In The Diaspora

This is an edited version of remarks given at the Tourism Hospitality Association of Guyana (THAG) Awards Dinner in Guyana in April by Dave Martins
In 1967, the year when Tradewinds became popular with Honeymooning Couple, I came back to Guyana for the first time and when the plane touched down I had tears in my eyes. I hadn’t been home in about 11 years. Emotion, as we say in Guyana, was “tearing tail boy.” That was 41 years ago, and since then I kept coming to Guyana almost every year, sometimes more often, sometimes with the band, sometimes alone, and always looking forward to the trip. But as time went on that started to change. As conditions in the country started to slide, I would say to people around me, “I’m not looking forward going to Guyana this time.  With the problems they have, the people are going to be downcast. It will be depressing.” But then I would come and find I was wrong; that despite the shortages, and the political wars, and the devaluations, time after time I would come and find the people still upbeat, persevering, complaining mind you, but persevering, finding things to laugh at. I remember one year Tradewinds came to Guyana to play, and there was a widespread kerosene shortage. There was a big crowd at the dance, a lot of Government ministers, the late Roy Fredericks was one, and while we were on stage a fireworks display started at the National Park – the Chinese had made Guyana a gift of some fireworks – and I sang, “Fireworks in the sky, but no kero to buy.

YOU CANT GET, YOU CAN’T GET, YOU CAN’T GET.” It was an improv moment, I wasn’t sure about the reaction, but the place erupted. The shortage was real – it was disrupting their lives – but they were laughing.

The next year I was coming home again, the devaluation had taken a sharp dip, and I remember thinking, “This is it. This time I will go and find people deeply dispirited.” And again I was wrong. On trip after trip, I was wrong. I would come expecting gloom, and I would meet these vibrant Guyanese all over the place. And for years I was puzzled by that. How were these people coping with these circumstances? I couldn’t figure it out. And then one year, I was going down to Hague in a taxi, with five other Guyanese and there was this fantastic gaff going on, about every subject under the sun – items in the news, gossip, tantalize, laughter, opinions, a  mini Bourda market on wheels. And it suddenly hit me: our dollar is 150 to 1, these people should be glum, heads hanging down, but look how they’re carrying on – vibrant, positive, upbeat. And right there the answer to the puzzle came: Guyanese culture was the glue that was getting Guyanese through the hard times; they wouldn’t put it this way, but without consciously knowing it, the power and sweep of their culture was the bulwark helping these people to cope. It was a sudden awakening. It was like somebody turning on a torchlight, twelve o’clock at night in the Pomeroon: epiphany.

If you think about it, it is the same way with any nation facing serious problems – the culture carries you through.  The traditions, the behaviours, the way of life, that’s what keeps mankind going.  When you consider, for instance, what was done to the Jewish people, you can see if you interact with them today that their survival came from their culture.  The Germans after World War Two; the Japanese after the atomic bomb – same thing. Right now, people in Iraq – same thing. Black people in America – same thing. Certainly, belief in the Creator is at play, but that is only part of the wider culture – the way the people are;  that is where the power to keep going comes from.

I obviously don’t pretend to know where the solution to our current dark time in Guyana lies, but I know for a fact that we have the ingredients in our culture to sustain us in those times when we may be despairing or afraid. It’s not anything new. We’ve done it over and over. As a small boy, I remember standing in Carmichael Street, during the Great Fire, the sky red as blood, frightened to death, thinking the whole of Guyana was burning down, but we survived that. We survived the Black Watch; the political wars; the riots; rigging; food shortages; no kerosene; devaluation; floods – in each case, the glue that keeps us going is our culture.

Understand I am not making light of our problems – they are serious and troubling and must be solved – but I’m saying that as we struggle with these things, we have the ingredients of our culture helping us to cope. It is there, without consciously knowing it, that we are finding sanctuary from whatever storm is raging around us. To borrow from Paul Simon, it is our bridge over troubled waters.

Because we live in the culture every day, we don’t recognize the role it plays in our lives. It is when you go away from it and come back, as I did, that you recognise it for the constantly uplifting miracle it is. And it is ingrained, we carry it with us forever. When we migrate, it’s in our suitcase…we’ve got achar, pine tarts, pepper sauce, fine leaf thyme, pholouri, all of it, as my sister says “smellin’ up de white people plane”.  Go to the Caribbean store Saturday morning in New York or Toronto…the Leonora man, parks his BMW,  dodging the cold, and bolts inside looking for hassar, and green plantain and casareep.

You can’t blind yourself to the worries, you can’t ignore the dark times, you can’t pretend they’re not there, but you can draw strength from the fact that we have survived and will again, as my Guyanese buddy  Terry Ferreira put it, “because of the lucky shot we were born Guyanese.”

I’m not saying when “ting bad” you put your head in the sand – of course efforts have to be made, problems have to be tackled† – but while that is going on you can find hope in who you are as a people, as the people in Palestine do, or the people in Iraq do. As a culturalist, I make the point that the resource we can draw on in these times is the foundation of who we are. If the superstructure is messed up, if it seems insoluble, the one thing we can rely on is that vivid and instructive culture that we were born into; the crucible that has formed us. That is our foundation; it rests at our core. It brought us through the Great Fire worries, and the Black Watch worries, and the independence worries, and the riots, and the floods; it will always bring us through.