A Guyanese Ohio University graduate is using animation to bring awareness to the social issues surrounding brain drain in an effort to encourage people to stay and return to assist in building their home country.
‘Tings Brown’ is an animated series created by Neketa Forde, 29, who migrated for educational purposes with the intent of coming back to help her county.
In an interview with Stabroek Weekend, Forde explained that the series was created to highlight and identify various factors that have and will continue to influence persons to leave their homeland. “The aim of the piece is to inform the Guyanese public [about the] social inequalities [that] may shove their citizens out of the country into a more developed one,” she explained.
The first episode, titled ‘Full Disclosure,’ which was solely animated by Forde, is “the adaptation of an interview with a Guyanese transgender woman who fled from religious and political persecution in Guyana to seek a form of asylum in the United States. She then, however, ends up in similar circumstances in the new place she calls home, as people are still fighting for those rights all across the world.”
Forde disclosed that this episode, which is the first of more to come, was done in a way which allows people to identify the social inequalities which cause people to leave, as well as the lack of awareness in relation to re-migration policies. However, future episodes will be created to specifically tackle the issue of persons leaving Guyana with extensive knowledge, instead of staying to help the country grow.
Forde, who is originally from Paradise on the East Coast of Demerara, explained that she started work on the series in August of 2019. “…I interviewed my guests and in the Fall I worked on the script and storyboard and [also] began audiowork,” she explained. “It took me about two months to piece together everything [because] I didn’t have the equipment to do it smoothly,” she added.
The first episode was officially launched on April 20.
Forde noted that most of the cast members are persons who have actually migrated for various reasons and she hopes to highlight the socio-economic factors that may contribute to a person making the decision to leave the country.
She, however, added that the series is not only about the factors that push Guyanese away from their homeland, but the problems they face after leaving. “In the pilot episode, the main character is left with the dilemma of either staying silent, speaking up for herself in the United States or returning to Guyana. I [think] by tackling societal prejudice in story form from the view of a transgender Guyanese woman [in Episode 1], it may inspire empathy [because] I want to tell stories that will have an impact and change some people’s way of thinking,” she said.
Forde wishes to bring to the forefront the issues that are caused by high levels of migration and to identify possible solutions that may curb the major problem of brain drain in Guyanese society. “We are losing too much of our human capital to developed countries,” Forde said.
She hopes to start a serious conversation about the issues that occur in her homeland, ensuring that recommendations be made to alter the norm. “I think that social change begins with a conversation and ‘Tings Brown’ will certainly start one”, she posited.
Forde mentioned that she hasn’t decided when would be the best time to release other episodes of the series, since she is concerned about the current global health situation. She, however, hopes to continue the series when she returns to Guyana.
The ‘Tings Brown’ series can be found on YouTube at shorturl.at/foIX5.
