We all do this. We see something or hear something – it could be in a brief moment, or it could be a long enduring condition – and in the absurdity of it, a momentary query, along the lines of “why is that going on?” passes through the mind. A part of this occurrence is that it’s usually fleeting; the impression doesn’t consume us; we may not even talk about it with our close ones or friends, and so the thought fades, until the next time we encounter the oddity and the ‘why’ comes back to mind, and then it becomes an irritant. I know it’s something we all do, because if I mention one of my ‘why’ situations to a friend, I will always get one or two of his/hers in return. And it is not just an idle curiosity; these observations I’m talking about may seem minor at first glance, but there are often significant implications behind many of them.
Why, for example, are we faced today with such a deterioration in English language expression? Hardly a day goes by without some very public and very high profile lapses in fundamental errors of spelling, grammar and word use that one would find shocking in even a rudimentary high school education. Why are so many of us clearly unable to differentiate between ‘loose’ and ‘lose’? A recent letter writer prophesied that a particular political party was “destined to loose the election.” Why does somebody, supposedly of average intelligence, not know that the sentence (this from a professional journalist) “the condition is getting worst” is patently wrong?
Why do we have this rampant confusion over the simple apostrophe? We have a well-designed sign proclaiming so-and-so “welcome’s you” and apparently nobody notices the mistake. It’s an epidemic. Just yesterday, on the Caribvision television channel, there was a stark subtext on the screen: “Caribbean Jockey’s Dominate at Canadian Track.” Why does a mistake like that simply sail by? And before you talk about Caribbean education, the decay is in the developed countries, too. I’ve heard them use the word meaning ‘head of a school’ when the word the sentence calls for is ‘principle.’ If they don’t learn the difference in school, why is that? That is the larger question.
Why does Guyana remain largely a ‘no-cheque society’ in a time when daylight cash robberies are so prevalent? Particularly given the absence of large-denomination bills, common sense should tell you that when you exit a bank with G$5million, your bulging pockets, or handbag, are obvious to all. Does the well known Guyanese disposition to solve problems desert us when it comes to being held up? We’ve embraced the cell phone, and the computer – we’re on the cutting edge of those things, but we are still in the Reformation age when it comes to using a cheque book. Why is that?
Some of these oddities are clearly cultural, but still puzzling. For example: Guyanese drivers are fairly forgiving to drivers who overtake blind, or to drivers who stop in the middle of the road, or speed through red lights, or drive with brake lights not working; Guyanese drivers come from the back and squeeze to the top of the line; all of that is okay, but if you don’t signal, even once, it’s Armageddon time. People scream at you with the veins bulging in their necks; they want to kill you and burn your car. Why is that? I may have mentioned before that early in my return to Guyana, after I had committed the cardinal no-signal sin, I was followed for four blocks by a man on a motor-cycle who finally pulled alongside me in a rage. “No signal, mistuh! No signal! Chris’ man, is whuh wrang wid yuh? ” I was speechless. I still am.
Again (and one could say this is a trivial example) why do so many of the television news readers in Guyana frequently close their eyes in the middle of a sentence? It often happens when they’re introducing a video segment, but there is this individual, face filling the screen, mouth moving, and suddenly the eyelids close. The first time it happened, I was startled – I thought the lady had passed out – but it appears this is a style thing because I see it frequently. There was a lady news reader in Barbados who had the same habit, so I asked my CBU friend Vic Fernandes about it. Normally a fount of information, Fernandes’ response was, “Sorry, bro, I can’t explain it.” I have noticed lately, however, the Bajan lady is not on the air. Perhaps she actually fell asleep during one of those eye closures, and woke up to find herself fired.
Sometimes, we ask “why” from frustration. There is a trench behind the house where I live on the East Coast, and during the flash flooding it overtopped and flooded about a dozen yards to the north and several to the south. Following complaints from residents, the powers that be used heavy equipment to effectively clear and dredge the trench, and created a 4-ft-high dam on the parapet. That’s lovely, but here’s the problem: the previous water drainage into the trench, from properties to the north, has been blocked by the dam.
The information we have is that it is now up to the individual homeowners to each put a pipe through the base of the dam to drain their properties. So why wasn’t that done when they were doing the dredging?
Channel 65 live programmes usually have an annoying hum. Why is that? I’ve asked several people who should know and all I get is shrugs. And when our television stations record someone speaking in public (NCN may be the exception), the audio is frequently painfully bad; why is that? There is so much echo and hollowness, it sounds like it was produced at the bottom of a well. Why is that? Don’t they listen to their own programmes?
I suppose some readers may supply an answer or two for my queries above, but here’s one that will draw blanks: in the face of their continuing wretched performances, why do we continue to pay money to watch the West Indies cricket team? I suspect nobody knows the answer to that.
