Cotton Tree Backdam West Coast Berbice remains a haunted place. Just four years ago it was there where the lifeless bodies of Joel and Isaiah Henry were found. It was there where their cries and screams were silenced forever. It is there where restless spirits I am sure congregate to mourn what was done to their bodies. What now decays in the ground was mutilated, spine detached, and blood drained into the earth – horrors unimaginable. It was there where the murderers of the Henry boys were blood thirsty and merciless, cold, and hateful as they stole the life of two innocent boys. It is there where none of them stopped for a moment to spare them or to think about the great evil that they were engaged in, the repercussions that would follow and the trail of sorrow their actions would leave. It is there where none of them thought about the future those boys deserved to have. Empathy detaches itself from some human beings. They are not good or righteous, they are not kind or selfless, but the epitome of what it means to be evil.
A few days ago, I had a conversation with someone who said he was a relative of the murdered boys. The fourth death anniversary of the boys has just passed and still justice is to be had. Their bodies were found on September 6th, 2020. I remember where I was on that night, I heard the news. Alone in my home, stricken with grief, I was horrified. I did not know them, but what about the mothers who gave birth to them, their fathers, other relatives, friends who grew up with them – everyone who loved them. Such tragedies leave oceans of trauma. Such tragedies can distort the mind. Such injuries to the soul are often unaddressed in this place we call Guyana.