyond imagination from the national patrimony, the local mass has had to deal with nothing but parched grass.

For these reasons, I have appointed myself to be the keeper of my brother, and it is a heavy duty I take seriously.  Come what may, regardless of what others say.  I will be the one who enlightens him (Uncle Ho).  His petticoat is falling, his slip is showing.

It is off his buttocks now bared before the world, and in those two rosiest of cheeks: incomparable and unprecedented corruption among his cronies, and chronic poverty across the board among the Guyanese people.  I will gift the PPP and Brother Jagdeo the corruption machinery and its rich practices, in momentary deference and acceptance of local political culture.

But I will be forever diminished and doomed, if I give the same pass for the poverty that assails the rank-and-file man and woman of Guyana.  I just cannot with all this oil wealth present.  I refuse to when Exxon makes all these official (and hidden) billions, and Mistah Alistair Routledge presents his lovely verbal pancakes.  I think donut may be more accurate, since his stories have a big hole in the center.

Billions of barrels, millions of words written globally, and almost three quarter million Guyanese live in despair.  Rich decadence at the levels that Dr. J operates, and economic damnation below the upper middle; it is where the bulk of Guyana are forced to deal with, and hang on to, life’s inequities and savageries by their fingernails and a prayer.  This cannot continue.  This must not be allowed to stand.

“So on we go

His welfare is my concern

No burden is he to bear

“We will get there…”

“If I’m laden at all

I’m laden with sadness

That everyone’s heart

Isn’t filled with gladness…”

He ain’t heavy, he is my brother.  Bharrat Jagdeo is, and I will carry him.  That journey has already begun.

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• Bharrat Jagdeo, black, Brother Jagdeo, Indian, Indigenous, schools of America

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