Things that amuse, alarm also  

Nov 15, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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…Hard Truths 

By GHK Lall 

Kaieteur News-A different note is being struck today.  A lighter one, which has its serious sides.  Passing by, looking on, listening occasionally, there are these situations from everyday Guyanese life that have become inseparable aspects of the domestic norm.  Many now take them for granted.  I don’t.  For there could be so much more than what meets the eye.

When was the last time that a vehicle was seen that was not as black as the deep inside of Guyana’s jungles?  Cars, SUVS, small trucks, buses, are all sporting some degree of tint.  Dark tint.  Impenetrable tint.  Private owned vehicles and public ones owned by the State are heavy presences in the national caravan.  Sure, the sun is scorching, so there is that consideration, helps to dull the unrelenting and unforgiving glare a teeny bit.

If the skin can’t get much by way of relief, then the eyes will take whatever they could get.  On the other hand, the mischievous part of me ponders a question.  Are there so many Guyanese who operate in the open, but are criminals behind those tints?  How is it that so many find it necessary to seek the layered protection offered by the darkest tints to be found this side of the Atlantic?  What do they all have to hide?  Who are they hiding from: the police?  The loan shark?  What about once friendlier private lenders?  The windows never come down.

Nor do the Guyana Police Force seem to be unduly troubled?  Have those rules also been put in storage, and also with a thick wrapping of the right colour tint?  Indeed, I readily acknowledge that Guyana is a thoroughly corrupt country, which means many people likely guilty of one white collar felony or another, if not dozens of them.  There are tints for protection and privacy.  But of this, let there be neither quibbling nor quarrel: tints could also serve the purposes of evasion and condoning of criminality.  Now that acting Commissioner of Police, Mr. Clifton Hicken has put the Leonora sound situation to sleep, with an able assist from Attorney General Nandlall, I would recommend that he turns his precious time and attention to the tint condition.  To put it flatly, if I were commissioner of police (of anything), I would be insulted by all those vehicles parading as though they are hearses going about the business that funeral parlours do.

At last check, they still dealt in death, so that makes sense for the blinds and other dark screening upholstery.  Darkness (getaway cars) and death have long been brothers under the skin.  And when official runaway corruption is placed on the scale, now the first glimmers of understanding arrive through the clouds about the need, the insistence, that there be this proliferation of tints on vehicles.  I think that tints are as good a defence as can be excavated relative to the right not to incriminate oneself.  For the edification of friend and foe alike, I don’t drive a tinted vehicle (don’t even own one).  There is nothing to hide, which facilitates two developments.  First, I can express any clean, sharp thought, whatever conscience dictates, before Excellencies Ali, Jagdeo, Nandlall and others.  Second, it gives them and their people ample opportunity to target me.

Next, has oil replaced blood in Guyanese heads?  Haven’t they heard about global warming?  Do they not know about climate change?  So, will somebody do a favour and explain why vehicle windows are up at 5 in the morning and never goes down, while air conditioner are blasting at high levels?  Vehicle air conditioners at all hours and not boom blasters.  It seems that Guyanese have developed a permanent allergy to fresh air, and the open air.  It’s not only Exxon flaring into the atmosphere with uninhibited abandon.  Guyanese are busy making their contributions.  Somebody just whispered that I must not forget carbon sink.  But because this country’s leaders have already flushed themselves down its pipes, doesn’t mean that regular citizens must play follow the leader.  Guyanese are smarter than this, and how smart is about to be highlighted.

It is dawn on any workday of the week, and there they are.  The only people moving with energy and determination on the streets are foreigners.  Venezuelans.  Brazilians.  Men and women in small clusters.  I would know that quickness and firmness of step, that dedicated walking, anywhere in the world.  It is an immigrant’s one.  Hustle and bustle.  The hunger and fire in the belly.  Ah, the good ole days of Manhattan and Boston and all over the world, if I recall well.  Where are the Guyanese workers?  They are still in bed, fooling themselves that they are South America’s Kuwaitis, with armies of hardy economic migrants to do all the heavy lifting for them.  Oil has taken over local heads, introducing a level of complacency that is both reckless and dangerous.

Too many Guyanese are not lethargic about getting up and going alone.  Almost all are lethargic about manifesting the passion that is part and parcel of the inheritors of a great natural resource patrimony.  The expectation is that the benefits of ownership will come without a finger lifted.  The foreigners flocks and Guyanese sit back.  With the comfort of a fat and lasting bankroll to their names, all this would be amusing.  Since that’s still a slippery, shifty dream, this is among the things that are alarming.

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

(Things that amuse)

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• buses, cars, Guyana’s jungles?, small trucks, SUVS, Things that amuse

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