I didn’t know him when I lived in Guyana, but in my years in Toronto I became very close to Terry Ferreira from New Amsterdam who had migrated there. He became probably my closest friend in Canada, partly because of the powerful Guyana connection. Although living away, he remained Guyanese to the core in all sorts of ways and to the extent (I’ve written about this before) that he rode a bicycle from the area around Kaieteur all the way to Atlanta in the US on the occasion of the Olympics that year held in that city, to draw attention to the mental help issues he was ardently trying to promote. One of the things that bound our friendship was the high level of resolve he always displayed.
We were both young men looking to make our way outside and Terry came to everything he did with a level of application that I recognized and admired. Setbacks didn’t faze him; he would treat them with a shrug, or even a joke, and keep going. To put it in a few words, Ferreira would stay the course; he didn’t fold. A few years ago, living again in Guyana, I sent him a note on that point about the commitment he always showed. I don’t recall what triggered it, but in the note I said the following:
“On the subject of ‘trying’ that I emailed you earlier…you and I were always back and forth about Lara. You know why I loved Lara? Yes, part of it was that glorious, sweeping stroke, starting from high and coming through like a pendulum, like ballet…no other batsman I ever saw could play with that kind of effortless beauty…but the other part, the more important part, is that the banna never folded.
He always came out there to put out. It wasn’t the runs. Yes, the runs mattered very much, but what mattered more was always not giving in. Yeah, sometimes he would score duck but he would do it playing a shot, not backing down. Even when he made duck, he made it going for something.
Hear him talk about the 375, how on the third hundred he felt drained, he had gotten 300, take that and go, but his mind told him, ‘there’s more, keep going’. Sure, sometimes the situation or the bowlers would tie him down, but even then he didn’t throw away his wicket; he buckled down, held the fort until they tired, and then he turned on the heat again. How much he scored was secondary; what was crucial was he put up a fight.
That’s what I loved about the banna. You can’t possibly mek dem runs against England, like in the Barbados match, but he did it. Don’t fold. Like in the 275 in Australia when almost everybody folded. That’s one of things I love about you. I never seen you fold, ever, not once. That’s one of the things that grabbed me about my second wife, Angela. She didn’t fold.
Even when things falling apart, or somebody bus’in her tail about something, or I’m urging her not to work so hard, she didn’t fold. She keeps going. She finds the grit somewhere. You got to love that. I’m drawn to that like iron to magnet. For me, it’s the key. In all the people I’m drawn to – my sister Mell, my first daughter Luana, my niece Allison, my friend Vic Fernandes, in Barbados, my wife Annette now, my friend Henry Muttoo in Cayman – that’s where it is for me. If you don’t have that, if you’re not committed, if you don’t stand up, if you’re not putting out, I’m not interested in your backside.”
I wrote that some years ago now, but I still feel the same way. It still governs. It’s still in play for me big time. So it’s why I’m drawn to the local businessman Dennis Diaz who has become a good friend here. I’ve seen him reacting to situations of stress, large or small, and the notion of bailing out is not on his horizon; he’ll find some bright spot in the situation, even some humour, and he keeps going.
Retired Major General Joe Singh is another one. Impediments in the way? Take a couple breaths, circumvent, improvise, but stay with the task; the mission is worthwhile, don’t let the heat deter you. Nigel Hughes, another stalwart.
Mind you, Nigel seems big enough to handle whatever comes, but sometimes, while I won’t name names, you see big men like Nigel give up and go home. Freddie Kissoon is another one. I’m not a friend of his, I don’t think we’ve ever spoken, but in the things he writes time and again Freddie is taking a stand, sometimes a controversial one, coming hard at someone or some issue, and inevitably, given the course he’s on, the flak will come. Freddie holds hard. He will apologise sometimes for an overstatement, but he stands up for his opinions.
He doesn’t fold. Another example, from my previous life in Cayman, is the late Ormond Panton (I mention him often) who was a pillar in that regard; as a leading politician in Cayman, he refused bribes, and stood up immovable on critical issues.
On one occasion, he even ended up in fisticuffs in Government House with the then English Governor of the country who wanted Panton to drop his opposition to an issue.
As Caribbean people, that is often our failing – we end up settling for less. We’re seeing some of it in recent years in Guyana, and every time it appears it bothers me; as I said earlier, if you’re not trying, if you’re not standing up, I gone. If you don’t give a damn, I truly don’t have time for you.
