Best laid plans: Who would believe

May 20, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – It was that towering Scottish giant of verse and rhyme, Robert Burns, who introduced the world to the profoundness of “the best laid schemes of mice and men…” When reminiscing on how that applies personally, headshaking accompanies the mystery of it all. Follow this journey.

When the aircraft taxied away from John F. Kennedy International a few years back, the thinking was that I had wiped the dust of America from my feet, moved on to more tranquil, rustic settings, and could devote time to volunteering and writing. Well, there is writing, but not of the kind that was envisioned, and in torrents that cause men in high places to fidget in their sleep, haunted by nightmares, and greet their day with dread.

They sense heavy shadows following them, hear footsteps when there are none. Ah wukking pun dem, scramblindeh minds. Like I said, the wrongs that men do constantly remind them during their lifetimes, their quiet moments, of which there are none. Hear those hungry children crying. Hear the mothers cursing and calling down the wrath of God on the ungodly and unconscionable in this country.

When I left America, one of my first thoughts was that I am done dealing with Americans, save for the occasional checking-in and consulting with the brothers at the US Embassy and Consulate. Little did I know, could have imagined in my most expansive dreams that this Guyana of mine would become the center of the universe. A country around which the suns of heaven go out of their way and make a special orbit in awed homage. I hope I have that right and it is not the other way around.

Chalk it up to advancing years. See I can make fun of myself, not think too highly of myself. I encourage local Excellencies and PhDs and JDs and MDs and MPs and SCs to take a page out of this book. It is cowheel soup for the soul. But I digress. Imagine long lost, long ignored and long ridiculed Guyana now the toast rolling off tongues on golf courses and old money clubs favored by WASP bluebloods and the Jewish and Oriental aristocracies.

If the left out-the others in colored royalty-felt slighted, please accept that no offense is meant. But here is Guyana plunked in the middle of the mighty Essequibo by way of the Atlantic, and a fellow named Nicolas Maduro coming up with all these bright ideas about who owns what and how much of it.

It is that old saying coming true in the worst way: win the lotto, and there are more friends and family than all the people ever encountered before.
With a friend like Maduro, who in their right minds would want another one of like kind. May I have the pleasure of introducing Mr. Alistair Routledge…. If I didn’t have a true friend in Jesus, it would have been the doghouse first, then the jailhouse, and last the Big House, for me. For the edification of sluggish natives, the Big House is American slang for Death Row. Yeah, if they had their way, they would hustle to electrocute people like me, simply for speaking and writing about what is really going on here. Not as Their Royal Majesties Bharrat Jagdeo and Irfaan Ali and Alistair Routledge (and their stable of thoroughbreds) say. But as the wretched of Guyana’s earthweeps to anyone that would listen.

In one of my conversations with the Big Boss upstairs, the courage was summoned to lodge a complaint. Thanks for the oil, skipper chief. But why punish Guyanese twice with Venezuela’s Maduro on one side and Exxon’s Routledge on the other? How can that ever be fair, a balancing of the scales for all the riches given to this Magnificent Province? If anyone harbored the idea that I disrespect Exxon from time to time, they should absorb what I just did.

In place of America’s Routledge, I subbed Exxon. It is because Exxon is bigger and better and badder than America. To be frank, I am feeling my way around in figuring out which one of the two is worse: Venezuela or Exxon? Forget Maduro and Routledge. With the residual respect that I can manage, they are a dime a dozen; where they come from, a thousand more could be found, are panting to take their places. Like Moses said to Pharoah: don’t mess with me, Mr. Bigmouth. Let my people go, buddy.

Now look at me in my silver years in a country floating on oil, and a bed to sleep on that is filled with snakes. It is true that some people are a magnet for trouble, and I happen to be one of that notorious (I will take illustrious) crowd. Now I am pincered between Ali and Jagdeo on the left, and Routledge and that phantom of the opera, Excellency Nicole D. Theriot, on the right. Talk about invisibility and inaudibility, and it is Excellency Nicole D.

When oil came up to Guyana from the ocean depths, Guyanese sunk down to the ocean floor and took its place. Davey Jones locker is where still hopeful Guyanese count the cash imagined heading their way. What a country! What a nation of superhero leaders! What the hell am I doing here? I don’t think Guyanese really want to know. They have enough troubles already, as it is.

(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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• Hard Truths by GHK Lall

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