One of the striking things about everyday living in Guyana is the number of foreign accents one encounters here frequently and in parallel the variety of pronunciations of Standard English words in common use by people living here. The result of all that linguistic modification or interpretation is that we are using a very complex means of communication without actually being schooled in it in the first place.
As a man in Hague backdam once told me when I asked him where his wide knowledge of Guyanese dialect words came from, “Awee dis jis larn am, jest suh bhai.” Case in point: Battling a persistent dry throat cough for weeks, I went to several doctors for a remedy but nothing seemed to be working. Suspecting I might actually have a throat infection, I followed the recommendation of a close friend and went to see a doctor in Georgetown, with a strong Latin accent (Brazilian, I believe) who put me through a range of tests, and ended up assuring me I had no infection or malignancy. And then, in his succinct Latin way, sensing my next question, he gave me a smile and a wave of his hand delivering his diagnosis as, “It’s jus dost.” Except, of course, that in his accent the last word came out rhyming with “toast” and made no sense to me. When I asked what he meant he said, “Oh, Guyana has it all over, you know, dost – in the air; everywhere you go. You breathe it in. That’s what’s making you cough. Your throat is clear; no infection. Just dost. Guyana full of dost; it’s terrible.”
I admit I was taken aback both by his statement and by the confidence with which he made it. I had never noticed the level of dust he described, and had never heard anyone refer to it, and initially I was skeptical about the diagnosis, but reflecting later on the comment I could see the basis for it. Where I live on the East Coast, for example, two apartment buildings have gone up in our district in the year past and two more (one to the right of us, one to the left) have been under construction for a few weeks now. For many months now, trucks and heavy equipment have been a daily fixture on our roads, most of which have been mangled or potholed in the process, and the sound of cement mixers, water pumps, and various power tools are a part of daily life from Monday to Saturday, and sometimes Sundays, from daybreak to sunset. In Oleander Gardens we have been literally in a construction zone for well over a year, with three apartment buildings completed, two more nearing completion, and, as this is being written, a house is being torn down to be replaced with a sixth apartment in the coming months. One has to wonder if there may be more yet in store.
Reflecting on the doctor’s remark about “dust” afterward, I had to agree the level of it had been high continuously, and with most vehicles parked in the open, our windshields require wiper washing first thing every morning and sometimes during the day, as well, from the dust. In addition to what came from the construction work, the damage to the roads from the heavy-duty trucks and machines was adding to the level of dust, and while I initially was frankly surprised by the doctor’s remark I could see in retrospect his logic. Given the condition of many of our roads, and in particular the degree of building and/or renovation now going on in Georgetown, in particular, I could see the basis of the medicine man’s “dost is everywhere” summation. There is considerable evidence of “dost” in our residential area both in the interiors of the buildings and on the streets and parapets – even the flowers show it, as do the curtains in the windows facing east.
So in the midst of the various back-and-forth about what is ahead of us in the much heralded oil economy, and the importance of Guyana needing to continue pushing the agricultural side of our GDP, and as we expand and construct and divert and realign, and as we face sea-level rise, while I hate to add another concern to the pile, we have to remember the Latin doctor’s alarm and pay attention to “the dos”; if it is indeed affecting my throat negatively, it obviously is a health threat to us in other ways as well. As the Hague man might put it, “too much dos nah good fuh abee dis living.” Frankly, however, I’m not sure how we fix this dust dilemma. After all, if we’re going to build and expand, that’s part of the deal. As the Hague man might say, “Bhai, yuh guh to crab dance, yuh mus’ get mud, or, in dis case, dos.”
