Former government minister and educator Donald Ainsworth, 73, and his wife Wendy recently celebrated their golden wedding anniversary. They attained 50 years of marriage in spite of many ups and downs at home and at work. They saw their six children, including a set of twins, through university to become professionals after uprooting them from Guyana and transplanting them in the USA.
“What we have done as a family might encourage a few people to adjust their behaviours and try to do things a little differently to raise a strong family. I was married on 1st June 1974 at 23 years old. We stayed together through the art of compromise. Sometimes either of us pretended to be blind, deaf and dumb. We had to decide what was more important to create an environment where there was tranquillity, regardless of the issues,” Ainsworth, who was initially reluctant to share his story of migrating to the US, told Stabroek Weekend from his home in Maryland.
His two eldest children, Darren and Donelle Johnson hold doctoral degrees, one in education and the other in health. The other four have master’s degrees and are pursuing doctorates. The twins, Deeanne Rowe and Denise Lee, the youngest in the family, both have double master’s degrees. His second son, Donald Dane has a first degree in mechanical engineering and an MBA in finance. His last son, Dillon, has a first degree in social work and a master’s degree in psychology specializing in counselling.
“They all went to university on scholarships, either academic or athletic. They all graduated on time. I credit my wife for their achievements,” he said.
While he held parliamentary and ministerial posts in Guyana, Wendy looked after the children.
“Many times I left home early in the morning and by the time I got back at night, the children were already sleeping. I didn’t spend the amount of time I needed to spend with them while I lived in Guyana. Once I came over to the US it was a different ball game,” he said
In the US, he noted, “Wendy basically put her professional development on hold to look after the children while I worked to provide for everyone.”
Born and raised in Victoria, East Coast Demerara in a large family, Ainsworth said he came from a stable home background in spite of historical precedence.
“My father was always there to look after us. Based on the example my parents set, I knew I had to be a good example for my children,” he said. “When we talk about family in the plantation economy of Guyana and the Caribbean, families were destroyed by slavery and concomitant factors thereafter. Black people were not encouraged to have families during slavery. The socio-economic conditions were such that it was difficult to establish families. When freed slaves bought land and tried to fend for themselves by establishing farms, the sugar estates flooded out those lands because they wanted the black people to return to work on the estates.”
After they brought in indentured labourers from India, China, Portugal
and elsewhere, Ainsworth said, the menfolk went to seek their fortunes elsewhere, including in the interior looking for gold. “They left their wives and children at home with some setting up other families in other locations. So historically, the black family was always a weak institution,” he added.
Both of his parents were school teachers. His father was a headmaster and former president of the Guyana Teachers’ Union. He did all the things other school boys did like swimming in the trenches, catching crabs, pelting birds and getting away from home to play cricket.
“Some days, you get away in the mornings and you don’t go home till in the afternoons because you know when you go home you will get licks anyhow. In those days you never worried about food because whoever yard you played in, always made sure you ate,” he recalled.
He attended Golden Grove Methodist School and pursued secondary education at Central High and Buxton Secondary schools. After leaving high school he taught as a pupil teacher for two years at the Friendship Methodist School before joining the Guyana Electricity Corporation as an accounts clerk.
In the home, he said, his wife was always the dominant figure in the development of the children. They were married before Ainsworth started his bachelor’s degree at the University of Guyana (UG). The Ainsworths had three children while they were both at UG.
“Amidst all of that, instead of going home to help, I was busy playing politics on the campus. My first year at UG, I was faculty rep for social sciences. Then I was junior vice president, senior vice president and finally, president of the University of Guyana Student Society from 1978 to 1980,” he said.
After graduating, he was appointed the deputy training officer at GEC. In December 1980, he became a member of parliament and was subsequently appointed parliamentary secretary for education, a post he held from 1981 to 1984. As MP he had political responsibility for villages between Golden Grove and Ann’s Grove on the East Coast Demerara.
President’s College
In 1984, then president Forbes Burnham assigned him the responsibility to construct President’s College and he was appointed a minister of state in the Ministry of Education. As coordinator for the establishment of PC, Ainsworth saw its development from conception to establishment.
When Burnham came up with the idea to build a residential school for the brightest young people to access the best possible quality education that Guyana could offer, there was no money in the national budget to build it, Ainsworth recalled. A committee, headed by Sase Narine, was put together for fund-raising and another to design the curriculum. George Henry, the architect, was responsible for the design.
“We found teachers, administrators and sent some for training in different parts of the world to observe how their systems were providing for the brightest to be of service to the nation. In August 1984 at the turning of the sod for construction, Burnham announced that the school had to be ready for opening in August 1985. He died before the school opened but everything was pretty much done,” he recalled.
The site, 150 acres of cleared land with electricity infrastructure and a well, was handed over to two building contractors the day after the turning of the sod. Apart from the school, they built dormitories, an administrative building and livestock pens. Having saved $13 million through self-help and donations, they also built six houses for teachers that were not in the plan for the first year.
“We involved the community in a lot of self-help work. Those who had skills in agriculture helped to farm the lands. The business community donated a lot of building materials. That was one of the biggest and most successful projects that involved community self-help
participation. Businesses and government came together to ensure the project was completed on time,” he said.
Housing ministry
Ainsworth was transferred to the housing ministry after the December 1985 general elections; Burnham had died, Desmond Hoyte was president.
At the first Cabinet meeting in 1986, he recalled Hoyte asking him how many houses he planned on building. Ainsworth said he told him there was no money in the budget for capital works in housing. The following week he told him he was going to build 28 houses at De Kinderen on the East Bank Essequibo where two competing groups were fighting over ownership of the land. He had brokered an agreement between the two parties to come together to build the 28 houses. With no money he had to find a way to fund the project. By then he realised that many people were not paying rent and mortgages in the government housing schemes in Georgetown and elsewhere. He launched a campaign to get people to pay up the rent and mortgages which ranged between $12 and $35 a month.
“At that time we had lines around Home Stretch Avenue to pay because this crazy minister was going to put people out of their homes. The fund used to build the houses and schemes were meant to be used as a revolving fund. I found out that housing officers were involved in all kinds of rackets. When it was time to do the scheme at De Kinderen, none of the officers who were involved in building the other places were involved,” he said.
The De Kinderen project started sometime in 1986 and when Hoyte revoked his appointment in 1987, Ainsworth said, it was about 65% complete.
He said encountered a number of corrupt activities in the ministry including one in which he overheard a man who was repairing his mother’s-in-law house telling his father-in-law that when he was finished with his work on their house he was going to paint the Ministry of Housing building and after that he was going to paint a senior housing officer’s house.
“When I went back to work, I asked the [senior officer, position provided] about the arrangement he had for painting the ministry building. He told me he had identified the contractor,” he said.
Ainsworth questioned why he did sole sourcing and not satisfied with the answer he instructed that selective tendering be done.
“When that was done, the bid of the senior officer’s guy was almost twice the amount of the next highest bidder,” he stated. Some officers at the ministry took bribes to illegally allocate housing accommodation to people, he said.
“It had gotten to a ridiculous stage where people came to the ministry and said they wanted to talk to me because they heard some houses had three bedrooms and only one family living in the house,” he said. While trying to make changes, he said, “People started to complain about me, right, left and centre.”
Migrating
Prior to leaving Guyana, Ainsworth’s two older sons were at President’s College, Donelle had just written common entrance, the last boy was in play school and the twins were a year old.
“When I thought I had done with making children, the twins showed up. Exactly a month after they were born in 1987, Mr Hoyte and I parted ways. Imagine just getting two young babies and you ain’t got work,” he recalled.
Ainsworth then spent two years trying to earn a living in Guyana. He planted rice at Hopetown, West Berbice.
“In those days we rented combines from Mahaica Mahaicony Abary Agricultural Development Authority to cut the rice. 1989 I’d paid for the machines to cut the second crop. I’d mobilised labour and everything. On the morning they were to cut my rice, the machines were diverted elsewhere. Six weeks later when the machines were sent, I’d lost the full crop. Blast had affected the crop before so I lost two crops back to back. It crippled me financially,” he said.
His mother, who had migrated to the US in 1982, and was a US citizen, decided to sponsor him. She returned to Guyana on a Saturday in August 1989 and filed the application for him and his eldest sister, who were two siblings out of 11, still living in Guyana.
On 2nd October, he received his US visa and left Guyana on 12th November, 1989. “I left home broke. Foreign exchange was restricted. I have some friends in this world who are exceptional. Godfrey Statia who was on a scholarship at Rutgers University had come home to bury his grandfather and he was returning on the same flight I was on. He had $200 and change on him at the time. He gave me $200…,” he said. Statia subsequently did more to help Ainsworth.
Fortunately, his wife and children had left Guyana before him and were with her mother in Maryland.
“Initially we stayed with my in-laws for a few months. Once we got settled we moved out. It was difficult at first. You had children who were used to sleeping in their own bed in their own home. We had to make up bed on the floor,” he recalled.
Ainsworth got his first job in the US on 2nd January 1990 as a manager with the fast food franchise Roy Rogers.
“I worked with them for six months. Being a manager at a fast food joint you do the work like everybody else. Sweep the floors, clean the toilets and wipe tables,” he noted.
He had applied to the Board of Education in New York to teach and obtained a temporary licence in 1990. The board granted him a one-year contract and a scholarship to City University of New York to specialise in special education. After the year, he left New York and taught at Prince George’s County Public School in Maryland from August 1991.
In 1992, he obtained a fellowship from George Washington University and graduated two years later with a master’s in human resources development with specialisation in emotionally disturbed adolescents. After that he spent five years teaching in the classroom. In 1996 he completed the school’s leadership licensing examination. He became an administrative assistant in the school system and subsequently a vice principal. He retired formally from the education system in June 2006.
“I’d told myself I will stay in America until my children were finished with schooling,” he said. When he retired, the twins were finished with high school, his eldest son had graduated from university and got married. His eldest daughter and second son got married later and the grandchildren, now 20, started to arrive. “My wife said she was not leaving them. I ended up staying but I had been going back and forth since,” he said.
Ainsworth was in Guyana from 2009 to 2012 working on a private sector project. When the APNU+AFC took office, he returned in 2016 as deputy director in the department of community development in the then ministry of communities. He was also vice chairman of the Board of Industrial Training and a member of the President’s College board of governors. He also worked with then first lady Sandra Granger who had a number of projects with young people across Guyana. He left in 2020.
