Dear Editor,
After reading Mr Frank Fyffe’s letter, published in both Stabroek News and Kaieteur News on Monday, November 22nd under different captions, I conclude that either Mr Fyffe has buried his head in the sand, lacks the “moral integrity” (to borrow his words), to face truth, or is guilty of being what he is suggesting of others, a “spineless, submissive” creature!!
This man describes my letter as “unfortunate, and did not make for pleasant reading.” Sir, you just gave yourself away! This is no time for pleasantries. If you desire “pleasant reading”, check the kids department (fiction section) at the National Library. I figure that for him, it is unfortunate that I should speak my mind so clearly for all, near and far, to learn of the atrocities we endure. He completely ignores the fact that my decision to pen that letter was not a hasty one, but one that I felt compelled to write after one year!
He asks an insipid question of graduates: “How do you see yourself in the service of your country?” How can one serve if one is not given the opportunity to serve! My daughter, for example, continues to do voluntary work among the less fortunate. Is it sane to suggest that one year after graduating with distinction it is selfish for one to yearn for a salaried job!?
“Create the perfect conditions and make us an offer…” These are the words that you formulate and place in the mouths of our young graduates!! You seek to give the public the impression that she (and others) have been “stubbornly rejecting” job offers! What nonsense! My daughter rejected offers to go abroad because she wanted to stay right here and serve her country, but her forty-one applications were put on file! You say “…no sane person will help to fashion a system which they know will handicap them or render them helpless: this is why we need to relinquish our passive posture at some point and be bold.” Good suggestion, sir.
Do you have any bold moves to suggest, short of leaving this country? Too late, Mr Fyffe, too late!! The truth is out and no meandering on your part will erase it. Truth needs no defence! It always wins!
And then you dare to add “But this is how everyone in this land has become – all material and nothing else…” Everyone? Speak for yourself, sir! You make a pronouncement, and then impose this degenerate, materialistic standard on all and sundry. Consequently, you accuse our ‘young and brilliant minds’ of lacking integrity , and advise that they “seek to implant into their character…some degree of moral integrity, courage and concern beyond self.” What an insult to our young and brilliant minds!
If you consider one year of a fruitless job hunt as an ‘obsession’ of self ‘not tempered’ I might just have wasted valuable time, and ink to respond to you, but before I close this letter (and this issue), let me remind you that I (not my daughter) was the author of that letter and can assure you that I, also a graduate of the University of Guyana, am neither ‘feeble’ nor ‘spineless’, so help me God..
Yours faithfully,
Claudia Theresa Heywood
