In a recent conversation with Godfrey, amidst the multitude of evocations that continually cascaded out of his extraordinary memory, he told me about bird-whistling competitions and donkey-cart racing in Guyana long ago, and described to me the hundred and one manifestations of that condition of bewitched infatuation in a man or a woman called typee. I urged him to do extended Nostalgias on all these subjects and he promised he would get around to it. He never will. I am unbearably hurt by the death of my friend and devastated also by how much the nation has lost in the passing of this absolutely unique chronicler of Guyana’s rich social history. He has gone leaving behind a thousand golden threads unwoven into the tapestries which were already making him celebrated.
Godfrey’s Nostalgias entrancingly open windows on Guyana’s long-forgotten past. When his book of these unique vignettes appeared four years ago I welcomed it as follows:
“It is truly a classic of its kind – a recapturing of vivid memories, bringing the past astonishingly to life again in a way which will delight those who knew those days, instruct future generations and also enlighten serious scholars of social history and preserve forever the wonderful days and exploits and fun and excitement and humour and games and more of a whole era in a country’s life. You have done a great service. You deserve praise and thanks and honours. And it is good to think that there are other volumes of Nostalgias waiting to be published in the future. This will be your life’s masterpiece – a five-volume “Remembrance of Things Past.”
If Godfrey’s many friends here and in the diaspora were to be canvassed it would be discovered that he was working on scores of projects – some just more of his famous Nostalgias, some major historical investigations, all precious. Not long before he died I spoke to him about a project close to my own heart – the compilation of the histories of all sports in Guyana. All of them, as well as the great clubs, deserve to have their stories written. I was going to suggest to the Ministry of Sport, the Sports Council and the Guyana Olympics Association that they commit themselves to such a project and for this purpose recruit Godfrey, that human dynamo, that one-man resource team, to assist. Godfrey was hugely enthusiastic and said he would do it like a shot.
He already had a lot of the stuff in his archives and in his God-given, unique brain – especially in the case of hockey and squash – and he was ready to accept the challenge. I was full of hope. Now, without Godfrey’s energy and drive and ideas and wonderful, contagious love for what he was doing, what will happen to that important cause? What will happen to scores of other important causes afire in his mind?
The sad ‘if onlies’ of history are legion. If only Godfrey had returned to Guyana even 5 years earlier and gone on with the work which has already made him legendary, think what a cornucopia of additional Nostalgias, memories, collected documentation, exhibitions of his gradually accumulating thousands of pictures and the unforgettable historical insights we would by now have in our communal possession. What we already have is large and memorable enough – what we might have had is an unsurpassed national archive of our previously lost yesteryears. It is the saddest thing. I can hardly bear to think of what might have been if Godfrey had not lost too soon the race we all must lose.
For once, here was a man who was indeed indispensable. All we can do – his friends and colleagues and the institutions of the state itself – all we can do is each in our own way try to continue and extend as best as we can the work he was doing. Godfrey’s legacy is a priceless national asset. What we must take care to do is amplify that legacy over the years to come. It won’t be easy Godfrey, but we will try.
