Dear Editor,
“Everyone crying out about the same things I’m faced with. Some days I would barely squeeze money to feed my family.” Brother Ricard Pitam, a businessman of Cotton Field, Anna Regina, Essequibo immortalizes the pangs, the heartaches of so many Guyanese. Amid the glitter, there is this national litter. People. Pain. Daily wretchedness. For onion and oil and greens and self-rising flour. We soar to the mountains, and there is the dreadful human miasma.
Mr. Pitam speaks to the pain of thousands upon thousands of Guyanese. The international students of the way Guyana is, and Guyanese life, report that it is about half of the local population. In some way, to some degree, too many Guyanese are hungry, short of necessities, and I am not even thinking of clothes or paying the bills. Think food alone. What dignity for our people, who are the envy of the world?
The numbers are glorious, the possibilities endless, yet constant piercings push plenty in our population to the edge of unconsciousness. Cost-of-living. The high cost-of-living, and its enormous impacts. It is the ongoing dirge embedded in Part 13 of SN’s cost-of-living series (SN, February 13), and the stunning repeats itself, week after week. Indeed, it is only a dozen at a time from over a dozen communities now. But, surely we will not fool ourselves, bury our heads in the oil, let the gas to get into our heads, and argue that they are the only ones. Outliers, and by a small margin. Aberrations, but with a human poignancy.
This issue might be boring for those flying high, and feasting at the public trough, but I persist with placing the plight of our peoples under the nose. Smell their traumas, leaders. Taste their distress, supporters and defenders and excusers. There is a palpable grimness emerging from the lips of those interviewed. I do not discern a single partisan phrase, only the worry over their circumstances that prompt baring the breast in public, via a national newspaper. That is saying something, isn’t? For who admits so openly their oozing sores?
Repeatedly, the government is implor-ed, petitioned, definitely begged. Help us, please. Give us a hand. Do something. Those are real people in Cotton Field. Those from Linden and Parika and other places touched before deal with the same barrenness, harbour the same deep fears, gingerly touch their psychic ulcers. Cringing comes. They wilt lower daily. To the men controlling the money, and making expansive speeches about the potential of Guyana, I urge responding to these torrential torments that inundate this ‘middle-income’ nation. To those in the middle, these are the ones at the bottom, and they are so economically distant from the centre that they are in an ongoing financial purgatory. Food in the pot. A dollar in the pocket. It is not of want, but dire need. It is about a trickle, some particles, of elusive comfort amidst the spectacular grandiosities that is Guyana.
We can build all the roads, erect all the educational structures, the good things today for a better tomorrow. But, if those in the near and far corners of this gifted land cannot find the simple ingredients to build a pot, to put together a small plate, then we are the epitome of the what is the best of times, and the horror of the absolute worst of times. I have heard that people are the greatest, most prized, asset, and that the children are the essences of the future. What have we done to them, when this is their present?
This is painful to write, to articulate publicly, in this paltry, pathetic, choice of words that don’t even begin to capture the harsh, jarring, increasingly jaded reality of Guyanese, who are the symphonies of angels, the awe of global contemporaries. For who can feel the pain (and the shame) of those who find it necessary to confess the same before a listening, reading, watching, and recoiling world. I will not arrogate onto myself that authority, any such wisdom. But I can sense it, and 1 speaks for 12, and the 12, now 13 times over, speak for all of us, to all of us. I feel sick.
Before the next politicians from any group clear their throats to utter a fancy speech, give a solemn pronouncement, I suggest they check their stomachs. At least they had something. They can feel it in the steadiness of their knees, the surge in their sinews. In this time of great happenings, there are those Guyanese who have nothing, know of nothing else to expect. Will the government do something? They ask. I plead. No speeches, please. I hope no offence is taken.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall