Dear Editor,
Two bits of news I received within hours caused me to ponder on the question of exiles. First was news of the sad passing of a good, gracious genuine Guyanese lady, the late Ms Juanita Thijs who passed away in Canada on Friday night. Juanita was an extraordinary person of energy possessing lofty principles with a passion for the welfare of family and the community in which she lived while in Guyana. She and her husband John left Guyana some years ago to settle in Canada for a better life where she further nurtured her children, John (Jr) and Marlyn, showing them the path of morality, rectitude and service. Her guidance went beyond the narrow confines of the family and extended to the society as a whole.
The other news I received was from Mr Ernest Vandyke, one of our top sculptors who has over the years produced both carvings and other works of art, which had become a source of pride to Guyanese all over the world, all because of the high quality of his craftsmanship. I asked him about his involvement for Carifesta X, and he smiled and said that he would be migrating permanently to North America before that event.
I felt saddened and reflected upon the haemorrhage affecting our country due to our talented and experienced citizens being forced for one reason or the other to leave. The stories we can tell to our children of lasting interest must be about death, exile and love. These continue to be significant signposts of humanity.
In one of our major books, the Holy Bible, we are told in the very first book of the Old Testament how, after disposing of the serpent, Adam and Eve – Gen. 3:23 – “Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken.” So from antiquity we have had to deal with exiles.
We are told of Noah who was transported in the Ark from the land he knew and drifted off in his craft with his wife, sons, their wives and a pair of each animal until his vessel miraculously settled on Mt Ararat. Then we read of Abraham’s eviction when he had to leave his place of birth and go to a strange land that God would show him.
The question one needs to ask, particularly after the hype of the 1992 elections, is, why should the phenomenon of exiles continue unabated? At a personal level, thanks to the administration’s policies of political bias, I have had to endure the exile of wife and daughters who in different ways were denied the opportunity to serve as they dearly desired to.
Exile, which for Guyana means tremendous loss of human skills, is unhappily aggravated by politics and, of course, human cravings for a better life of safety and comfort. But I suppose notwithstanding the propaganda, so long as they are bullies, and those who feel that the process of being elected to office gives them some divine right to control every facet of society, this condition will continue as we banish from our land people whose navel strings are buried right here, but who are not of the same kith and kin of the ruling elite. I suppose we can leave it to our poets, intellectuals, writers, artistes and calypsonians to capture the poignancy such as Mohamed, Dante, Cicero and Ovid did. History will record the flavour of the exiles.
But beyond that I hope that those who now manipulate the state apparatus would recognize the need to put in place policies that will arrest this movement. To accept that shared governance and good governance are cardinal to what democracy in the 21st century is all about, and move away from the apparent arrogance where they are convinced that an electoral victory, (secured more by race than by policy and competence) is sufficient for them to rule the roost. Such a shift will be for the general good of Guyana.
Finally, they must know as we have seen, as with the crime situation, once you use illegal or inappropriate methods as a solution, you open Pandora’s box, and as we see, they lose control as in the case of the phantom gangs.
These were my thoughts as I bid fond farewell to Ms Juanita Thijs and say ‘see you up north’ to Mr Vandyke.
Yours faithfully,
Hamilton Green JP
