Dear Editor,
Towards the end of 2006, and together with a friend and colleague, Sara Abraham (originally from India, but whose work at the time engaged the Caribbean and particularly Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago), I thought about starting a column in the Guyanese newspapers. Our intention at the time was to aim for a different kind of space and voice, to invite others to share the space so that it would not become one written just by the two of us, and to engage issues not just Guyanese but that touched the Caribbean and beyond, issues we thought would be relevant to a readership that included those at home as well as those who read the newspaper online in the diaspora, a space so many of us occupy (even diaspora is too restrictive a word, as I have over the years received e-mails from several non-Guyanese who are now familiar with this column). I decided to write the editor-in-chief of Stabroek News, David de Caires, spelling out our idea and asking whether there might be interest. After some back and forth, in which he asked us to send some examples of topics and persons, cautioned that we might have to take a weekday column as the weekends were full, we were over the moon when we received an e-mail from David on December 28th, 2006, that the Stabroek News would take our column every two weeks as we had originally proposed, would run it on Mondays, and that he was expecting the first instalment by the 10th of January 2007. It was to him that the columns would be sent, and it was he who would write back with a query, a short comment, a gentle reminder that I was not always sticking to word limit. A year later, and after an incredible experience of interacting with so many people who immediately and generously responded to requests for a short column (at one point we had about eight pieces ready to go at one time), I asked whether it might be possible to shift to a weekly column. David consulted with his staff and by the end of November 2007 he agreed to this shift.
March 31st 2008 was my last correspondence with him as the point person at Stabroek for the In the Diaspora Column, and on May 2nd I received an e-mail that he would be away for some time. I knew he had ben ailing, but like perhaps so many of us, did not realise that he might not be back. We take some things for granted, sometimes out of carelessness and selfishness, but sometimes because we cannot bear to imagine something different. As In the Diaspora approaches its third anniversary, and on this the first anniversary of the passing of David de Caires, I want to publicly acknowledge his generosity of vision. As my continued experience with the Stabroek News staff shows, he has left the paper in good and careful hands, and all Guyanese a legacy to be proud of. I am sure that I speak on behalf of all those columnists who have appeared in ‘In the Diaspora’ when I say that we shall always be grateful to him for granting us this space, and we miss him dearly.
Yours faithfully,
Alissa Trotz
