After well over a year living in Guyana again, I am often asked, “What’s the difference between here and outside?” It’s an impossible question to answer objectively, precisely because almost all the ingredients are subjective. It is a matter of individual choice, and what I find valuable in Guyana, or in Toronto where I lived for 25 years, may mean nothing to another person, and vice versa, but assuming you just asked me the question here are some random responses.
Living in North America you take good roadways, clearly marked, as a given. In Guyana, sometimes in the heart of town, I’m still surprised by how bad some residential roads are. What is even more disturbing is the frequent absence of stop signs, and the almost total lack of one-way indications. On my very first day of driving here, I turned into a completely unmarked one-way street. Ten feet into the road, someone yelled at me and I stopped. Despite my explanations, a policeman on the corner told me, “If you don’t know the one-way streets, you should drive with somebody who knows them. You will be charged.” He made me sit in the car on the roadside for half an hour. After a policewoman intervened, he eventually let me go, but I was furious.
On the other hand, highway driving outside can be a somewhat clinical experience. Driving here, you encounter vigorous horse carts, charming roadside vendors, some amazingly old vehicles, motorcyclists calmly transporting 8-ft long brush cutters, grazing cows, and, on Vlissengen Road, goats on the way home. In North America you’re driving through landscape; in Guyana you’re manoeuvring through life. You have to be alert, though.
In Guyana, as well, the human interaction on the street is wonderful. Walking, or even driving, you’re privy to some of the most fascinating personal information (“Yuh tink is wan time ah went to de docta ‘bout dis ting?”) or news about a looming confrontation (“Ah tell she she mout too hot; nex time she talk to mi so is wan box she gettin’.” ) and people you don’t know will frequently walk up to you and launch into the most elaborate conversations – I’m talking about total strangers. You have to stand and listen and often laugh at the tirade. Conversely, you step into an elevator in Toronto; it makes 10 stops; in all that time, no one speaks.
Outside, there are occurrences of personal violence, but not with the frequency we have here. So many altercations here end with loss of life, and particularly noticeable, compared with away, are the egregious excesses directed at women. It is truly one of the things that distresses me most about our behaviour – the atrocities we inflict on our women – and in any comparison between life outside and here, that aspect would stand out. It is abhorrent.
On the other hand, most Guyanese families seem to have a very caring attitude to older members of the family as their needs increase with age. Outside, it is common to see children consigning mothers and fathers, with no medical problems, to nursing homes. Even people of moderate means in Guyana continue to find ways to accommodate their old people in a loving way.
Residential dwellings in North America often tend to have a sameness about them. In suburban developments, among several dozen houses, there will be 5 or 6 models; in Guyana no two houses in a neighbourhood look alike. It’s a striking difference. While I admit that many of our buildings suffer from neglect (there are some shocking examples of buildings in good neighbourhoods that really should be demolished), the architecture of this country is both interesting and varied, and in its churches Georgetown truly possesses some of the most beautiful, even uplifting, public buildings one can find in a city anywhere. Yes, they need attention, and in some cases repair, but the basic structures are a treasure.
Also, the design of our buildings, developed over the years to deal with hot weather, and long hours of daylight, has given us a residential architecture that keeps us naturally connected to the outside. The copious use of windows and verandahs, our wonderful inclination for bottom-house spaces made for living, instead of just parking cars, is not something you see in the developed world. There is a oneness with nature here; overseas, the feeling is often one of enclosure sometimes going as far as confinement.
For someone like me, a bit of a handyman, going into a hardware store in North America and coming out with everything you need, is automatic. Living here again, and having to make four stops for the same items, I appreciate the difference. It takes getting used to. Mind you, with help from my friends at Crawlers I’m getting better at finding stuff, but it takes getting used to
Here’s a big one. Unless you live here, you can’t get the big picture. The media, like media everywhere, by their nature, will give you one slant: the shock stuff, the scandal, the tragedy. The examples I listed previously, you’ll never see that in the press. You won’t always see what I refer to as “the bright spots”. This past Saturday at the opening of the new GBTI office in Kingston, I referred to some of them; the striking new Hope Beach Primary School; the recent Gizmos and Gadgets building in town (I misspoke and said Hits & Jams); the new GBTI headquarters; the Mekdeci warehouse in Happy Acres. You won’t have that information. Living outside, you tend to have a generally negative view of Guyana. Living here you get better balance.
Another big minus for me is the lack of balanced discussion on major issues of the day on our television programmes. The kind of informed back and forth, with persons of opposing views, that we are exposed to on Al Jazeera or CNN, to name two, is one of the features of a developed society that we sorely need here. In those deliberations, with two or more participants presenting arguments based on differing views, a better understanding of the issues often emerges. In Guyana, whether it’s ethnic voting, Amaila Falls, the Hope Canal, the Supenaam stelling, we invariably get 30 minutes of completely polarized positions on these fascinating subjects. We lack balanced public discussion on major issues, but in GT, so it go.
Finally, another big difference: the East Coast breeze; nothing like that outside.
