Dear Editor,
As a woman, I’m particularly affronted by the total disrespect dispensed to senior citizens in Guyana. There must somewhere be a photograph (or I will ask someone to take one) that shows what’s happening at those distribution centers where our government is distributing crumbs from the table—their bountiful table. They’re doling out crumbs and serving it up as though loaves of plentifulness.
What is going on? US$105? Or US$100.50? Or whatever it is— that’s what old people are getting—with all the great fanfare from the government—and extreme punishment for the aged. I stood in my shoes and wondered when I looked at what was going on at the distribution center at the Redeemer Church, which is the center in my area, and not a word . . . not a murmur from those old people, as they meekly waited.
In many precolonial African and Asian cosmologies, elders are most closely related to infants and children—what I now call my second childhood. To disrespect elders is to disrespect the genesis of life and all that is divine about its regeneration. Editor, with your help, I will speak out and let the world know what is happening to senior citizens like me in Guyana.
Sincerely,
Joan Cambridge
