By Alissa Trotz
Alissa Trotz is editor of
the Diaspora Column
We have just commemorated the third anniversary of the brutal and inhuman assault on the village of Lusignan that ended with the slaughter of eleven persons, five of them children. And in just over two weeks time we will mark the third anniversary of the murderous rampage which made its way to the riverain community of Bartica, leaving twelve men dead in its wake. This week we carry an older column that was first published on February 5th, 2008, and titled ‘Remembering Lusignan; Eusi Kwayana’s tribute.’ The sentiments expressed here continue to resonate today, and are offered as a tribute to the 23 fallen victims of those tragedies, their families, those injured and all Guyanese committed to unity, not division, in the face of such unspeakable horror and pain.
*****
It is now ten days since the murderous events that took the lives of five children, three women and three men, all Indian, in Lusignan. There has been an outpouring of sorrow and outrage in the media, over the internet and on the streets. Sadly, not even an event as horrific as this one has prevented some of us from taking sides. This week’s column is for Lusignan and for the numerous Guyanese who have stayed true to their first instinct to grieve with the village. It is also a response to the thoughtless, irresponsible and speculative statements that have been made by one side or the other, statements which will neither mourn nor heal.
Speaking at an art exhibition in Georgetown to mark the 25th anniversary of Walter Rodney’s assassination, Barbadian novelist George Lamming reflected on the life’s work of Eusi Kwayana: ‘One of the richest legacies he left for me was the example of his courtesy. Kwayana always met all his encounters with an unfailing courtesy. It is a virtue that is worth cultivating because it is a spiritual shield, courtesy, how to be courteous, whatever the status, whoever the person, whatever the nature of the situation. Courtesy should never be suspended, because it is the most reliable protection against the virus, the terrible virus of intolerance.’
The Oxford English Dictionary defines courtesy as ‘polite speech or action, especially one required by convention’. This is one of those cases where the dictionary got it utterly wrong. Lamming was most certainly not describing actions or language that hold up the status quo, one that in Guyana is increasingly and dangerously racially polarized. He was referring instead to the transformative power of gestures that challenge the status quo by crossing the divides that separate us.
Lamming’s interpretation of courtesy as a radical act came to mind when I read Eusi Kwayana’s letter to the Stabroek News (January 30th, 2008) in which he expressed shock and incomprehension at the killings. His first seven words said it all: ‘Born in Lusignan and grown in Buxton…’
This opening line is an extraordinarily profound and moving declaration of solidarity. Kwayana’s reputation as an elder of Buxton who has spoken out consistently on the crisis that community faces is well known. As Lamming noted, ‘Kwayana did not only belong to Buxton, but Buxton belonged to him, in the way that the skin belongs to the body that wears it.’ And yet, by letting us know that his navel string is (also) buried in Lusignan, Kwayana reminds us of the possibility of our shared humanity, whatever the status, whatever the race, whoever the person. It is courtesy that responds to the tragic events of last Saturday morning with the depth of true feeling that can only come with genuine, generous and unconditional identification. Courtesy asks for nothing in return. It simply gives. It does not offer sympathy with the right hand (I recognize your pain), and demand identification with the left (but you must – first – recognize my suffering too). Sympathy without expectation is the ultimate act of identification, and faith is the belief that the example will be repeated by the recipient and the observer. Perhaps not the next time. Or even the time after that. Perhaps not even in one’s lifetime. But it will follow. And that is enough and that is reason to live and code to consistently live by.
Eusi Kwayana also reminds us of another time, before the disturbances of 1961-1964 that displaced thousands of families and resulted in a village being thought or spoken of as African or Indian, its rich and complex histories of mixing and neighbourliness erased. By claiming Lusignan as the place of his birth, by standing with Lusignan as a proud African-Guyanese who belongs there and who feels the loss, Kwayana refuses both the media and popular descriptions of the community as well as the deadly logic that targeted it as an Indian village. And in this vein there are many Kwayanas. In fact, one of the proudest Buxtonians I have ever had the privilege of meeting is septuagenarian Rampersaud Tiwari (I call him pandit), a retired senior civil servant who now lives in Toronto but whose ancestral lands and heart remain in the Guyanese village he still calls home, a place where every week Indian women can be found selling fish to residents. Along the East Coast, I have met African women in Haslington who call themselves Enmorians and who see their Indian friends from Enmore, Indian women in Enmore and Better Hope who recall their lives in Victoria and Golden Grove and Plaisance. We have remained parts of each other, and we cannot continue to make the reality of our entanglement invisible by the narratives of separateness that threaten to bury us all.
The statement issued by Red Thread in the wake of the Lusignan massacre asks that we learn to recognize that a mother’s grief knows no race, no politics, no camp, only unspeakable loss and love. The bridge to our connected lives offered by Kwayana’s opening lines provides one answer we can aspire to, one to each other, beyond the petty politics of narrow ambition that profit from our division, that profit at our collective peril. Let us mourn with Lusignan as if we were all born there, and let us continue in that vein, for there can be no solution to the current crisis unless we are able to recognize ourselves in each other. This is the revolutionary and healing promise of courtesy, our best defence in the face of the virus of intolerance that George Lamming warned against, and it is needed now more than ever.