National mourning

Jul 23, 2026 News

Editorial…

(Kaieteur News) – All Guyanese who still have some level of humanity in them, some feeling, join in this period of national mourning. A country gathers itself to mourn its dead. Rightly mourn the momentary nature of life, the swiftness with which it can depart. When the MV Barima went to its resting place, we at this paper remember that ancient saying: ‘tomorrow is promised to no one.’ We mourn the dead with anguished lips, hearts rent with disbelief. The MV Barima is not a bad dream. The fall of the MV Barima and much more than 100 falling also are about life’s harsh lessons. Now enshrined are the brutal wounds inflicted on the living, through the injustices that men afflict the living with. While we mourn the dead officially and publicly, we also mourn for the living. For theirs is the struggle to continue. Theirs are the trials that fill nightmares and, which all too often, arrive suddenly to add to the burdens of the day.

Guyana national grief is not in honor of its war dead. Grief, in today’s context is for more than the commuters stuck on a boat that did not make it anywhere close to journey’s end. It is also for the endless wars waged by those with the power, money, and other resources of this country in ruthless efforts to runover others, force them into craven submission. Grief that all those assets are assembled to defeat the people of this country. They could have been put to better use and by many a rich margin for the benefit of the people. Few are those rolling in laughter. Many are those gripped in their new role as mourners. Venal and craven men, a cast of submissive, supporting, women, have seen to it, will have it no other way in Guyana.

The surviving family of those claimed by Neptune will have their hands held, their shoulders squeezed. A kerchief extended, a shoulder on which to cry. There is the smell of blood in the air. Blood has to be on the hands of those who shed a tear politely. Blood which provokes quiet, private weeping. Why did this have to be? It did not have to happen. It should not be happening, not in this Guyana of which so much is spoken in such rich, fresh, terms. Adults cutoff in the prime of their lives. Children lost before they got started on their own walk of life. The pinch is enough to bring a scream. How long will the people of this country have to be sacrificed so that others can dance on their graves? How many more to suffer from this fate in a place so richly blessed?

In this time of mourning, of remembering a boat past its prime and its time, there are not even bodies to bury. In mourning, there is no closing of the window of grief in order for the pain to be kept at bay. There is a deadly spirit that roams the close quarters and far corners of this country. It thirsts for victims: young and old, male or female, it does not matter. All are consumed, all can be victims.

What words, what presence that arrives with eyes averted and hands outstretched, can comfort when pain drips like an acid on the soul? Three days of national mourning for likely fifty-three times more victims. For an all too short, an all too embittering, outpouring of public grief. And when this period of haunting national mourning is over, there is still that other more waking and sleeping condition to face all alone. Private mourning that knows no rest, that does not take a day off. Private mourning that reminds at every turn, every pause, of what used to be. Private mourning to rekindle who is now gone without so much as farewell.

In a crowd, in the loneliness of an empty domestic setting, what is there to say to a grieving mother? Who knows how she feels, can ever understand how her heart quivers, how grief drenches her soul? National mourning will soon to be over. There is then that other horror. A chair not filled; a bed not occupied. A song that will never be sung. We at this paper weep for the victims and families of the MV Barima. They died too young. We weep for all Guyanese. May we all grow old and grow better than we have in the past and present.

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Editorial, MV Barima, national mourning

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