Sometimes you’re sailing along, minding your own business, and an idea will land on you, totally unsolicited, that is so startling in its acuity it almost makes you jump. It happened to me last week. I’m going into one of my favourite stores in town. There’s a taxi parked outside (Pipey, I later learned, was the driver) and a sign on the trunk, written in dialect, reads, “Bun Bad Min.” It stopped me in my tracks. I cannot remember the last time an unsolicited idea hit me the way this one did. I instantly saw the brilliance of the thought. Just stop and consider for a moment how Guyana would be transformed overnight if we could find a way to get rid of the “bad min” attitudes among our people and our leaders. Applied across the board, that philosophy would have a dramatic and panoramic effect on almost every negative condition in this country; it would be a transformation to behold.
Imagine, for starters, what would happen to all these contentious projects which have been hanging around our necks recently like the proverbial albatross. With “bad min” out of the way, government would cordially give us the real story on Amaila Falls and the Chinese fishing licences, and the opposition will be disposed to reconsider the budget cuts. We would learn the thinking behind Sooba’s appointment as Town Clerk, or how we got saddled with outdated medicines, or the real story with the City Hall funds,
