Jay Jordan, born and bred in Canada, embodies a Guyanese story that we could easily lose. It’s the story of a lost generation, folks who picked up and left this land in the ‘60’s, that first wave of migrants who fled their homes for foreign lands.
Waves of migration stifled our development through the ‘70’s, ‘80’s and ‘90’s, and a 21st century wave continues today, with family sponsorship now a big part of the cause.
Alien smuggling to the US and Canada became a huge pillar of the underground economy, fuelling corruption, broken families and illicit gains.
Many Guyanese left their homeland in the ‘60’s because they did not want political Independence from Britain, but also many migrated because they felt fearful of a Government under Forbes Burnham or Cheddi Jagan.
Jordan’s family, from a distinguished upper-middle class background in British Guiana, settled in Canada, but their culture remains of a distinct Guyanese flavour, even now, decades later. And so, today, despite his Canadian looks and accent and ways, Jay’s heart is rooted in things Guyanese.
He grew up eating Guyanese breakfast at home, and knows of pepperpot and metem and cookup and garlic pork and ginger ale. He listened to endless talk at the dinner table about Guyana and things Guyanese, much of it nostalgic for the days of British Guiana, and debate about the politics.
He spends hours researching his family’s genealogy online, tracing the English and African and Amerindian roots of his fore-parents on the Guyanese soil.
People of Guyanese origin now live in every corner of the global village: Carl Hooper, one of our national heroes and a gifted West Indies cricketer, lives in Australia; Denise Jones-Rasmussen, a Bishops’ High School alumni from the 1980’s, lives in Denmark. Guyanese make up ten percent of Barbados’ population. Throughout the Caribbean, North America, Europe, India, Ethiopia – we are everywhere.
And as we see with Jay Jordan, the roots remain in the heart. We are, in fact, a global nation now, dispersed across the earth, but with the common thread of this land being our homeland. This idea comes with profound responsibility. We cannot any longer live with the myopic tribal politics that we fostered for the past 50 years. It’s time for us to grow up and become who we are – a nation of people who form a civilization, a people of a distinct cultural mindset.
One way for us to mature, to grow up is to sacrifice the national habit of scapegoating each other.
Every one of our leaders left us a footprint that leads to us creating and designing a future that works for the global Guyanese people.
Jay Jordan yearns to contribute to Guyana. He has visited this land just once, but his heart beats with a Guyana dream. Like him, people of Guyanese origin, even second- and third-generation, want to play a role. We must allow them to do so. Jay, as a wrestler in Canada, wants to design a national wrestling programme for schools in Guyana, and articulates well the social benefits of such a programme.
How could we make these things come into reality?
We must look back on our history, first with a forgiving heart, as Jay does (even though his family lost their properties in Georgetown through nationalization when they quietly packed up and migrated in the ‘60’s). And, in looking back over our history, instead of scapegoating those whose leadership impacted us in a negative way, we must look for the positives that they brought to our nation.
Forbes Burnham gave us a great gift, in his idea of the Guyanese people as a nation. His book, ‘A Destiny to Mould’, and his constant repetition of the nation concept, should be a defining guide for us today.
One day we will see both Jagan and Burnham as defining leaders, fathers of the nation, who chiseled a path for us to define ourselves in the historical annals of humanity. Both embodied strong visions for who we the Guyanese people could be.
But they could not reconcile their visions with the necessities of building our society. They lived a fractured leadership, with even their personal lives showing serious contradictions and paradoxes.
But Burnham’s idea and dream that we are a nation, should today motivate, inspire and galvanize us to put away tribal ethnic leanings and look beyond narrow walls.
The old generation is passing away. Hopefully, we’ll one day, soon, see the backs of myopic leaders who got their education under ideological doctrine, as in the communist bloc, where they learned to lead by deviousness and deceit.
It’s a new day, and a new generation of Guyanese has grown up, here at home, and abroad. And the fractures and brokenness of the past, of our fight for self-identity, should not taint us as it did those who were in the battles. We can look ahead with clearer hindsight.
When Burnham and Jagan lamented the social class divisions that characterized the British Guiana society, they had in mind the exclusive zones that existed in Mackenzie, at Watooka, and at places like the Georgetown Club. And they over-reacted and became extreme in seeking a level playing field for every citizen to be equal and treated fairly.
We’ve moved beyond all that.
We now stand at the threshold of a new future, embracing a global Guyanese nation.
And so Jay Jordan and Richard Van West Charles and Malcolm Cho Kee now embrace as friends in Canada, as Canadian-Guyanese, with their diverse backgrounds, with one common identity – Guyanese seeking to make a difference for Guyana’s future.
Each of these embodies a fascinating personal history, with traces of ancestry spanning across the earth – English, Dutch, Chinese, African, Indian, Amerindian.
Yet, here they are, Guyanese of the 21st century, each filled with zealous passion in their heart, with a Guyana Dream burning bright, and each ready to play a role.
Yet, when Jay Jordan visited Georgetown last January, for the first time, we were not ready to welcome him home, to open his homeland to him, to put him to serve his nation.
We’re not there yet.
