Dear Editor,
When I turned on my computer, accessed the independent dailies and read that the mindless violence that had plagued our nation over the past five years had wended its way to Bartica, my hopes for my country just withered and died.
Because Bartica, for me, had always represented an idyllic retreat away from the cultural and ethnic forts and ramparts that seem to make up the rest of Guyana. It had always represented something of a cosmopolitan microcosm of what Guyana should be, could have been, and maybe still could be, if we could ever get our act together. That vision today has been shattered by the realization that from Punta Playa to the Corentyne, our nation is being rent asunder because of mindless violence, and seemingly, a narcotic obsession with power among some, and its attendant craving to be the lone thousand-pound gorilla in the political cage.
Bartica used to be the place where every evening you would dress in your finest and wend your way down to the main street where a huge clock once stood in the middle of an intersection landmarked by the Police Station and Transport and Harbours Stelling. It used to be the place where the movie of the day arrived on the steamer of the day, and was shown the same night at the lone cinema obliquely opposite Maickoo’s and next to Smartt. It used to be the place where young men spent time at Joris drinking mauby and eating cake, and engaging in tantalizing ribaldry prior to taking in a show. It was the place where you could get the best stewed beef meal in Guyana from Aunt Ivy’s cook shop on Front Street.
Bartica used to be the place where the Khan Twins from Seventh Avenue became famous for their swimming prowess, and where John Willems in Risk It defeated all his opponents at the yearly regatta speedboat races. It used to be the place where the young and the not so young could exhibit their moves at the Barn Dance every Saturday Night. It used to be the place where young men recounted with awe, massive feats of strengths performed by the Earl Van Langs, the Cecil Tobins, the Tear Gas Simmons, and strove to build their bodies so that they could become as strong. Bartica used to be a place where none who lived there could ever imagine the tragedy of what occurred, taking place on that little land mass jutting out at a point where the Cuyuni and Mazaruni rivers confluence and empty into the Essequibo. Bartica used to be the place where you joined Gravesande’s or one of the other trucks for the 12-plus-hour hazardous journey to 111 miles Mahdia, Potaro. It used to be the place where miners took part time gigs cutting down and shipping greenheart trees on timber grants in order to build a stake to get back up into the mountains to seek their fortune. It used to be the place where Notre Dame football club in its day was as unbeatable as Michael Jordan’s Bulls, and where Fisher of the Spurs, with his bent foot, could bend it as good as Beckham. But most of all, Bartica used to be a real gorgeous mosaic of Guyanese peoples, blending and intermingling culturally with almost no break in the ebb and flow of the mixing.
There are insufficient words in my vocabulary to lucidly express my emotions vis a vis the massacre of innocents at Bartica. Suffice to say that my sympathies are unconditionally with those in grief and pain. I just wish that the nasty residue from the national political expression had bypassed or ignored Bartica completely. Bartica because of the interwoven interaction among its peoples used to be a source of hope that Guyana had a chance of grabbing a hold of sanity one day and riding it into reconciliation, peace and stability. Today that hope has all but disappeared, lost in the hail of bullets, the scent of blood, the aura of death, shattered bodies and immense human suffering and grief.
Maybe it is time to become realistically practical and examine all options that will provide a sense of security for all of us in and of Guyana. Maybe it is time to poll and examine each human grouping in order to determine what is it that they desire, and come up with a political structure that not only ends the expenditure in innocent lives, but allows people as groups to become the creators and administrators of their own destiny and security. Maybe it is time for us to decide if we are destined to live together. Maybe it is time for us to take a hard and honest look at ourselves, at our divided and convenient expressions of morality, at the conundrum and confusion that exists in our interpretation of due process and the rule of law, and of our terrorist/freedom fighter subjective formulations. A house divided against itself will never stand. It is obvious that this country has never been more divided amongst itself.
Yours faithfully,
Robin Williams
