Coming very soon: GT’s Christmas chaos
Hello readers. To be sure, this is another deliberate attempt today to do my escapist time-out from our daily doses of disease, traffic fatalities, crime and – yes – politics and electoral campaigning. You’ll agree that right within these pages there is no shortage of all that – and court case reporting too.
And I’m not sure why in heaven’s name, I’ll now risk boring you with the captioned lead “story” which revolves around some of my own life’s shortcomings, failures, regrets.
I think I really wish my younger fans to learn lessons from an ordinary life. For inspiration of the more positive type is often born of the mistakes, lapses, under-achievements of others. So here goes.
*****************
Regrets – large and small…
Laugh all you want but I regret seriously never having learnt to snap my fingers! I watched all my little daughters do it. But me? To this day, no. Eternal shame!
And after more than seventy years on earth in Guyana I also failed myself in never learning to play the first pan in a steel-band; never learning to swim properly or speak a second language. My last daughter learnt the pan for me but I encourage young Guyanese to learn a second language properly after mastering the difficult English. I suggest Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, French or Chinese.
Of course after nineteen (19) years of familial togetherness, my marriage unraveled, primarily because I never wanted to migrate to the USA. There is still a genuine bond between me, wife and children but it’s still a major regret. The message here is for couples to try marriage. I’ll always love the bedrock institution even as the modern social world now seems to prefer just “living home”.
Even though I’m still around to keep attending funerals of peers and younger, I now regret not being fit from regular exercise. I urge the young citizen to keep fit through games, exercise, appropriate diets and healthy lifestyles.
I’ve done one biography of five I had planned. I remain miserable over never completing the biography started of the late Police Commissioner Henry Alphonso Fraser. A few interviews and intimate conversations with him fascinated me – his childhood near to Cheddi Jagan’s family; telling me about the first Mr Gafoor, Laurie Lewis and Norman McLean – and about meeting personally with every police recruit when he was Commissioner. I missed a few interviews. Then he died. He had to have been a remarkable man.
******************
The two really big ones!
It might be known that I’ve had some success with writing during my more than three score-and-ten here. Though relatively “unschooled”, I’ve won short-story competitions and have been published (long ago) through, from schools supplementary readers, crime advisories, cartoon comics to radio plays and columns.
But it seems some force is preventing me from writing my own “magnum opus”! This personal “masterpiece” has been postponed for years! Why – oh why? What is it? It is simply my own slim publication to remind Guyanese and the world that everyone of us was once African! It was/is (?) to be titled “Our African human race”.
For whether you believe in Christian creation – or evolution – reliable, researched reports, by fair-skinned Europeans and Americans tell that mankind/ humankind’s birthplace, his first-ever home was in Africa. Just this past Sunday the Stabroek carried a fine report of the latest site of “humankind’s ancestral home” – Botswana. But there were also other locations in Africa too.
What obviously happened is that thousands of years ago our original human forefathers had cause to migrate out of the continent. Climate changes over thousands of years led to “genetic diversity”. Meaning fairer, shorter, other varied physical appearances. Then diverse language, dress, food, habitats – cultures.
That origin of man in the African cradle of civilisation means that the Chinese on Robb Street, the Queen of England, Virat Kohli, all Germans, Jews, Russians, Swedes and First Peoples were all once African! I suspect some folks of paler complexion including American Southern “Whites” disdain that historical human fact. Hence racism!
So every time these days Facebook tells me of a “discovery” that the first Romans, the first Irish, the first South Indians or the first Mexicans, Jews and Aztecs were “black”, I regret I might never publish my own simplified version of that vital humankind story. (But look how “looks” and “colour” and cultural changes have birthed racism!!)
Secondly and lastly, would you believe it? I, Fenty, have never completely understood who or what God is? I’ve read some “Holy” Books. I know there has to be a Creator, an Oversoul. But just who is this Supreme Being worthy of worship and endless praise by whoever/whatever he created in this universe? Do you know? How did you know that? Why do you believe?
I trust my list of foregoing regrets would teach the young never to delay, postpone, procrastinate. Don’t be like me. Seize the day!
***************
A “strong” Coalition?
For political purposes one definition of “coalition” is a “temporary union for a common people.”
His Excellency has just decided that he “has built a strong coalition.” Before I return to this next time, consider the following: APNU is touted to be a political partnership for “national unity”. Lots of that around? In the partnership/coalition the PNC dominates the WPA, the JFA, the GAP, the NFA. Do you know of those powerful parties? And how is the union with the opportunist AFC coming along?
****************
GT’s inevitable chaos
Whether you live in Georgetown or visit it the signs are more ominous than before: there is going to be law-breaking chaos and congestion in the name of “Christmas 2019”. As never before!
It’s apparent that the Georgetown municipality is collecting fees for additional vendors on City pavements. Even right on roadways. Old pedestrians be damned! More vehicles clog the same streets as Christmas is commercialised from October. Vulgar! Can city constables or young police recruits cope? Neither the PNC Pandit Mayor nor His Excellency’s unbribable commissioner will dare touch those errant vendors who have to vote appropriately when the time comes. Roadside robberies are already increasing. Merry Christmas Georgetown.
**************
Ponder a while…
● 1) Would His Excellency and the fit-and-proper GECOM Chair recognize the outrage their last comments caused?
● 2) Recognizing Dr Ian Mc Donald’s subtle but yet pointed remarks on
discriminatory advertising and a free press on Sunday.
● 3) If Mr Badal can convince me that he’ll end blackouts after decades, I’ll
support him. If I vote.
● 4) Who are the leading ladies of the new political parties?
● 5) Will Dr Jagdeo’s Irfaan not be made to defer?
’Til next week!
