Dear Editor,
I had a dream that the people of Guyana woke up before dayclean on September first morning and, by 4:30 AM, in every single corner of the country, every man, woman and child of them were fully dressed and headed out from their customary homes to other villages. Was this a spell, a hypnosis, a madness? This movement, as if in trance, of an entire nation?
Like sleepwalkers, boarding the buses or the boats or the planes, you could see the Barima-Waini people heading far East and South, to the East Berbice-Corentyne. The Pomeroon-Supenaam people moving south, to the Potaro-Siparuni. The people of the Essequibo Islands, travelling to the deep south and central, to reach the Upper Takatu-Upper Essequibo Region. And there were the Demerara-Mahaica people faithfully joining the Essequibo Islands people heading to the Upper Takatu.
Goodness gracious, the recent immigrants – the Venezuelans, Haitians and Cubans and all the others – woke up to this movement in bewilderment! And wait! Most of the Brazilian-Guyanese were also caught in the trance and were travelling too.
Eh Eh!!! What a confusion and a madness was this?
Plenty rain fell as the sun rose and they travelled. But then the travelers moving south and west and east realized that they were not the only travelers. When they arrived in East Berbice, the Barima Waini people met the people of the Cuyuni-Mazaruni who themselves did not belong to East Berbice. And the Mahaica-Berbice people were in the place where the Cuyuni-Mazaruni people should have been. Yes! All of them had been travelling, not only the people in the coastal and riverain villages, as they had believed. And as each set of travelers arrived at their destination, they set down their weary selves.
Back in the various hotels in Georgetown, the Caribbean and International Observers rose from their beds. The Cuban and Venezuelan immigrant workers quietly served them their breakfast in semi-trance, and there was no riot. The members of the armed forces remembered the places they would go on holiday and smiled. And by 10 o’clock, the Guyanese everywhere were gazing with amazed faces at strangers who were also strange to the place to which they had just arrived. Quietly and respectfully, they found food and drink in the dwellings of strangers who had left their doors open and their stores unlocked, as though in expectation.
Yours truly
Charlene Wilkinson
