Within a month or so of returning home to live, I found myself in a well-known lawyer’s office in town to have a document notarized. I had met this gentleman about a year previously at a Guyanese function in Florida where I was playing with Tradewinds and where he and I had been featured speakers. So after the notarizing, we chatted about the Florida event – it had been a true Guyana celebration evening – and at one point, my lawyer friend turned to me with a quizzical smile on his face. “Boy, you’ve seriously come back to this godforsaken country?” Newly back here, I wasn’t confident I could challenge the tease, so I dodged the question, entertainer style, by saying, “Well it can’t be so godforsaken – you’re still here.”
Now, almost three years later, and with some back-home mileage under my belt, I met my lawyer friend briefly last week, and while I didn’t reopen the question I did remember the occasion. He may read this and come at me again, but this time I would have a more direct response.
Going in, I have to concede that the description “godforsaken” can properly be applied to Guyana. In fact, you don’t have to bring God into it; the ordinary man in the street would agree it is so. However, like most sound-bite descriptions, this one, true as far as it goes, does not go far enough. There are certainly a boatload of things wrong with this environment, in the widest possible sense, that we call Guyana, that make life difficult here, but unfortunately the complainers – and Lord knows we have them – all seem to be too busy rowing to notice that there are joyful and even uplifting aspects of life around us in the midst of the trauma. Admittedly subjectivity comes into play here, but I make no apologies for that; you choose your own subjectivity, and let me choose mine.
As much as I hate the garbage littering Georgetown, I treasure the coconut vendor I saw a few weeks ago on Irving Street who paused in the middle of cutting a coconut for me, to cut one for a beggar passing on the opposite parapet who hadn’t begged him for a thing. No words were spoken, either by giver or receiver; the vendor came back across the road, gave me a little smile and a shrug, and went on with his business. Whoever that vendor is, he’s the kind of man to be proud of, no matter in which country he resides. I say, thank God, we have him here.
I would also tell my lawyer friend about a woman known as Auntie Phil (her name is actually Philomena) who spends her days, and nights too, working a 5-acre farm in the Waini riverain area (allow me to pause here for emphasis) alone. Yes, alone. She hires extra help from time to time, but as a rule it’s Auntie Phil alone, battling the swampy conditions and the weeds, setting the plants, reaping the produce, while holding off the hordes of mosquitoes. If you know the Waini, you know this is ‘man wuk,’ but to Auntie Phil, who is a trained teacher with an impressive vocabulary, the farm is her life and she’ll laugh at the problems while frying moracut for you as the marabuntas hover. This lady is a modern day pioneer produced by this country – something to shout about.
I would remember to tell my legal beagle about walking down a street in town and being confronted by a girl about 10 or so, resplendent in corn rows, who told me with this huge grin, “Sign your picture.” It was a picture of me from an advertisement some place (Lord knows where she got it), and perhaps her parents had put her up to it, but there she was, full of ginger, and giving me a lift that lasted all day.
I realize most of the ‘good life‘ examples I’m giving you involve people, but in fact it is the quality of the people, their tolerances, their humour, their kindnesses, their verve that contribute most to the quality of the life you live, wherever you live, and in that sense I would argue God has been good to Guyana.
You see people all the time bubbling with life, but the cream for me was the young schoolgirl I saw on Sandy Babb Street near Vlissengen Road. Bouncing and laughing with her friends, I was stunned to see that she was moving on crutches; she had only one leg. The joy was pouring out of this child like a river; nothing was holding her back. I was so taken aback I pulled over and watched her making her way up the road – arms flailing, head bobbing, crutches moving.
Be aware of the problems here, look to resolve them, but keep the balance. We have the worst drainage system I’ve seen, but we have wonderful rivers and waterfalls. Okay, our beef can be tough, but we have the best pineapple in the world, I say again, in the world, and the best paynoos (if you don’t know what that is, check Cynthia Nelson’s cookbook), and the best mauby (not that vanilla stuff the Trinis hand you) and the sweetest prawns (notice I didn’t claim the biggest; just the sweetest).
With election in the air, yes we have seen some excessive behaviour, but we’ve also seen examples of substantial people offering themselves to serve, and in the midst of the yard talk we have heard some impressive speeches and some searching analysis.
And in that vein, notice the thorough job our Guyanese Gecom has pulled off. Detailed voting information has been in the newspapers on radio and television, on the website, on roadside signs and banners, and the volume of it in this election must be unprecedented. I was in a little hardware shop in Kitty buying paint last week, and with my change came the yellow Gecom flyer making sure that voters got it right. I’ve seen elections in several Caribbean countries; the organizers of ours here deserve a rose.
I’m running out of space here, but we have two trenchant newspapers, a cricket stadium to be proud of, and a rugby team that rules the region. If you’ve never seen it, I must mention the vista on the Lethem Road as you come out of the forest into the sunlight of that sprawling Rupununi flatland cradled by the Pakaraimas. We have serious problems, yes, but look around; we’re not so godforsaken, after all.
