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By GHK Lall
In this the season of Easter, I think I could be forgiven. For what I dare to share in this space with my Guyanese sisters and brothers, including those who revile. One man rose, I must allow him to lift me up, and not reciprocate in kind. So, on I go.
Given that Guyana is reported to have a population, where over half of it identifies, in some way, to some degree, with the teachings and ideals of Christianity, there is comfort in what is offered today. Jesus gave of himself to the bitter end. He held nothing back, left nothing untouched, in his giving. From this, hope comes in waves, even in the most dismal of times, the lowest ebb of the spirit. It is such a time in Guyana, for too many of our fellow citizens can be found to be in need. It is not ordinary need, but the gnawing, piercing, stripping to the soul of naked need, that little extra to make something of substance happen. A family could smile, the children not left to wonder, why this has to be so, day after day.
The painful irony, the weeping contradiction, is that Guyana has been blessed with so much, given so much that the world envies. Yet, there are the brigades of our brethren: the hungry, the thirsty, the weak and worn, the forlorn and the failing and the falling. Before the memory slips, there are those with tatters for fig leaves to cover themselves, and a cracked or holed or broken scrap of rubber to carry their hurting feet from pond to post. The Guyanese people are floating on oil, but they also float on a sea of broken dreams, in the haze of uninterrupted, unrelieved hallucinations.
This can’t be happening. But, it is. This can never be so. But I assure that it is definitely so in what our leaders do. Who gets, and who is targeted not to…. Who is hailed and lifted high, but of the others left behind, and laid low, there is nigh, except for the sighs. Jesus looked at the crowds and his heart was torn to tears by their torments, the awfulness of their wretched state. He felt for them because he could see and hear and actually touch their loneliness, the desolation of their circumstances, the abomination of their times.
This is oil Guyana, and we have a government that is all about oil. Oil is of riches by the billions, and this is what could enable, empower, and energize a whole lot of giving. The PPP Government gives, but to whom, in the sleekness of the narrow band of Guyanese who receives, prospers. What about the others, dear leaders? Those same ones limping and languishing and lamenting being left behind and without? They, too, are humans, and not just lifeless nuisances along the great racing highways of this Oil Dorado, this Oil Guyana.
Some people, and some communities get gifts in great bundles. There is cash; plus there is infrastructure in its limitless sprawls: a road, a bridge, a center, and a this and a that, that all up into one rich, well-thought out package of oil’s rewards. Why not the rest of Guyana? Why not, Dr. President? How about those other kinds of people, Dr. Vice President? Dem peeple dat doan look like me and you? Or are in the same space as the big men and the middlemen? What about the poor in the country (some of the government’s own people) , and those others in the deep country of forests and rapids and mountains, the people who were here first? In this time of giving and getting, what about those who came on sailing ships, while wrapped in chains, with so many more left wrapped in the embrace of the waters of the deep?
A case is sure to be made that not one Guyanese is being left behind in this gleaming Atlantis that is ‘One Guyana.’ This conflicts with the sly disparity of a hand for a small public works project given grudgingly here and there, but nothing else. As locals would say: caan help fuh caan help…. How about those same loaded packages, or some decent fraction of them, for communities not considered, because the PPP Government sees not as their own? Those are Guyanese citizens, tried and true, and not Syndicatos. Some cash, some jobs, some sustainable gifts (as lavished on other more highly favored communities of color). If I were to present like my Anglo Saxon and Nordic and Celtic brothers, they are of a particular color, those communities embraced. I regret that it is a one-sided feature that is conspicuous in this production of ‘One Guyana.’ Aal ah wee is waan, but it is who is de unwanted waan, and in the multitudes of them.
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses….” This is at the mouths of the Demerara and Essequibo and Berbice, and not Ellis Island. I speak of the mass of Guyanese wretched on this Easter Sunday. Who thinks of them, other than with malevolence? Who cares for them, besides the punishing? Who does what should be done for them, considering the gleams of the nuggets that we have in our hands, at our disposal, through the nod of a leader’s head? If this is liberty, then give me the slavery of my own company! If this is oil’s glamorous prosperity, then give me the misery of my drudgery!
I speak to Presidents, each of them, and say: brother, can you spare a dime on this Easter Sunday? Go a yard longer, and not as much as the mile that is traveled for others in the Guyanese firmament. My God, my God, hast thou forsaken me…. Perish the thought. Never! In adversity, there is beauty. Of the soaring human spirit. God will provide. God will take care. He always does, does he not? Blessed Easter to all Guyanese, believers or those not.