‘How’s life?’ It’s a seemingly innocuous question that people tend to ask when they have not seen each other for a long time. It gives the impression that the person doing the asking already knows something of the life of the person s/he is asking about and the query is to find out if it is at the same standard, has improved or has worsened.
Too often, it is the opening for the divulging of a litany of woes under the standard caption line ‘Life’s hard’. The government constantly touts that there has been development and progress over the last 20 years. And there has; as a cursory glance around would reveal an increase in foreign and local investments, road/highway expansion and homes and businesses being built, to name a few.
However, the average person is hard-pressed to notice improvements, when s/he is being pressed that much deeper into poverty or is faced with dire straits.
Just ask Natasha Lorrimer, a 36-year-old single mother of three who related her woes to members of the Guyana Women Miners Organisation (GWMO). Ms Lorrimer lives at Linden and, unlike many other women in that community, had managed to secure a job. However, unfortunately, her job takes her away from her family for long periods at a time; she is forced to endure squalid living/working conditions and must fend off unwanted sexual advances from her boss. She was one of some 40 women who attended a forum the GWMO held at Linden last Saturday and for the majority unemployment headlined their litany of woes. Reports are that unemployment is as high as 70% in Region Ten, where Linden is the major town.
Sadly, Ms Lorrimer is but one of many women in similar situations in various jobs, the majority of whom choose not to complain or feel they cannot.
Or you might want to ask Lall Ramjiwan, whose 20-year-old wife Chitrawattie Ramjiwan died en route to the New Amsterdam Hospital on Friday last. Mrs Ramjiwan of Lot 33 Cotton Tree Village, West Coast Berbice, died after delivering a healthy baby girl, but only after she was made to wait some hours after arriving at the Fort Wellington Hospital.
Mrs Ramjiwan became a statistic in an ongoing problem plaguing the health sector. There was a great hullaballoo over the fact that there were some 19 maternal deaths in this country in 2010, the highest number in a single year in over a decade. The issue was taken to Cabinet and the health ministers roasted. It was subsequently reported that systems were put in place to prevent a recurrence, particularly where such deaths are avoidable. But like everything else, it would appear that once the issue is no longer on the front pages, people grow lax again. Mrs Ramjiwan’s was the third such case this year.
Elsewhere, women are faced with unemployment, sexual harassment and gender-based discrimination; people are without access to adequate health care, potable water and decent housing. There are families that are still struggling to keep their children in school. There are hundreds if not thousands of people, mostly children, suffering daily from illnesses as a result of the unhealthy environment, particularly in the city.
Changing the caption line from ‘Life’s hard’ would involve correcting all of the above, since people’s perspective would be based on their level of comfort. There are still way too many Guyanese for whom comfort seems unattainable.
