Dear Editor,
The first person said it was “tough.” The second one started and closed things out with “hard.” Another felt it was “very hard”. By the time I reached the next it was “serious”. To my fellow citizens, the utterers of those words were not Middle Eastern millionaires weighing in on how difficult it is to make the next million. It was a handful of men and women from Linden in Region Ten about what it is to grapple with the cost of living, which is such a portion of their daily existence.
It’s a crying shame, isn’t it? For here we are on top of the world with glittering statistics that no one can challenge, and there are so many Guyanese catching hell to buy food to feed their families. Food, folks (whether the editor at SN or its readership that pause to peruse and ponder this national pathos). Food, not fineries. Ms. Cheryl Blount of West Watooka spoke for the unspeaking and unvisited in Linden when she said to the SN interviewer, Ms. Subhana Shiwmangal, “The cost of living is affecting me because we don’t have enough money to buy food items.” No! she must have that wrong, exaggerating a little, maybe even considerably. Not enough to buy food? This can’t be happening in today’s Guyana. But it is, because so many Guyanese are saying almost the same thing in different words week after week in SN on Mondays. Linden was part 78. And if this was done in consecutive weeks that is one and a half years of Guyanese (ten at a time) from all over crying their pain, overcoming their shame, to talk of the trials, if not tortures, to get a daily meal together. I am sure that the politicians on the bridge of the local ship of state read about them, or hear about them, but simply shrug their shoulders and come up with some curious propaganda line. Like how many billions were allocated to subsidize this, or boost something else. Or, that they have put together an infrastructure network that brings the greens truck and the fish cart directly in front of their homes. There! They save on time to get to the market, and money that isn’t paid to the minibus. What the ivory tower operators occupying leading chairs in the government fail to come to come to grips with, or deny outright, is that the people who don’t have enough to buy food can’t buy one catfish or butterfish from anybody, and this is regardless of how modern the infrastructure is, and how well it stays together.
Guyanese are living in a most exciting time, one where the news is of hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil produced daily, (not in Nigeria but here), and millions of ounces of gold estimated in some field or the other. Yet, the same Guyanese are forced to stir a pot that has only water floating inside, and not a single ingredient lining up and coming. Given the grimness of so many Guyanese, this is not a tale of two cities. Rather, Guyana is clearly the story of many individual tragedies inside one helluva big national tragedy. To emphasize the disconnect between the political dukes and dewans, on the one side, and the serfs and citizens on the other, the big chief went to Linden to remind the inhabitants of how much freedom Independence has delivered to them. What was conspicuous was that he walked emptyhanded, a full mouth of rhetoric and one impressive and ominous looking honour guard of military men. People need a meal, and the main man of Guyana traveled with his military brass. Howzat for a cost of living cure….
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
