Dear Editor,
It is said that time can erase memories and so can Alzheimer’s, memory lapses can be also be very convenient to say the least.
I have heard much talk of all the corruption that it is claimed is overtaking Guyana and also how much the government has not done. My basic response is what are people looking for and from where is the analysis taken? I would prefer to focus on what was done and what is being done. No one can have a negative mind with a positive life.
Certainly my letter reading friends, the analysis/evaluation cannot be from the Guyana we live in, so much has been done in the years that have gone by so quickly, that those who have not been around can easily be fooled. The roads we travel on are now a virtual paradise and we have moved from pot holes to impending four lanes. What about the dark streets and the risks it presented during the night time, now street lights are almost everywhere, the shortages of food, newsprint, text books etc, and to add the most commanding of all the housing boom, poor people now have the opportunity to own their own domicile.
Ingratitude is a cardinal sin, we must remember where we came from. Driving from Timehri to Georgetown was like a nightmare with potholes everywhere, Burnham Drive in Wismar, Linden was a nightmare, children died from malnutrition. I have an experience that I will never forget. In the eighties, where I lived in Agricola, I got a Pastoral call to pray for a sick child. Two minutes of getting to the house the child passed away. The child died as a result of consuming too much rice flour. It was so sad, the young man just about twelve had his whole life and future taken away from him because he couldn’t be fed a balanced diet and thereafter we had many more cases of children dying with that kind of plague and the aged too. It would be a good thing if this younger generation can unearth all that transpired in the past to bring truth to their ears and heart and not just to listen to the inaccuracies that are being peddled around.
The past helps me to understand that I must never want some of what transpired then to be part of my life now, poverty, and poverty housing (living in a one bedroom logie) and many other experiences of the old days makes me want to vomit.
I know what is being done is not enough, the country was in a very bad state, my memory tells me that I am better off and I have no connections to the so called “big boys”.
Hard work has been my motto, commitment my theme, service to others, my joy regardless of who is in power and I did what I could to make life better for myself and family and community.
My work life cannot be stacked into one volume. I worked as a labourer, reared poultry, sold newspapers, worked in sawmills, had my own shop, worked as a volunteer pastor, construction supervisor and now a Justice of the Peace, never cried and complained that there is unemployment, I found something to make me an earner.
Please do not repeat the past by making the same mistakes.
Yours faithfully
Bishop Ivan John
Justice of Peace and
Commissioner of Oaths to Affidavits
