When I returned to Guyana in 1968, after a gap of some 12 years, I was standing in my aunts’ shop at Hague Front, talking with a rice farmer from Hague Back who had known me from a boy. In the course of a rambling conversation comparing living conditions here and in Toronto, where I was then living, he turned and said, “You know, Mister Dave, de more civilized a man get, de harda he life become.”
I was astounded. This was a man with very little formal education. His world was limited to a small area on the West Coast. He had never been to Berbice, much less abroad. But somehow,
