Inspiring people, accomplishing amazing feats, live all around us in our nation.
Role models accomplishing feats of excellence inspire us, causing us to believe in ourselves and our nation.
Across this land we see countless souls achieving great things, working hard in quiet humbleness and a strong belief in their potential.
We know of the masses of Guyanese who gave up on this country and migrated. Many, many of these accomplish amazing feats on the world stage.
One thinks of the Canadian-Guyanese entrepreneur David Singh, who, despite severe setbacks and challenges, pioneered a new University and Medical School in St Lucia, working hand-in-hand with outstanding Guyanese Dr Richard Van-West Charles and Dr Max Hanoman to start-up a global training ground for doctors.
Here in Georgetown, Loris Nathoo stands tall as an outstanding role model for the new generation of Guyanese, as signs of optimism start to peep through the clouds of gross poverty still shrouding this nation in social stagnation.
Nathoo, a Queen’s College graduate and a national chess champion, refuses to migrate. He believes in his ability to excel right here at home, launching out on an entrepreneurial venture of incredible vision and excellence.
His Red Cherry cafe seems to be an anomaly in our land, where we so lack innovative business ventures.
Nathoo’s brother, Pierre, also believes in a Guyana Dream, having stayed here and raised two outstanding sons, both students at the University of Guyana.
There’s Collin Henry, who stayed in this country, lives at a humble home on the West Coast of Demerara, and serves as an officer in the Guyana Defence Force, while raising five children in a successful marriage. His older kids are now going on to UG.
At the university we see countless young people take life seriously, studying, planning a career, and setting their eyes on a future as successful Guyanese.
Lenandlar Singh in Information Technology leads an outstanding group of young programmers at UG.
We do see pockets of the poverty and economic degradation that eat away at families in this country. Poor neighbourhoods abound everywhere. Poor governance and snarling political leaders stifle many communities.
But out of many of these social quagmires emerge outstanding Guyanese souls, inspiring us, motivating us, encouraging us, with their dogged determination to rise despite the odds.
Guyanese like Pierre and Loris Nathoo; Deonarine Chand, who operates his video production company as a home business and built a beautiful home next to UG; Iana Seales, shaping up as an outstanding intellectual; and thousands of others – cricketers, footballers, athletes, academics, business owners – paint a picture of a Guyanese nation going somewhere, working hard with integrity and self-belief.
Despite the alarming national literacy rate, the economic backwardness that dogs so many villages, the plight of families facing drug and alcohol abuse and domestic violence, as a nation we embody a generation accomplishing amazing feats.
Quiet, unassuming, their praises unsung, these Guyanese souls embody our nation, and offer us the hope of becoming the world class society we deserve to be.
In Berbice, Nicolas Ramsarran, still a teen, dresses with tie to go to work every day as a TV Reporter.
Afeeza Khan, just 18 years old, attends UG studying Biology. From a humble family at Cotton Tree Village, West Berbice, she is set on studying medicine.
Asif and Ameena Akbar operate a restaurant on the West Coast of Demerara, refusing to sell alcohol or cigarettes, yet making the business successful, raising their two kids in a home respecting morals, ethics and social values.
All these young people, raising young families, ignore the social degradation around them, and believing in their human potential to rise above their stifling society, accomplish amazing lives.
Christine Gooding and the host of young TV journalists emerging today speak of a new era in our media landscape, with local programming taking on a glamorous flavour.
These little things inspire us, pushing us to develop a kind of inner belief, a pride that we are indeed world class, and would not settle for anything less.
So our citizens push ahead, ignoring the fractured political landscape, the falling apart of our governance system, the lack of integrity at Parliament to see to it that local government elections install community leaders.
Our young citizens ignore this backwardness of the political status quo. They move ahead, and pull the nation into the 21st century.
Yes we suffer as a society from a crippling brain drain. But despite this, despite the sad state of our public education system, and the health care system and the preponderance of rum shops in villages all over the land, we can look around us and be wonderfully inspired.
These young people take it upon themselves to read books of excellence.
They exercise the discipline and self-awareness to live healthy lives, shunning substance abuse and wayward living. Like Nicolas Ramsarran and Mark McGowan and Gina Arjoon, and so many others, they serve in local churches and community organizations. They give back to their local communities.
In Berbice Brian Rooney and his wife Mandy, herself born in an Amerindian community on the outskirts of Essequibo, still in their 20’s, wake up at 5 am to prepare for their day. With four toddlers, they work hard, raising livestock, planting their yard, building their own humble home on a house lot they got in a new housing scheme sprung up out of Government’s commendable housing programme.
Brian feels no qualm operating a donkey-drawn cart to go about his business in the village. Humble, hard working, quiet, he prepares for a life raising his kids to be outstanding sons of our nation.
These people make up our outstanding citizens, these and the countless others in Pomeroon, Lethem, Moruca, Essequibo, Orealla and Linden, who refuse to become victims. Instead, they rise to become victors, triumphant in that spirit of the human soul that rises despite severe odds.
In them, we see hope, inspiration, encouragement. In them we could ignore the greedy, immoral political leaders who sink our society for selfish gain, who refuse to reform the literacy landscape and reshape the social space of our nation.
In these outstanding Guyanese citizens, we will become a world class nation.
