By GHK Lall-I am beginning to worry about venturing outside. Death stalks this land. In many forms, in different ways, in places with the same harrowing result. Dead and done. No question, gone for good. Just don’t tell the grieving loved ones about what is good in a time of hard loss. I contemplate the flurry of recent death-dealing circumstances, and notwithstanding the heaviness, still find the space to wonder how Guyana has metastasised into this violent land.
In no particular sequence, there was a domestic violence incident that led to death. A dozen bullets will lead there. Alcohol contributed. One man, in essence, committed suicide, when he stood in the middle of the road, after being denied his car keys by his concerned spouse, due to his advanced state. She went from concerned to mourning in a heartbeat. Alcohol again showed its muscular face. A third fellow succumbed after being stabbed by his partner during a drinking session, where some difference developed.
For the third time in a short span of days, rum and steel played their parts and three Guyanese have left this earthly pale. Then, there was the post three-day holiday weekend shocker in one of Tuesday’s headlines: five dead in road accidents. There is some double counting here, as the citizen who stood in the center of the road numbers among those five deceased. All told, those who didn’t die by motorized machines, died with some link to rum. Guyanese are either killing themselves, or killing one another. Death stalks this land.
Liquor is held by Guyanese as a proven stress buster. The by product is the busting up that follows afterwards. One man made the news when he killed his domestic partner. There was the ubiquitous alcohol, which is a condition waiting for an argument, so as to blow up in a crisis. Or a crime. One young woman dead, one young man in the lockups. I am asking myself whether domestic violence, never less than right below the surface calm, is making a comeback.
Wrenching, appalling violence in the home, with a few of those occurring this month alone. Has this country become such a hard place to live in, that citizens take out their rage and frustrations on the nearest available target? Regrettably, domestic violence has always been a steady companion in Guyanese life.
Whenever the guard is let down, in the flawed belief that the wave has been crested, there are these grim reminders of what lurks in the breast, in the home, and in the hand (loaded gun, or shaft of sharp steel). Whatever the mindset and the instrument, violence, serious injury, or death is the inevitable result. Too often, too many victims. There has to be a national push that addresses changing the alcohol culture that overwhelms large swaths of this land. It is not just the terror in the home.
The terrors of alcohol have this strangest of expressions in Guyana. Violence erupts in public drinking places, not from the hand of outsiders and intruders, but from one’s own drinking partner. From domestic partners made into victims to drinking partners falling dead at the hand of someone with whom they were sharing good times. This is incredible; and also revealing at how the level of control that was once treasured has now gone to the dogs.
Is this violence an offshoot of social media verbal violence meted out against one another? Or the conspicuous verbal violence that starts at the top of the power pyramid and seeps down into the mainstream. To a large extent, Guyana could now be considered television country. What is blasted out from power circles (a euphemism) makes an impression on those down the ladder. It is anything goes, and that everybody should chip in and do their part.
If ever there was naked political instigation, that was one, notwithstanding the covering language. I think that when those held as heroes, because they are seen as protectors of the tribe, manifest the ready inclination to rage loudly first, then engage in verbal brawls on an ongoing basis, then a certain message is absorbed by watchers, listeners, and followers.
It is okay to go to excess. The law is an ass, there are ways to work around it. Often enough, the reports have emerged where people with much voltage behind them do their dirty deeds, and are left free to laff at how the law doesn’t apply to them. It is the kind of virus that catches on fairly easily and quickly. At the very least, a certain recklessness is fostered.
Last, there is the mayhem on the roads: one dead, or two, or three. I encounter motorcycles too close for comfort, lose sight of them for a nanosecond, and there they are curling dangerously around the front fender. Alcohol is not usually involved. But speeding is. Drinking leads to killing. Drinking and driving is an incentive to speeding and killing (self or others).
What is my conclusion from all this? Guyana now qualifies to be: a) a happy-go-lucky society; b) a violent one; c) a malicious and retaliatory one; and d) one where death could be a whisker away. And in what was once the most comforting of places.
