I’m driving up to a house on a side road up the East Coast. There are two approaches to the place, both full of potholes. One approach can take two-way traffic, but it’s a long route. The other approach is a very narrow track, bush on either side, wide enough for only one car, but it’s much shorter and fewer potholes, so I head for that one. As I turn in, there is a car parked in the middle of the track blocking the way. There’s somebody sitting in the car but he doesn’t move a muscle. I should have blown my horn, right? Instead, I backed up, turned around and went back through the longer route. My wife says, “Some people are so inconsiderate, eh?”
That episode crystallized in my mind one of the things I’ve noticed living in Guyana again. It may not strike someone coming down here for a two-week holiday, doing the rushing around, and heading back out, but if you’re in place here for months on end it begins to emerge: we have largely lost our consideration for others.
Of course, I’m comparing. My reference point is the Guyana I grew up in, where that grace towards others was part of the way of life, part of your upbringing. As a teenager at Vreed-en-Hoop, I remember my mother repeatedly preaching the lessons of respect for elders, listening to other opinions, not “making yourself a nuisance,” not keeping people waiting, having good manners, not “laughing at somebody less fortunate than you,” and, above all, not having your eyes on something that did not belong to you; if you think about it, all traits that exemplify consideration for others.
Now you can overdo this consideration-of-others thing to the point of being obsequious in your demeanour or of accepting behaviour that is demeaning towards you, as was the case in the colonial days. I’m not talking about that kind of excess. I’m talking about the consideration of others, certainly among family, but also between complete strangers, that used to be part of life here. It was a salient aspect of this culture, and it has declined.
I remember riding on a full bus on the West Coast and my mother’s gentle nudge to “get up and give that lady your seat” when a female passenger came on. Visiting New Amsterdam by train as a youngster, with our little string band from Vreed-en-Hoop (the Henry Brothers and I), we were met with that Berbice hospitality and ended up having to eat four dinners on a single night – including mutton curry twice. We struggled through it; even with a belly about to burst, you couldn’t hurt people’s feelings by refusing the food.
While you will certainly find instances of it, that kind of consideration for others, including persons outside your close circle, is definitely on the wane in Guyana. Admittedly, we live in a more hectic time, often in a rush, often coping with the stresses our parents never had to deal with, but even given the reality of those influences, it is sad to encounter this kind of disconnect among Guyanese that seems to be affecting the majority now.
A few weeks ago, on a Saturday morning, I was in Nigel’s; okay, bad time to be there, but I needed only one item, and they’re the only place that stocks it, so I took the chance. The place was like Irving Street on Mash Day. The cashiers were jammed up, dealing with full shopping carts. I go to the head of a line and say, “Excuse me, I have just one item. Can I go ahead of you?” The lady I approached told me, “Nah. I been here long.” I tried another line and got a short, “Sorry.” I gave up after the third one just gave me a shake head. I joined the pharmacy check-out line (no shopping carts there) where two guys ahead of me were arguing about who was first in line.
People in motor vehicles exhibit some of the most worst examples of unconcern – cutting in and out without a by-your-leave; barrelling through red lights; speeding past pedestrians at crosswalks – but it’s there in other places as well, as in sales staff in stores who don’t speak to you but communicate by hand signals or shakes of the head, or grunts.
I went into a department store looking for a particular item. The receptionist sitting at a desk, one hand propped on her cheek, was reading a paperback. I asked for the item. She didn’t raise her eyes from the page. “Buddy mi ain’t know fuh tell yuh wheh fuh fin’ duh.” She turned the page.
Mind you, I would have to concede there are exceptions. Like the minibus conductor who got out on Vlissengen Road, held up his hand to stop traffic, and shepherded an elderly lady safely across the road. (You don’t need to reread that sentence; I did say “minibus.”) Or the young sales clerk in Lens on Sheriff Street who secured the cell phone I had left there and handed it to me with a big smile when I went looking for it the following day. Or the lady battling with a farm all by herself in the Waini (if you think that’s easy, you don’t know the Waini), who put aside her chores to fry fresh moracut for us and insisted we lie down on her bed – the only bed in the house – while she cooked. Certainly those people are around, and they’re a blessing – and of course the farther you go from Georgetown you seem to find more of that congenial long time reaching out – but they are simply the exceptions proving the rule.
Guyana was once a country where no driver would even think of sitting in a car blocking other cars; now they do it all the time and you have to drive around them. Long ago, if by some lapse it did occur, you can be sure some other person would pull him up with a simple, “You have to move; you’re blocking people.” I know my mother, and other mothers of that time, would have been all over that like ants over honey.
I don’t know what happened to parents like those. Maybe they’ve been changed by circumstance, and by the more self-centred mores of this modern time; maybe they’re too busy now with this faster life we live; maybe they’ve been hardened by a hard life; maybe many don’t live here any more.
Whatever the case, we could sure use some of them now to help arrest the decay. There was a time, travelling the region, when you would often hear Guyanese described as the most hospitable people in the Caribbean. I have my doubts that we can still make that claim today.
