Dear Editor,
I refer to Mr Ian Mc Donald’s letter (‘Papers have found an excellent home in a sister Caricom country,’ SN, Dec 10) explaining why he donated his personal papers to UWI and not to a Guyanese institution. His answer arose out of a question I asked in my missive to SN. In my correspondence, I did state I know why and accepted Mr McDonald’s decision.
I have worked at UG for 26 years and it would have been repellent dishonesty for me to criticize Mr McDonald for his UWI choice.
In those 26 years, I have published literally dozens of columns and newspaper letters on the daily decline of UG as a functioning university. It has reached the stage where any eminent Guyanese like McDonald to have donated his papers to UG would have meant the certain destruction of the documents. I believe Mr McDonald knows this would have been the fate of his collection.
As Mr McDonald wrote in relation to the UWI Special Collections Division: “I do not believe, even with all the efforts being made, that Guyana has a matching facility.” This is where I think people like Mr McDonald and Sir Shridath Ramphal have failed the younger generation of Guyana.
Why couldn’t Mr McDonald simply say, “Guyana hasn’t got comparable facilities,” and leave it at that? Which efforts is Mr McDonald talking about? Educational facilities and educational services continue to decline in Guyana. Go any afternoon to the junction of Vlissengen Road and David Street, Kitty and you will see the large number of Queen’s College students taking extra lessons. If they can come from Queen’s then they come from every other school – and they do.
That statement from Mr McDonald is worth repeating: “I do not believe, even with all the efforts being made, that Guyana has a matching facility.” This is an immensely important reflection by someone not known to ever make political statements that are critical and controversial.
That is not Mr McDonald’s way and we should accept that. But that statement contains a trillion words of all that is wrong with this country.
After about fifty years (really, fifty years is a very long time for a country not to be a top class modern nation) of Independence, Guyana’s only university has not got a facility like UWI to which our valued nationalists like Ian McDonald and others can donate their personal collections.
To do a thesis on Mr McDonald, a Guyanese student based here has to travel to Trinidad. This is not only unacceptable but tragic. And this is indeed a tragic nation.
I hope those who continue to damage this poor, tragic nation by falsely and shamelessly extolling its fictional progress – and I am not referring to the government only, but people at UG, those that admire Mr McDonald – some of Mr McDonald’s associates and similar types would seriously and honestly reflect on the statement about Guyana’s lack of a facility for the preservation of his private collection.
Finally, and I should not hide my feelings, it came as no surprise to me that Mr McDonald was tempered and restrained in offering his reason why Guyana has not got the facilities. I guess that is his way of operating in life and he should not be criticized for not being like other humans who do not function in similar mode. But at the end of the day Guyanese like Ian McDonald, Sir Shridath Ramphal and similar valued citizens of this country owe the younger generation the truth as to why their homeland is such an enduringly troubled land.
Yours faithfully,
Frederick Kissoon