-Should “Skibby” Critchlow cry?
I thank you all for allowing me this one-day break today. From the politics, the health issues of His Excellency, the activities of Dr Jagdeo, the government public relations efforts and some social media partisan rants; from our society’s daily murders, frauds, traffic fatalities, cocaine trafficking and rape reports.
Whew! I leave all the above today to other commentators, columnists and philosophers. Instead I share with you my long persistent concern with the seeming – or obvious (?) – dilution or disappearance of too many vestiges of the culture that once fashioned our identity as one distinctive (type) of people.
Not an academic, I define culture to mean simply all that which is grounded in our approaches to and manifestation of our collective life. So my meaning of “culture” embraces our evolved faiths and other beliefs, our unique versions of food and recipes, songs, dance, early folkloric/creole traditions and even our ethnic/racial mixtures and admixtures who comprise that national demographic known as “Guyanese.”
So what is, why my concern? Well when large numbers of foreign folk decide to settle in a society, those migrants are expected to integrate and assimilate into the characteristics and norms of the hosts. Of course that acculturation hardly occurs in the short term. Or ever, at all!
Foreigners (long to) keep their “origins”, their behaviours or “culture.” See the robust single-mindedness of Chinese road construction workers and business people. Observe Cuban dogged buy-and-sell characteristics. Those strangers cannot accept the relative Guyanese laid-back approaches.
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Copy-cats vs poor people identity
I doubt that Chinese, Cuban or Venezuelan cultural manifestations will overwhelm what’s left of our own identity. But the current generation’s copy-cat mentality concerns me daily. The youths gladly mimic foreign hairstyles and fashion; they and some radio stations sound American whilst Afro-Guyanese young seem to appreciate only Jamaican dance-hall songs and talk. (Just witness the near-20 Jamaican/Trinidadian artistes in town last weekend! Do Guyanese performers hold down audiences in those countries?)
Mind you, I’m aware of the primary, powerful, underlying reasons for this generation’s imitations: the fact that a preferred dominant culture easily captures the fancy of a people whose self-contempt is nurtured by the “success” and lure of foreign “superiority;” (the youth’s longing to go and be “foreign” and the lack of sufficient promotion of our own cultural values and traditions – by both official and private sources.
Of course, there is now the over-powerful force of ICT – that electronic shrinking of the world community whereby television, computer and smart-phone combine to impose other values and behaviours on culturally-weak places such as Guyana.
Perhaps the latter bolsters my point that two-three generations ago few of us owned even radios. So in a world with no TV, no computers, no quarter-million cellular phones our poor people’s children sang folk songs, played ring-games, listened to moonlight storytelling, found out about our (frightening, scary) spirit-beings, plaited hair, cooked creole dishes or ate good cook-shop foods (as there were no KFC, Popeye’s, etc); and we made our own toys and slowly and surely, blended ethnic diversity to fashion an identity, a culture unique to us. Now?
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Guyana in a global village
The world moves. And improves? What’s trending in New York, Toronto, Taiwan, Japan and Jamaica must impact us here. Especially the current get rich-quick, impatient generation. So in a smaller electronic world how does a traditional Guyanese identity survive? I suppose it has to be promoted – if only to co-exist.
There is officialdom’s Department of Culture. I once perused a draft of a National Cultural Policy fashioned by former Director of Culture, Dr James Rose. Not too familiar now with the workings of Minister Norton’s outfit, though I applaud the recent efforts/initiatives to empower writers, artists, cultural entrepreneurs, local movie-makers and the work of the still-fledgling institutions of dance, drama and music.
You know what? I’d better contact Dr Vibert Cambridge, Mr Ruel Johnson, Mr Barry Braithwaite and Henry Rodney to assist with plans to save our endangered culture. Okay? After the imminent CARIFESTA 2019?
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Critchlow, unions, employers, government
During the early-to-mid seventies, yours truly A.A. Fenty, produced a Supplementary Reader for Primary Schools featuring Hubert Nathaniel “Skibby” Critchlow. (It was “alongside” another story about whether “Buxton people stop train”. How I wish those gems could be reprinted!)
So when I recall the heroic successful struggles of dock-worker, non-academic Critchlow to found our country’s first-ever workers union, then to promote and defend workers’ rights throughout Guyana and the West Indies, I am assailed by negative thoughts about the status and effectiveness of the country’s labour movement these days.
Since these lines are just meant to be provocative, to inspire reflection, I propose that those interested think on these issues: who are our most effective labour/ union leaders right now? How come? Which union dares to strike against His Excellency’s Coalition? (Congrats GTU). Observe the indifference to the (vital?) GPSU. Can the sugar unions really influence this administration? Do Chinese employers care about unions – or unionisation? Can my batchmate – the Labour Minister – identify alternatives to RUSAL?
I’ll listen again to Wednesday’s Labour Day “addresses.” And wonder whether “Skibby” Critchlow is turning in his grave – and crying!
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Please ponder…
1. So Comrade Moses has shrewdly accepted that his AFC is facing slow but sure
demise?
2. What? Mass Games to return to please His Excellency? However, they are great for
mass and individual discipline.
3. What’s the cost of establishing a new 20-piece steelband? (The cost of “creole
culture”?)
4. Which of our top government officials does not appreciate those sexist Queh-Queh
folk songs?
5. Will Leonora, Vreed-en-Hoop and/or Parika become towns some time?
6. GECOM has advertised for more office furniture, yeh!
7. Name our national stadium the Kanhai-Lloyd National Stadium. And Comrade
Chow-Pow and Mr Jumbie please take serious note: a comedian has won Ukraine’s
presidency!
8. Coming soon: two more family-affair ministerial businesses.
’Til next week!
