Perhaps we are tired of the accounts of Guyanese women who have been murdered by the hands of the men they loved. Perhaps the collective madness of men who commit these violent acts has subliminally affected us all. Many are certainly desensitized but perhaps that desensitization is also a saving grace. Yes, we will talk about events immediately after they have occurred, but like an echo the outrage soon fades, and we move on to the next distraction or calamity. Our collective peace is fleeting as we are caught up in the noise of a crying nation and to feel it all too many will become the faces of unsound minds. We must be deliberate about our personal peace, which saves us from that place where we are dismembered spiritually and emotionally and cannot be made whole again. In that place, we may believe that we have no control and that we must accept that this is just the way things are – that some Guyanese men beat, maim, and murder Guyanese women. And in that place, we may also believe that our voices or actions will not make a difference. And we may imagine that time is an illusion for we cannot bear to face how long it has been since these crimes have been common and haunting us. So, whether decades pass between the murders of Monica Reece, Neesa Gopaul, Kescia Branche and Tacina Dazzell, in that place where we stop feeling, nothing shifts in our consciousness to emphasize that violence against women has long passed crisis mode in Guyana, and that all hands-on deck are needed to begin to curb and eventually end it.
