Dear Editor,
Sometime during the early hours of Saturday 3rd October a drunk driver knocked down and ran over a beautiful chestnut colt in a residential area of the city. The driver left the colt to die.
I say a drunk driver because I cannot believe that any human would do something so evil unless the human’s orbito-frontal cortex (impulse control and moral judgement), the uncinate fasciculus (conscience and guilt) and the ventro-medial pre-frontal cortex (empathy and consideration) had been damaged by alcohol. Alternatively the human could have been a psychopath.
The little colt suffered terribly. He is now dead. I want to thank the people who tried to help – Owen who was the first person to show compassion and who helped to get him into the shade, Shanti, John, Richard, the neighbour from the back house, the man on the bicycle, Syeada, Zenzie, Dorian, Dr Bassoodeo, the workers from across the street and every single person who showed compassion for this little horse and anger at the driver who caused his suffering.
Animals should not be wandering around the streets but that is not a reason to knock them down. It is a reason to drive more carefully. Our next High Commissioner to the United Kingdom will be taken by horse drawn carriage to present his/her credentials to Her Majesty the Queen at the Court of St James. London drivers know that the horses get priority.
Personally I prefer to encounter a horse on the road than a driver. The horse will stop for a chat and move aside to let you pass. The driver will blare the horn, abuse you for daring to walk on the road and in many cases lick you for six. Guyanese drivers kill more humans proportionately than anybody else in the world except for drivers in Iran, Iraq and Venezuela. Guyanese motorists continue to slaughter and maim humans and animals while the authorities do nothing except play at traffic management.
Guyana’s ill-considered policy seems to be to adopt the American nightmare of universal car ownership. More enlightened countries are going for car free days, pedestrian areas and bicycle tracks (http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/blog/bogota-empowering-citizens-to-cycle).
We too have to take back our streets so we can walk and ride our bicycles safely, so our children and grandchildren can go out without being knocked down, and so that other living beings are not killed or injured by thugs behind a steering wheel.
Yours faithfully,
Melinda Janki
