Shafiau Rasheid wants to come home. She boarded a plane in March, 1977 as a 17-year old girl to migrate to Ontario, Canada “because Guyana was starting to get really bad.”
Now, the 51-year old mother of five grown Canadian kids longs for the day she could board a plane and walk away from this cold snowy land to plant her garden and live in the sun in her family’s East Coast Demerara village.
She visited “home” four times in the past two years, mainly for funerals. But she always longed in her heart to return.
Today, she awakes early as heavy snow covers her driveway and cars parked there. She cooks for her children and does household chores, then gets dressed with four layers of clothing, including a thick winter coat, before heading out the door.
She shovels fresh overnight snow off her car, warms up the inside for a few minutes, then drives to the subway train station, where she parks and takes the subway for an hour’s journey to her workplace in the heart of the busy financial district in downtown Toronto.
With her thick gloves, headscarf and long leather coat, she looks like any Canadian heading out to brave the Canadian winter.
So what’s stopping her leaving for warm sunny Guyana right now? “I have children still going through college. I want the youngest to get through college and then for sure I’ll go back there to live,” she said.
Rasheid left Guyana to become a bride in Canada. She married her fiancé Hafiz Rasheid soon after landing in Ontario. For close to 20 years the couple made their life in the new land. Hafiz had grown up in Charlestown, Georgetown, at Broad and Lyng Streets, and after a short stint as a teacher, he migrated to Canada in 1972. But he had seen Shafiau and fallen in love with her. He came back to ask her mother for her hand in marriage, and the Canadian marriage resulted.
Hafiz still had his own mother and sister living in Charlestown, Georgetown. So after he retired from his Ontario government job after 25 years, he would visit his family in Guyana often. In 2008 he went there for a few months. He died there, a day before his 60th birthday. Shafiau and their five children travelled to bury him at Le Repentir cemetery.
However, the marriage had prospered and the couple had done well.
Rasheid has a ready smile for anyone. Jovial and friendly even in the subway train where people sit through a journey in stony cold silence, Rasheid is a woman of warmth. Her home is always open to friends, and she offers food and tea or coffee to her visitors, reaching out to others with gracious kindness.
Rasheid said she is thankful for a wonderful life in Canada. “I raised five kids and they are all educated. I do not believe that if I was in Guyana I would have had five educated children.”
When she left Guyana, “no one wanted to marry and stay there. The country offered no hope to us for a good future, to raise a family well,” she said.
Her children are all Canadian born, and they see themselves as Canadians with Guyanese parents.
Today, she wakes up to feel a deep sense of accomplishment, of a life well-lived. She has three children living with her at their three-bedroom Toronto bungalow. Her eldest daughter, Alima, married a Trinidad and Tobago immigrant to Canada three years ago, and her eldest son, Karim, bought a brand new four-bedroom house an hour east of Toronto. Karim works as a banker, having graduated from university in Information Technology Management. Another son, Azam, started college this year, and her youngest daughter, Mariam, is finishing up Grade 12 in high school and getting ready for her college days. Another son, Khaleel, is also gearing up for college.
“My children are important to me, and Canada has been very good to them. They do not see themselves as Guyanese at all, and I do not think they would, or even could, ever go there to live,” Rasheid said.
“I think if I was in Guyana my kids would just maybe have gone to high school, and not college or university. I really believe that they are educated because they are Canadian.”
Rasheid said Guyana’s major failing is that the country does not aggressively seek to see that most of its young people attend college or university. “The country must look into a good university or college education for all the young people leaving high school. Maybe they should hire foreign teachers to help educate the young population, and invest wisely in the future.” She prescribes a sound tertiary education strategy for Guyana to move forward. “The government should develop a plan to see young people go for their education – quality education. Do whatever it takes to get the young people in education centres all over the country.”
She said when she came to Canada as a teenager, she attended college to study Fashion Design. “If I had stayed in Guyana, I would not have done that for sure.”
After college, she worked for five years in Ontario, then chose to stay home and raise her kids, whilst her husband worked at his government job.
Rasheid said she has lived a life of dignity and fulfilment, being able to own her own home, drive cars of her choice and see her children live enriching childhoods. “I would say that in Canada we have a high quality living standard, and who wouldn’t want that?”
She still has four brothers and two sisters in Guyana, along with a sister and a brother in the United States, and a brother in Suriname.
She said the key to her achievements in Canada is “not to be lazy. Here you cannot afford to be lazy. You work hard and the society rewards you with a decent life. But in a few years I would go back to Guyana to live. My children, though, would never go live there. They would go on vacation or for recreation, but not to live. They are Canadian and they feel at home here. There’s nothing there for them.”
She said her recent visits have revealed significant progress for the country. “I see progress. The government is doing a lot of good for Guyana. But there are still serious problems, like flooding. The drainage system needs to be developed better.”
Yet, despite the progress, “everyone wants to leave the country still. There seems to be no real future for people living there.
They all want to get out so they could live a better life.”
She said the future depends “on young kids being taken care of. You have to invest in the education and living standards of your young people to build a nation.”
She said she had sent “lots” of money to family in Guyana over the years. “I sent money to support my mother, who died there in 1996.”
She would come “home” once the kids are old enough to be on their own. “Here in Canada I raised a great family. I have lived for that… Once they don’t need me, I could go back and settle there. I long to live in Guyana one day.”
