Dear Editor,
Two Guyanese sons of the soil strutted their stuff at the Commonwealth Secretariat to celebrate the 50th Anniver-sary of Guyana becoming a republic.
First, the great poet John Agard delivered an inspired virtuoso performance of some of his poetry. He was on fire and inspired, ending with a call for the Government of Guyana to create a ‘Minister for Dreams’ to celebrate the anniversary.
Then came one of the great public figures of the ‘Guyanese Mafia’ Trevor Phillips, former politician, equality tsar and television producer/presenter. Trevor was returning ‘home’ for the first time in many years. Some of his talk very personal. He called it ‘unwarranted nostalgia’: Recollections of teenage life in David Street, Kitty to where he was sent back from the UK to live with his grandmother and aunt in the vibrant multi-racial environment at the time.
Trevor was (and is) A QC boy through and through. Very proud of it too. He thought it was ‘equal to any school in the world’. So too his classmates who included Stanley Ming and Eric Phillips. For Trevor and them ‘failure was not an option’. As he opined: we were from the land of Walter Raleigh, the land of many waters. How could we not succeed?’
The universe and its universities their oyster; Trevor went to The Imperial College in London.
He remembered the rough too. An illicit visit to the Bishops’ High School to serenade a paramour resulted in a caning that afternoon back at QC. News travelled fast between the schools.
On Guyana, he had ‘never given up hope’. People were the country’s greatest asset and the export of them should cease. ‘A small country does not need to be small minded’, he said. Phillips had decided he wanted a Guyanese passport but that was proving a bureaucratic nightmare. ‘They make it hard for people to love our country’.
As an example of the talent of Guyana he referenced Schenectady in upstate New York and Mayor Al Jurczynski, who in the early part of this century brought 2000 Guyanese to his town to share their entrepreneurial spirit. He arranged bus tours from Queens to his town and was their guide on a weekly bus tour that brought dozens of Guyanese immigrants every Saturday for a three-hour tour of the city. He took them to Schenectady’s own Central Park for ice cream cones. He took them to his in-laws’ house for home-made wine. He promised to build them a cricket stadium one day, to personally review all their résumés, officiate at their weddings and learn to love their spicy soups. His plan worked. From the time that Mayor Jurczynski heard there was a small Guyanese population in his city, some 2,000 have moved there They have bought dilapidated or condemned homes — some for as little as $1 – a classic Rags to Riches Guyanese story.
All in all, 4000 miles from ‘home’ the Guyanese in the UK diaspora were able to celebrate Republic Day with Phillips and Agard and later with pholouri, channa and wine but no rum.
Yours faithfully,
John ‘Bill Cotton/Reform’ Mair
