Dear Editor,
One year ago, January 30, 2006, my beloved partner, journalist and advocate, Ronald Waddell was gunned down as he entered his car parked outside our home. It is no mystery to most that neither shooters, paymasters, political and criminal facilitators have had to face what passes for justice in Guyana.
Those who congratulated themselves on their ‘tolerance’ toward him or targeted him as the ‘mastermind’ of African Guyanese rebelliousness or were gleeful at his murder may well feel his violent death was justly deserved. God knows.
We do, after all, live in a country where a frighteningly large proportion of adults defend, promote and/or employ various forms of violence against children and vulnerable youths. Normal human development behaviours of searching for truths, living truths taught, and speaking truth to power are generally considered offences deserving of corporal punishment – at any age, under any conditions, nurturing or oppressive.
Ronald’s body (the corpse) was consumed by the fire of the funeral pyre and his soul, his eternal spirit, liberated. The bodies and souls of our young freeze and burn, freeze and burn, freeze and burn. Just ask. Just listen. Just look. Just see.
My uncompromising solidarity with our children and young people vexes many. Especially my view that behind every problem child, there are at least two adults with serious deficiencies. Hurting children, for any reason whatsoever, can never be right. Hurting them to make them better is sheer madness. Our deformed and deranged children do not end up as adults in mental asylums. They are in our ‘disciplined’ services. They are in positions of authority in homes, schools, faith and governmental organizations. They are in our jails and at large in our communities. Our children – the good, the bad and the ugly – do not make themselves. We do.
I asked people to do three things in remembrance of Ronald – ideas that came to me because they were among the things he did while alive. So, respect to those who made and kept a covenant with children and young people to act only with love and respect towards them. Respect to those who supported a nursery school and assisted in the well being of its teachers and children. Respect to those who gave blood or organised the giving of blood. You are truly, lions of Guyana. And respect to those who are doing other forms of ‘lion work’.
With the generous help of three artists (they know who they are) I have today launched a range of ‘Lion of Guyana’ t-shirts. The t-shirt project will be managed, not by me, but by Ras Richard Taylor, Culture Shop, Stall #63, Bourda Market (tel 225-9678). Please contact him for retail or wholesale (for groups or income earning) orders. Please get or give t-shirts if you are, or know of someone who is a Lion of Guyana. If you know someone, or some group of youngsters, who can grow in stature by manifesting the lion in themselves, please mobilise them with Lion of Guyana t-shirts. The horrible labels, not names, by which our young people are called, and call themselves (Nasty Man, and Not Nice are two that come readily to mind) is very troubling. The HIV/AIDS epidemic should have educated us on those deeply damaging effects of sigma and the discrimination it engenders.
A group of lions, I learnt in primary school about 55 years ago, is called a “pride of lions.” I close by inviting persons who are distressed over the depths to which Guyana has sunk to organize community prides of lions – young and old, he lions and she lions – who can teach and learn and play and feel and take pride in self, community and country. Jah Rastafari!
Yours faithfully,
Bonita Harris
