By GHK Lall- It is Mash Plus 1. But here I am, about to write on this holiday, the one that Guyanese can embrace as belonging to them. Because they own it. There is a fever of ideas, some hot, some chilling. It is what should not be. Not for Mash. Not for one Guyanese. Not anymore. Not with Guyana as it is today. Where do I begin to talk about this love story with this land that took a wrong turn? I know just the right place.
For centuries, one set of Guyana’s sons and daughters lived with dread amid an unending season of wretched days. They toiled and labored. For nothing. Just recompense, what about that one may question? I respond with one of my own. When there are people who have made themselves masters of men, don’t even consider the chained and the whipped as humans, then to get to the stage of wage for work, well, that is a world away.
Then the enslaved were freed. The indentured found that their circumstances were loosened. Last, the indigenous were still allowed proprietorship over land and their way of life. But when the days of the first enslavers, exploiters, and predators were over, the liberty to live a dignified existence, the kind due to men and women who are free, was still a very traumatic, hobbled experience. Economics contributed to the hobbling.
For there was the scrambling, scratching, scraping to keep a level head, hold the family at a respectable state. Farming in the back-dam brought some cassava and plantain. Cast nets supplemented little kitchen gardens, with fresh catch to decorate the bai-gan and bhagee. It could be a slim existence (just getting by).
Or a grim one, with anxieties about managing from one day to the next. In such barebone circumstances, it required unflagging will, could be considered reckless, the lost cause of dreamer. But make it our people did. Don’t ask me how but somehow, they did. For many, poverty that was tiring and terrorizing were companions, that unwanted guest that wouldn’t leave.
Then along came a big thing, the biggest development to hit Guyana and its peoples. It was not just the biggest ever, but also with the richest and sweetest promised. Goodbye, poverty; except it was not to be.
Five years since that biggest development first showed its face, the always poor and the forever many of Guyana are still waiting. They still hope to taste that condition that could made them live like people who are truly rich, with the sweetest prospects. Where is it? Somebody tell the Guyanese people just where the hell it is, that richness and sweetness that bypasses their lives?
The people who used to grab the cream of slavery and indentureship before, look who follows in their footsteps. Try their children. The same familiar faces cluster around the riches of Guyana; control that wealth. Ours. They are from the old addresses, their habits as unchanging as the sea.
They exploit the gifts of Guyana’s earth; they erode the spirit of the people to whom this wealth belongs. Throughout this, the Guyanese who have it good, whose bellies are full, and bankbooks are bloated, barefacedly wish their lesser: Happy Mashramani. These are the Guyanese who are so obscene (scaly, snaky, smelly) that they partner with voracious predators, and call that progress for all citizens.
They want other Guyanese to swallow their pride, to suppress their intelligence, and pretend at rejoicing over Mashramani. The exploiters are empowered by our own, who turn around and expect (demand) that Guyana transform into a colony of ostriches.
Or one that is a nationwide village of idiots. Many are good at burying their heads in the sand, breathing easily underground. I can’t. No Guyanese with a speck of self-respect left should be, either. As for those who are allergic to sand, then it is just as acceptable, power the same objectives, to play the fool.
In olden days, kings embroidered their lives with court jesters. It’s easy to identify those from here, who have fallen into that role, who have fallen in love with themselves for what they interpret as elevated status, thanks to resident king(s).
The jesters were expected to perform flawlessly for the pleasure of king and queen. Some have become very good at the jester’s trade in Guyana. Start with the government. Step in the direction of parliament. Then, if mental stamina still abounds, then venture to a judicial threshing room or two.
Happy holiday! How can I sing a song in a time when captors command my land and treasure? Sing with enslavers of my political princes and academic pillars? Happy Mashramani doesn’t ring right, has a terrible dullness in its forced gaiety.
Many Guyanese are hungry, more mired in poverty, inside of this magnificent patrimony. Again, I hear chanting: Happy Mashramani. To Guyanese be glory. When I see it, I will know it. Until then, take all those wishes and greetings and stuff them in that long lower canal in the body.
