By GHK Lall
This is a story of Guyana, the country with the richest people on average in the world. A native-born son got deported back to Guyana 20 years ago (Demerara Waves, May 1). In his mind, Guyanese Lorenzo Charles, left the heavenly for the dreadfully shabby. Now forced to deal with the Guyanese reality of a bucket for shower, his words came tumbling out, “I thought it was the end of the world.”
It is a haunting picture of what was from 20 years ago, but what is different now for the ordinary Guyanese man and woman? What is different in the lives of man-in-the-street citizens, and with so many billions of barrels of oil? What is different for locals in this era of big national budgets, of great expectations?
To begin with, what is not different are the great disappointments that gnaw at Guyanese, who know that they should not be left in the lurch as they have been, and forced to live how they do. It might no longer be the “end of the world” for Guyanese-born Lorenzo Charles, now gladly back in the fond confines of his family in Brooklyn, but still remains Guyana as it is, to a considerable extent. It is the only world that Guyanese who can’t move, who are unable to breathe freely know. They knew it before oil arrived in all of its flashing splendor. The problem is that the rays of that brightness has not touched them in any material manner, in any sustainable fashion. What is the end of Mr. Charles’ world, is the beginning, the norm, of Guyanese existence.
African Guyanese know this frustrating norm, Indigenous Guyanese know it from a time now lost in the mists of years, and poor Indian Guyanese know it as their hardscrabble routine too. Does Guyana really have oil? Are all the lush, exciting, spectacular things said about Guyana accurate, actually have some bearing with reality? Then why….?
Why are so many Guyanese living without, other than with so many woes that overwhelm their daily quest for survival? Why are so many citizens living with the unreality of having so little (World Bank), in the middle of ever-rising oil production, glittering profits for the foreign oil companies (Wall Street Journal), and ballooning budgetary allocations for infrastructure (Guyana’s parliamentary records)?
Because expectations were so high, and remain doggedly and forlornly so, the gaps of need, and the voids of answers not forthcoming, become more unbearable, the piercings even more wrenching. Dashed hopes, the paltry splash of a bucket for a shower instead of a shower of the economic goodness that could be, and should be, but just has not been.
Where have we gone wrong, why, and who is responsible for the plights of a population deemed to be on top of the world? There is no interest in pointing to government and leaders, as much as such is justified. I think it is enough to say that the government rides on the back of a bucking tiger. For now, the back of the unhappy beast is the most unsteady of seats: there is the danger of ending up inside of it. The longer the tiger remains in that impassioned and upheaving state, the hungrier he gets.
Too many Guyanese people are hungry. Too many citizens are hungrier for their justified share of their inheritance. There is no discussion, never any debate, that the national inheritance is theirs too, each and every one of them. They are neither impressed nor amused that ‘Big Brother’ milks twice: for himself, first and then mostly from their share again. We cannot be this prosperous on PowerPoints, this superbly standing on financial spreadsheets, and still this dirt poor in the sum of our material goods.
On Labor Day, one worker group put on the table a minimum wage of $81,000. It is a well-meaning vision, but the wage bucket isn’t even coated by drops of dew. Helpful, yes; delightful, not by any stretch of the imagination. The days of contempt and crumbs must closeout with finality, with more of the record-breaking national budgets providing more for the hands of more Guyanese. All of them having their hands outstretched, their stomachs and pocketbooks stressed past the breaking point. This was what another union grouping called for in the form of a supermajority in the parliamentary budgetary process.
I agree. For what could be more of a ‘oneness’, a togetherness than heads actually hearing and knowing the cries of Guyanese across the national spectrum, who are oil magnates, but who live with individual misery. There is the fullest appreciation for the history of oil, and how it could lead to the fulfillment of national promise. There is also knowledge of how this same genie of a commodity brings as its rollicking companions many perils and perversities. A bucket for a shower 20 years ago may be pardoned. A family without food, hopes that hemorrhage, heights not scaled are all simply untenable and intolerable in this era of oil, the hour of the dawn of Guyana’s magnificence. Too many have been forced to get by on too little for too long. It is criminal, a cardinal felony, when we have so much. Guyana should not be the ‘end of the world’. Guyana should rear to the fullest height of its grand promise, and march in front of the beginning of a new time. This is what Guyanese should be, to what Guyanese must aspire. Oil makes this possible, is the proven difference-maker.
