In some measure, in some aspect, in whatever country you find yourself, life on a daily basis can be a source of anxiety – sometimes depressingly so. Anybody who tells you otherwise is either being careless with the truth or, more often, it is a matter of someone bemoaning atrocious behaviours in another country (currently, Thailand, Israel, the Sudan) while apparently oblivious to the egregious in his/her own backyard. Of course, as my Bourda Market vendor would put it, “Me ain’t business wid anywheh else; is hay I livin’.”
So in that context, and since “is hay I livin’ tuh”, I have to admit that sometimes folks in Guyana can get you down.
You see them on the front page of the newspapers charged with chopping up somebody, or inside the paper running some racket duping poor people of their money, or in a small tucked away item about somebody mutilating somebody else.
I used the word “folks” but such people sound far removed from folks. You read about these things, or hear them on a broadcast, or somebody phones you to relay them, and after you get over the shock at the news, you’re left to wonder; “Who are these people? What kind of pressure or trauma is driving them to commit these acts?”
Such incidents, coming as they seem to do these days with such frequency, can leave you demoralized. What manner of mankind are these? Whatever happened to the solid, tie-bundle people of this country? Where in the name of God are we headed? Despair is definitely a word that fits in that scenario
And then you find yourself on a sunny morning in a modest meeting-room in the village of Trafalgar, on the East Coast, Demerara. It’s around 9am, and approximately 100 people have gathered. They’ve come voluntarily from the surrounding area to a public awareness session to educate people about the value of mangroves as sea defence (a wifely coercion had me there) and they wait patiently for the meeting to start – yes, Guyana time is always in play.
It’s a genuine countryside cross-section, ranging from the free-spirited Eldon, whose main interest is catching towa-towa birds in the mangrove forest, to the cattle farmers who are concerned about losing their grazing areas in the mangrove, and everything in between. Housewives are in the crowd, and some teachers, and several businessmen. At a time when a trip to the market may be calling, many women are there, leafing through the printed matter, and then following the Power Point presentation intently.
They’re full of questions and opinions, and the meeting’s convenors quickly put them into four groups so that all the views can be aired and proposals noted. Eavesdropping on the fringe of these groups, one is struck by how sharp these people are and how well informed. Climate change and solar power and environmental pollution are familiar subjects to them, and they refer to examples of it in their villages.
Very few of them have university degrees, or even high school ones, and Standard English is not always their medium, but when you listen to these people you hear a lot of hard information, common sense, and a lot of direct talk – the b.s. and the rhetoric is pretty scarce in this room.
There is the articulate Indian gentleman with a flowing grey beard, implying some religious inclination, who calmly dissects comments in his group with a skill that suggests he’s been a teacher. Two elderly black gentlemen sitting to my right are enthused that the Mangrove Management Committee, running the workshop, is proposing methods to stop the practice of garbage dumping in the mangroves. When a suggestion for solar power in kitchens is deemed impractical, a businessman gets up to argue strongly otherwise.
The Mangrove Committee has made a good move in coming to these people for their input. They know the landscape in their area. They know the people of their community inside out, and who is involved with what. They are free to tell you where the problems are, and what will not work, and, most importantly, why.
Throughout the meeting, although some opinions differ, and contrasting concerns are raised, the atmosphere remains one of discussion and resolution instead of conflict; there is a kind of common purpose underlying all the back-and-forth. Particularly striking to an observer, is how much in tune these people are with the concepts behind the government mangrove project – sea defence; fish propagation; carbon storage – and with the hurdles to be overcome – man-made destruction of mangrove; loss from grazing animals; degradation from discarded garbage. To use the phrase of one of the meeting’s convenors, Paul McAdam, “These people get it.”
In summary, the Trafalgar folks were a pretty impressive bunch.
Most days, if you’re paying attention, you can learn something new or reinforce something you’ve learned before, and that East Coast meeting served to remind me that while the Guyanese making bad news in the media are very real, they are actually a small minority. The vast majority of our people are like the ones up there in Trafalgar – a collection of solid tie-bundle people who are working hard and honourably to make life better for themselves and their own.
Only 10 minutes into that meeting, you could see it. They had come there prepared to contribute and to help and their enthusiasm was real. After the three-hour session, one young man, owner of several bee hives located in the black mangrove, insisted on showing us his operation, five villages away, from which he exports honey to the Caribbean.
All this is not about the scenario of mangroves in Guyana – for that you’ll have to go to people who can unravel that subject better than I can. My point here is that if what you see in the news some days leaves you concerned about the future of Guyana, take heart; most of us are not like that.
The majority of our people are like the folks I saw last week in Trafalgar. With all the anxieties, with all the disturbances, with all the inequities, most Guyanese are like those – decent people engaged with, as the song says, “strugglin’ we struggle” in an honourable way.
