Guyana’s young die too young

Soraya.  Adrianna.  Isaiah.  Joel.  Haresh Singh on the West Coast Berbice, Quindon Bacchus on the East Coast Demerara, Keon Fogenay in Linden.  The young in Guyana die too young.  In mysterious circumstances.  In gruesome set pieces.  In the toxins of the tentacles that are there to protect.  In the fingers that twist into the perverse: a pull, a sound, a fall.  The Venezuelan accused is the exception.  The more I hear of crimes solved and closed, the more there are questions.  What’s missing?  Where’s the connection?

The freshest funeral, that of young Soraya Bourne, evoked all of this from a place unliked, even abhorred.  The horror of the young dying before the old.  The mathematics is poignant; the rules out of alignment, not made to work that way.  So, there is weeping and grieving.  Until, there is more weeping and beating of breasts at the inexplicable tragedies, wastes.  Apart from Soraya, all of 6 years old, and not ever knowing what it is to be 16, or 36, the minds and hands of the destructors have been Guyanese.  And, even in Soraya’s last fatal falling, there are three Guyanese alleged to be part of the detonation that blew a young child away.  It could have blown a city block into pieces.  Still, there are those in Guyana-and they are many-who raise voice and hand against other Guyanese, and for the worst of reasons.  More young lives cut short in barbaric manner.  Have had them before.  Will have them again.

What is missing?  What is missing is what is connecting.  Irony, isn’t it?  When the law isn’t walked in a straight line, then the crooked and demented results.  If the top voices in this country are fearful of speaking in straight, clean lines, then it is too much to expect, demand, that those who are answerable to them toe the line.  Straight ones.  Hence, these individual catastrophes, the savage ends met, and with that one thread.  They are mysteries that are not mysteries at all.  When leaders who command the widest swaths set the worst examples of fearing truths, but keep searching for comfort in distortions and more deceptions, then that’s the standard that binds, that becomes dominant.  When the first reaction is to be about covering up than coming clean, then the mysteries of the deaths of Adrianna and Isaiah and others continue to thrive in that murky condition.  When the first instincts of the State are to clean up the crime scene and clean-up the surrounding narratives, then Guyanese get a story.  A story that strains credulity.  The ones they have always been getting from officialdom all the way to the head of the class.  Of course, there is washing of hands.  Amid the shedding of official tears and gnashing of teeth, the washing of hands was long in motion.

What is the connection?  These young deaths, these ancient mysteries, that now torture the soul of Guyana, and hangs it in exhibition before the world.  Like some local House of Horrors, a well-stocked version of what is Guyana’s own wax museum.  Funerals bring out the unknown in me.  The unknown unknowns.  With all the knowing that Guyanese in this country have, what do they know?  They know this one thing, and with the immovable conviction of true believers.  The connection travels from the top of the head to the sole of the feet.  When the body is rotten, it starts at the head, and flows upwards from the foot.  Like a diabetic so far gone that he or she is beyond the power of insulin, and even that last resort [dialysis], doesn’t register, there is the connection that surges with deep sepsis through bones and tissue and devastates all in its path.

Think of leadership, and there is the connection.  Tragic, not transformational.  Want to pinpoint the law, and there is the connection.  It is greasier than a pig prepared for a circus.  Try holding onto that creation.  Seek a persuasive narrative, and there is another connection.  Choppy and shaky as the Essequibo River in raging crests and troughs. It has been that kind of ride for Guyanese.  They have been continually taken on one.  Continually may be out of place, because there has been little interruption.  The mystery deaths, the young tumbling away from that last grasp of earthly consciousness.  In the wake of those grim moments that have spanned almost three score and ten years now, the leadership dancing and official sidestepping around frightening national fires continue.  There is a merciful pause every now and then, until the next time, the next victim.

Nothing enrages this country anymore.  Not the mysterious deaths of the young once in the midst.  Not even Soraya’s death.  Not when convincing answers have hiked up Mt Everest, probably never to come down.