A close friend sent me a note recently that I’m passing onto you. It was headed “How Come,” and here’s a portion of it:
“How come successive governments can’t stop the mini-buses from killing commuters with loud music? I thought it was illegal, yet passengers are subjected to the loudest and sometimes nastiest music on the planet, and nothing is done about it? How come?
“And while we’re on music, how come DJs can play songs with expletives at public events and not get charged by the police or taken off the stage as would happen in other countries?
“How come the mini-buses behave as if they own the road, driving through red lights, stopping anywhere any time, cutting across traffic, without being charged by the police? How come?
“How come teachers at some schools are afraid of some students, and have to put up with being threatened with violence? Who is really in charge?
“Tell me how come we’re seeing potholes like craters all over our roads and we can’t fix them? At some junctions, to make a turn, you have to manoeuver around huge holes, some of them five feet wide, looking to swallow your vehicle. How come?
“How come little children as young as 10 years old can be heard any day on the street cursing and using all kinds of “mother this” and “mother that”, and “f—-” this and “f—-“ that, and how come no one can control this loutish public behaviour by the youths in society? No one seems to be able to get a handle on this thing. Have parents been immobilized? If so, how come?
“How come people now use cell phones when they shouldn’t and disturb other people in theatre shows, conferences, even church? It clearly doesn’t occur to them to consider other people and mute the things, or turn them off. How come we become so thoughtless?
“How come after a public event the authorities need about two days to clean up garbage thrown all over the place by patrons? In fact, how come supposedly upright citizens are dumping their garbage where they stand, in the first place?
“How come most road markings are non-existent, and the ones we do have are often invisible to the motorists because of fading? Is it that we can’t find the right paint, or that we’re watering it down to stretch it?
“How come the government can’t put some pressure on the commercial banks to lower the unconscionable interest rates on credit cards that we have to pay now? How come?”
The points raised in that partial list are known to all of us who live in Guyana, “Yeah, boy, that’s life in GT.” There’s a twist here, however. The “how come” note from my friend is real. Those things, you well know, are really going on. My friend, who referred to them, is the columnist Vic Fernandes. He knows about them, too, and he wrote those comments recently in his ‘Market Vendor‘ column, but here’s the twist: he was writing about Barbados. Yes, we’re familiar with those disturbing conditions in this country, but Vic’s column was telling us, if we took time to notice, that Bajans were grumbling about the same things over there.
Going in, obviously life in Guyana is replete with examples of situations in need of repair or replacement – from roads, to morals, to sanitation standards, to attitudes, you know the list – and we are right to rail about such things and to see them as needing attention – governmental, institutional and individual. The problem for me, however, is the tendency among our own people, at home and abroad, to then wail about these deficiencies as peculiar to Guyana often concluding with the plaintive “Only in Guyana, boy.” It is a reaction frequently expressed in letters to the press, and in emailed comments from readers, and it represents a myopia that I find puzzling and even irritating because the decay in social conditions or mores is everywhere you look.
All you have to do is travel to other countries and listen to the complaints from the people who live in those places; it sounds remarkably close to what one hears here. Indeed, you don’t even have to travel; airfare is too expensive, anyhow. Simply read the international press; talk to friends overseas; scour the news events online. In even the richest and most developed countries in the world, highway bridges are falling down, opiate use is skyrocketing, foul language on the airwaves and in public is common, modesty is on the wane, ordinary folks are rioting violently at soccer games, and millions of people are being fleeced in financial scams.
It can be argued that in some respects, our level of deterioration is worse than in other places – litter in Georgetown, for example, or loose behaviour – but the “only in Guyana” accusation is misplaced, as the column by Vic Fernandes demonstrates.
Let’s be clear. I’m not for a second suggesting an end to the complaints. On the contrary; make them more intense and more frequent and more unrelenting. All I’m saying is that labelling them as only our problem is way off base. I accept we have a lot wrong that needs correction, but clearly we’re not the only people with work to do.
And while we’re on it, let me close with two more “how come” points from The Market Vendor.
“How come so many Caribbean governments are still tied to the Privy Council in the UK when we have the substantial Caribbean Court of Justice right in our backyard?
“How come, with all the money we spend on cricket, we still have a jokey West Indies team? How come?”
Remember, now; that’s Barbados talking.
Finally, I can’t resist adding one of my own jibes. How come in Guyana we have two national cricket teams, with two different captains? On reflection, that one is truly a case of “only in Guyana”.
