Dear Editor,
I worked the day shift with former President Cheddi Jagan on the day he would normally go to his office to meet people with appointments, but as we settled in his car and was on the move, he said to me and the driver, “Comrade, we have to make a short stop to see my doctor.” His visit didn’t last too long for a normal heart checkup; as I sat there and looked at his doctor tending to him they both chatted a little and we left for the Office of the President and all seemed fine. A few days after as I had finished my shift, another bodyguard called and said, “Hey, yuh hear wah happen just now?” I said no and he said the president was rushed to the hospital and it looked like he got a heart attack.
In those days information was not like nowadays, we had to depend on the newspapers and radio and TV, but through the grapevine, we heard that someone contacted the U.S embassy and that they would fly him to America. I was very surprised they made that decision since Jagan was a communist he should have been sent to Cuba. We were always told that the Cubans had the best doctors and medical facilities. President Castro would have welcomed Jagan with open arms, but before all this, there was the cyanide spill at the Omai Gold mines that polluted the mighty Essequibo River and Jagan was furious.
He lambasted Omai and pressed for compensation. Those who were affected were given a few black water tanks to catch rainwater and as we travelled along the Essequibo River with him, Dr. Jennifer Westford and a delegation we could have seen the sadness in Jagan.
Cheddi Jagan was very kind to us bodyguards, he would make sure we ate, asked where we came from, I remembered the long nights at Freedom House where Jagan would hold lengthy meetings with his ministers and as soon as those meetings finished he would have us collect the food and take it to State House and share it amongst ourselves. He loved his grandchildren and would not only take them to the pool but would also send a car to pick up some ministers’ children to swim.
At the Office of the President, the close man and a few bodyguards had to cut out articles published in the letter columns of the respective daily newspapers about things that was of concern to them, e.g. broken water mains on the East Coast, police harassment in Berbice, etc. These clippings were put in a file and it gave Jagan detailed knowledge of what was happening in and around the country. We also had to reuse envelopes which were used to send internal documents within the ministries. In the afternoons, we would walk around the National Park and sometimes around Kingston and nearby areas to sell the Mirror newspapers.
I remembered the disturbances in 1992, the Herdmanston Accord, the frequent picketing exercises and sometimes Joey would lecture us on politics at State House, and on some weekends, we would go to New Haven in Bel Air at Jagan’s residence where he would tend to his sheep, dogs and chickens. In the nights we had to massage the president. I saw different types of electronic massaging machines in his room but he never wanted us to use them, we had to do it by hand.
I remembered he had something called ‘This Week with the President’ where he would address the media. I never saw him angry but he and Enrico Woolford had a little exchange of words once. He would also give us blank tapes to put in the tape recorder to record Radio Deutsche Welle, broadcasting from Cologne in Germany, and London Calling with the latest news. Then we heard the sad news that Cheddi Jagan had died at the Walter Reed Memorial Hospital and he would be brought back to Guyana. When I looked at his body at State House and saw the crowd in line every day I said Guyana had indeed lost a great soul.
Sincerely,
S. Harald
Former bodyguard to President Jagan