And Purely Personal, After 18 years
Ironically, I’ll understand if readers turn to something else after just a minute or two of glancing at this.
Because today I’m bound to be Mushy Mawkish and Maudlin. Why? Well, the sentiment is derived from the fact that today, this working-man’s column is eighteen years old! The “anniversary” completes 18 years since Doreen and David allowed a non-lettered fellow to share his views in a newspaper that still towers above others in terms of journalistic integrity and standards, whatever its partisan position from time to time. I give thanks. But I’ll wax more personal in later paragraphs. And because I feel that drug-trafficking, cocaine-influenced economics, have compromised our morality and influence new values, I choose to re-cycle a favourite theme for this anniversary offering today.
You know my old-fashioned position by now: that quite normal, upright, religious (over-forty) citizens of this land (are forced to?) compromise whatever values they once held dear, whenever they buy from enterprises owned by drug lords or their surrogates; in events sponsored by the narco-trafficker’s and/or their younger relatives; whenever they even socialize at sporting or entertainment occasions with known suspects.
Guilt by association used to be a social (even legal) concept which could even be tested in a court of law. Frequently however, it’s the Court of Public Opinion which knew guilty parties and beneficiaries of criminal activity. Alas, in today’s Guyana – tell me not of other societies – Christian/Hindu/Muslim parents – staunch church-goers and willing professionals all – cannot affectively rebuke their savvy off-spring who understands compromising cave-ins, hypocrisy and contradictions, as their parents bow to the all –pervasive cocaine-inspired criminal control. There is the moral dilemma: “we can’t beat them, so turn blind eyes, or even join them”.
But we are ”religious” and still try to stand on some high “moral” ground. Cause we really can’t “stay home” to avoid contact with the drugs or its managers. Why, besides the now get-rich-quick syndrome where there is little “wrong” these days, even University graduates, job-challenged and vulnerable in their frustrated hopelessness, are potential “recruits”.
Discuss… 18 years: blowing my trumpet, quietly
Every January month-end I enjoy two anniversaries. This column marks eighteen non-stop years of publication. As I repeat annually, I claim no profundity just provocative comment, no intellectual excellence, just interesting insights.
Check objectively, you’ll realize that 18 years represent a record locally. Review honestly, you’ll find that the issue and/or prediction first appeared herein. Before development by the dozen or score of others who now abound. Even that was a worthwhile achievement.
The other anniversary is relatively easy to discover but “ordinary” though always looked forward to and welcome. By both me and my tiny family – and the fellas!
I now personalize and celebrate by doing two separate things. Firstly, ironically I present other people’s words – quotes from writers and editors who probably put over my views better than I could.
Stabroek News Editorial (Jan 17, 2011): “Why should the President and an apparently handpicked list of supporters, confidantes and the favoured be able to take up this land at the expense of the so many other worthies? This is certainly not a working class government. It is a two-tiered administration. One set of the land for the salt of the earth – i.e. Tuschen, Parfait Harmonie etc and the plum spots for those who least need it but are “with” the government.”
“I expect that we will all behave in a disciplined manner and with decorum as the party considers the nominees” – Gail Teixeira, Announcing her bid for nomination.
K N columnist: “As the PNCR is fully aware, it is not simply a political decision that has to be made; there are all kinds of legal and other technical ramifications to be undertaken before any real progress can be made on that question. But that is assuming that the ancestral lands problem is one of the concerns that the PNCR wants to solve before it participates?”
KN Editor Harris: “And so it will be that in Guyana, when the robots break down there would be no one to fix them, because they all refused to learn. Life would be chaotic and crime would rule the roost because instead of learning to work we would learn to prey on each other.”
Elder Eusi reminding us that we are all African: “True, science has held for some time now that we are all ultimately African descendants. Spencer Wells believes that he has demonstrated this through tracing the Y chromosomes in men in various places he considers significant. This can never be stretched to mean that historically developed communities have no right to their traditions, their history and the tasks bestowed on them by experience”.
An hysterical mother whose little son was allegedly sodomised by a teenager neighbour: “Everyone is telling me to take compensation because that’s how Guyana is … Justice will not be served due to the office the accused mother holds.”
And the fore-going was not any evidence of my journalistic laziness. The quotes represent one of my (column’s) beliefs – that wisdom does not reside within any one dude.
Ponder please:
*1) An Annan Boodram used Dr Hinds’ views this week, so I’ll pass up today my “People-of-African-Descent” queries. (Are some things really “better left unsaid?”)
*2) “His guts was hanging out…”, the cry of the wife who saw her Minnesota, USA-based husband seconds after he was gunned down on the Corentyne. The accused will be well-defended in a Court-of-Law. That’s the way it has to be, right?
*3) If they are going to assist Rupununi athlete Doretta Wilson, they must assist her parents too.
*4) My knowledgeable friends in cricket try to curfuffle me! Laundromats thru cricket? What the dickens is that??
*5) Available next week! A. A. Fenty’s book of proverbs – “A plate-A Guyana Cookup” And the CD Too!!
‘Til next week!
(Comments?allanafenty@yahoo.com)
