Dear Editor,
It has been a trauma in 15 piercing readings, bowing to SN’s weekly enlightenments about the lot of real Guyanese. A dozen a week, and for that dozen, there are dozens more right there in their spaces across Guyana. Today, I say not one word about what government and leaders should or should not do. That is known very well. Nor do I repeat what most of the people interviewed in Mahaica in SN’s part 15 urged government to do. All I merely seek to do is to capture the threnody of lost souls trapped in a paradise that is a purgatory for them and their families, their wider communities and, by extrapolation, the widest community, which is this rich national society. Hear them, as I hear them; if there was a time of having to do without, to reaching, but falling short, then there will be more than identifying and hearing. There will be feeling their life, tasting their bitterness, retching with their needs, their fears, hurts.
“People can’t survive from the rising cost of living….” The cost of living equates to the price of dying. Cost of living is not an abstraction, but of that pain in the gut, that shrinking of the thinking from acute anxiety. Just ask Mr. Mohabir of Mahaica. From Mr. Gobin: “When you look at the country producing oil, you wonder why we are in this situation.” As I relate to Mr. Gobin’s travail, I read hours ago, that Guyana’s economy per capita (person) stands at US$17,000. This means that we, Guyanese, are living in an economy, a country, of approximately GY$3.5 million per person. The division is flawless, perfectly correct. But, what GDP does not tell is how more than 740,000 citizens out of 750,000 are subtracted from actually touching, knowing, that lovely US$17,000 per person computation. They don’t know anything, feel nothing, from that magically accurate US$17,000 a Guyanese head. If they can come near to a quarter of that US$17,000 figure, they would count themselves rich and prosperous, very blessed.
I will not bore anyone about who (the few) is it that gets countless multiples of that US$17,000, and who don’t know what it means a shilling of it, because they are forced to go without. Try telling that to Mr. Mohabir and Mr. Gobin in Mahaica. Try running that one by, or asking, Mr. Bhudni Persaud (“the punishment is terrible”). According to him, “a small piece of pumpkin…even pak choy, sweet potatoes, all gone up… I can’t buy that…” But he and the others are US$17,000 richer according to the numbers, and the numbers don’t lie. I buy-in to both pictures, one is glittering, the other gruesome.
Editor, when the men are crying their pain and shame at not having, I don’t think that we can begin to stomach what the women, our Guyanese sisters, have to say, in this numbers-busting, world-stomping, record-breaking national economy. Guyanese are like a man tied by paralysis in famishment and fearfulness to his bed, but being celebrated globally for the magnificence of his breathtaking riches. He can hardly breathe from the gnawing, grinding, groaning pangs in his stomach, but he is the richest man in the universe. If those numbers represent the number of our individual delights, then we would all be in heaven. Because those startling statistics have come to capture our collective screams of anguish, then they don’t matter at all.
What is the point of them all? To where do they lift us, take us? I leave with this statement: perhaps, the more practical question is this one: to where do they dump us, leave us? People like Abeena Jones, David Grundall, Omadevi Kowlessar, Abhimanan Indramatie, and the hundreds of thousands of other Guyanese in the same boat staring at the same dire straits and shoals.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
