Mentors make men and women strive for the extraordinary.
Whether it is Tiger Woods in golf, Venus and Serena Williams in tennis or Shivnarine Chanderpaul at cricket, master mentors make the difference between being mere ordinary sports players or fascinatingly extraordinary performers.
These three share a common mentor: their father. All of them became astonishingly extraordinary performers, conquering incredible obstacles on the world stage.
Chanderpaul practices his batting with discipline and diligence, but he became a great batsman, ranked 7th in the world today, because he had the good fortune of having a master mentor early in his life.
The deep practice, the master mentor, and the inner motivation to be a great cricketer (which we’ll deal with in next week’s column) guaranteed Chanderpaul’s place in history.
A nation develops to the extent that it fosters a mentoring society.
The developed world fosters such a mentoring society.
Although the Minister of Youth and Culture holds much of the responsibility for fostering such a national culture, we cannot look to government with its inept bureaucracy to solve our problems.
Like Chanderpaul, scores of Guyanese have risen from utter poverty to conquer great heights of achievement. We all could follow their path, despite government.
The individual in this knowledge age is supremely empowered.
Our tropical land full of green space and abundant water and healthy sunshine offers us a natural haven. If we believe in our human potential and strive to overcome the harshness of a hard world, if we refuse to see this society as useless, we could become extraordinary people.
But the young generation suffers from this lack of master mentors.
In this country, where are the seasoned, experienced Journalists mentoring the young? Where are the senior business leaders reaching out to a vibrant young entrepreneur class? Where are the older politicians teaching the young ones about ethical and moral public conduct? Where are the senior retired Judges who could mentor young lawyers? Where are the experienced religious leaders who could walk with the young and guide them into sound social responsibility?
We must foster a society that builds a master mentor mentality, a social environment where young people would find mentoring wherever they turn – in school, in community centres, in businesses, in churches.
As a young boy my Mom made sure I was surrounded with sound mentors – in Scouts, in Church and in the village. In the home, myself and my siblings learned from our parents how to conduct ourselves. We never heard swearing at home, and none of us grew up swearing, for example.
Master mentors make a huge difference in how life turns out. David de Caires, founder of the Stabroek News, mentored me into a sound Journalist, and I remember to this day his admonishing me that I am “too idealistic”.
I played chess with alternative energy expert Joseph O’Lall as he mentored me about life, even taking me to ballroom dancing classes in Georgetown. My high school friend, Deonarine Chand, and I would spend days at O’Lall’s house at Prashad Nagar talking to him.
He had studied in Germany, married a German lady, fathered a son who was in college in Florida, and dreamed of contributing an alternative energy grid to Guyana. He dreamed big. He mentored Chand and I into launching a TV production company, using his computer school property as offices.
Such mentors taught me life. Today I am grateful. As a young boy, my teacher in Primary School, Miss Lucky, taught me about prayer and spiritual living. At the lunch hour we had Bible study and prayer meeting in the classroom.
Does this society still have such master mentors?
I attended Central High School at D’urban and Smyth Streets. That whole Werk-en-Rust area in the 1980’s was quiet and safe and clean.
Three decades later the whole area is a social mess, with daylight robbery on the streets a common affair. That stretch bordered by Lombard Street to Smyth/Charles Street, and from Hadfield to Sussex Streets is now such a crime haven.
I interviewed an old Central High student recently, and he bemoaned the state of the school, including the complete destruction of the D’urban Street building. That building at the corner of D’urban and Smyth Streets housed a state-of-the-art Science lab, playfield and cricket ground, garden and classrooms that I remember with fondness.
Thieves in the community stole the entire structure – the wooden walls, zinc roof and concrete blocks. The land now lies naked and bare. Central High School, D’urban Street branch disappeared into the social chaos of that corner of Georgetown.
Who mentored the generation that grew up in that area over the past 30 years, to go into the night and rob their community of a historic building?
We lack this culture of master mentors. We suffer for it.
Master mentors do a simple thing. They look into the future and envision a possibility. Then they work to instil that future as a reality for the mentoree.
Chanderpaul’s father saw where Shiv could be in 2011 when he mentored him on the Atlantic foreshore 20 years ago. He saw that the boy could be a top ten world class batsman.
Who sees a future for the youth of Werk-en-Rust, Georgetown? Who sees a future of greatness for the young people of Leopold Street and Princes Street and the ghetto on Lombard Street? Who cares like Joseph O’Lall to open their house to young people searching for a place in the world?
Where are our master mentors?
A mentor is a coach. Want to win in life with so much passion and zeal that you find your mentor, your coach. And then become a mentor and a coach to someone else. Play life’s game for others to win. Only then could we build a great Guyanese society, one mentor at a time.
We have one such mentor among us in Hassan Mohamed, the cycle coach, whose cycling influence on my two brothers is immense.
This is what Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan said in their book, ‘The Three Laws of Performance’: “great coaching alters how the situation of the game (of life) occurs for the players, especially at the critical moments. The coach will say and do whatever is necessary to win the game”.
A master mentor creates an environment and a ‘playing field’ for extraordinary performance.
And to generate extraordinary citizens we need this society to foster such master mentors.
