Dear Editor,
The nation is in the middle of the season of Advent, signalling the approaching close of another tough year in the republic.  Advent: fears and dreams; but, above all else – hope.  Indeed, it is a severe hardship for many in Guyana to subscribe to hope amidst the grimness of their circumstances.

Many are those who listen angrily to the milk drinkers who grow fulsome in their magnification of the meaningless, and with which the man in the street cannot identify.  The air is awash with enthusiasm over vibrancy, climatology, and promised prosperity.  Welcome to the brave new world of a Guyana poised to race into the unknown.  Such is the ethos of the calcium fortified favoured and privileged few, even as they encourage the multitudes of those at the bottom to “bear yuh chafe… things gon get bettah.”

But to this same many in this the season of hope, the reality is an agony more reflective of the pathos of society writ large, bereft of the basic subsistence of the day, and where a hardscrabble existence is all they know.  Too many are the stories of proud individuals – and communities – locked in a daily battle with schooling and feeding and sheltering.  These are the ones without opportunity for government largesse, corruption flows, criminal proceeds, or overseas remittances.  They cannot partake with the resplendent and opulent few in singing paeans of progress.  For these citizens, hope is not a spring in the breast, but a trickle that can be excruciating and enfeebling.  The despair is etched in faces, obvious in the resigned slump of shoulders, and evident in the drag of feet and the rising resentments of the oppressed yearning for relief.

Hope has slipped from the ramparts of the mind, and fled stealthily from the consciousness of the day.  The relentlessly glowing releases do nothing to assuage distress.  It is like telling Nigerians how much oil wealth they have; they just do not feel it or taste it.  Or more graphically, saying that air travel is the safest; except it is not so for those who become a statistic representing the departed.

Yet, ironically, it is hope even though diminished that sustains – it is all that remains to confront the challenges that trudge through each day.  Truly, it is the same hope of the ages, and a promise born two millennia ago, in the saving belief that nothing lasts forever, that tomorrow will be a better day, and that change will come.  Oh yes, it will.

Hope is the one defining and enduring aspect of this time of the year.  Many still believe enough to dare to hope and to commit to doing so.   Many will commit even in the face of the hoarding and recycling of wealth within the sanctum sanctorum.  For there is the hope that the moneychangers and their desecrations will be upended to usher in a restoration of something better, something not seen before.  Hope must not depart, it has to remain.  And it must do so amidst the tumult and chaos waiting impatiently in the wings, and just below the surface of an artificial calm.

Yes, it is all that is there, to carry through another day, and which to greet whatever the dawn of a new year will bring.  Hope in the face of adversity, before the jackboots of arrogance, and deep in the soul amidst the seasons of our discontent.

Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall