I see burglar bars, grillwork, heavily armed company security forces, reinforced doors, guard huts, watchmen, security lights, CCTV cameras, reinforced steel shutters, barbed wires, broken bottle topped fences. Crime and insecurity make for big business these days.

Such is this national scourge that people in Guyana are now chaining down their flowering plant pots, garbage bins and even, as I saw in one yard in Georgetown, their clothes lines. Street signs which are bolted down or have their concreted bases buried in feet of earth are not safe.

In Guyana it is unthinkable for anyone to build a house on the coastland and not have grillwork on every window and door as a necessary prominent feature. It has become as basic as a toilet.

It is a certain form of imprisonment, not only of the body but of the mind. At nights not only is the nation locking out whatever elements may wish to intrude but it is also locking down itself against whatever dangers may lurk unforeseen inside. Fire being the most prominent one.

I remember the circumstances which led to the death of Guyanese cultural icon Lakshmi Kallicharan whenever I think of grillwork and my heart bleeds. Lest we forget, her Georgetown house became engulfed in fire one night and she was burnt alive at her grill door because she could not get to the keys to open the padlocks to get out. Some dismiss her death to unfortunate circumstances, I hold the leadership of our country accountable. What are the real reasons why Lakshmi had to live in a cage?

It is true that as Lakshmi did, the people are making practical decisions. They are voluntarily imprisoning themselves and their families out of what they deem to be necessity. One can’t blame them for taking action to protect themselves because the state has failed in its mandate to protect them.

But it ought not to be.

People often think only of what is on the surface. What would cause a man to plot and orchestrate to leave his home (if he has one) in the dead of night to go to the dwelling of another, risk his life and limb and break into it to get what he can? No one can convince me that this is what those thieves wantto do. For the vast majority it is what they are forced to do by circumstances. They keep at it out of necessity because they must and because they do not get caught.

Why is this so prevalent?

There is desperation. There will always be criminal elements of various kinds. But why, in Guyana, is there a criminal culture? Why is it a way of life, not for a handful, but for such a large segment of the population? Why is Lot 12 Camp Street overcrowded with break and enter thieves?

It has become a nationwide disease. It is not a Police Force problem or a Ministry of Home Affairs problem, it is a national problem. Such is its widespread effect that it requires the focussed attention from the head of central government.

It is not, as it used to be, a blackman perpetrated crime. Coolie men are in it now more than ever, perhaps as much as blackmen are. We see the names and photographs of the ones who are caught from time to time, we see skinny coolie boys just out of high school in hand cuffs being herded to the docks.

There are no jobs for thousands, for thousands of others there are only demeaning jobs cleaning drains, garbage bins, gutters, alleyways and toilets for scraps which cannot do for a decent week’s living for one let alone a family.

Men, in these sorts of numbers, in the first instance turn to this sort of crime not because they are inherently bad or lazy but because it is their last resort at feeding themselves and those who are dependent upon them. After repeat successes they may become career criminals but there must be an examination of why they made that initial decision to get into banditry and larceny.

The grillwork imprisons our bodies at nights but it also seems to be imprisoning our minds from understanding the fullness of the situation.

The grillwork is as a result of the prevalence of crime. The prevalence of crime is as a result of desperation. Desperation is as a result of hopelessness. Hopelessness is as a result of a lack of opportunity. Lack of opportunity is as a result of discrimination and the absence of real development for all across the board.

More than the immediate threat of bandits, to me, grillwork is another constant in-your-face reminder of the dreadful management of our country at the very highest levels.

Grillwork is an unmistakable statement by the people – coolie people, black people, all people – that they do not trust government and politicians, that they have no confidence in their performance, management and capacity. Grillwork is an indictment on our leaders.

Grillwork does not have to be, but it is because the leadership is failing the people. That is the legacy of national leadership in Guyana – a nation caged without any confidence in those who a flawed electoral system allows to lead, guide, serve and protect.

I noticed him, for the first time, after the elections, when media reports put him as having surfaced in front of the Providence Police Station to the aid of some stranded Lindeners.

As it turns out he played a prominent role in delivering Linden and the wider Region 10 to APNU in a manner that still has the PPP and the AFC licking their open wounds.

And now he is not in Parliament.

But Africo Selman is. So too are a host of others who are unknown to the wider Guyanese public. Previously I had never heard of any of Richard Allen, John Adams, Jaipaul Sharma, Jennifer Wade, Dawn Hastings, Rennis Morian or Annette Ferguson.

I know of Selman only because I had seen video footage on NCN of a very poor presentation she made in the National Assembly and had cause to enquire who she was only to be told that she is so and so’s “lil girlfriend”.

I know of Joan Beveghems only because I saw a news report that she was shot with a rubber pellet during the protests. I was shocked to learn that she was a Member of Parliament. I had never heard or seen her name before, neither did she make any impression with the electorate during whatever time she served. I trust that her qualifications for being an MP go beyond being shot in the leg by a rubber pellet.

I know of Vanessa Kissoon through personal relations. James Bond and I know each other since our time at the University of Guyana and he, perhaps more than anyone else has earned, through strategic thinking and action, his place as an APNU Member of Parliament.

I know of Christopher Jones.

Volda Lawrence, Basil Williams, Sydney Allicock, Amna Ally, Ronald Bulkan, Dr. George Norton, Joseph Harmon, Desmond Trotman, Keith Scott and Winston Felix are all known to the mess.

Presidential and Prime Ministerial candidates David Granger and Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine and Carl Greenidge round off the list.

I struggle to think of a PNC MP who would have made more robust contributions of quality and substance ahead of Robert Corbin, Winston Murray and Aubrey Norton.

Corbin is not returning to Parliament and Murray is dead. How could Norton be off the list?

This development speaks a thousand words to me.

Most worryingly it signals that the PNC/APNU is still playing the politics of spite and vengeance. At a time when the nation is longing for a deliverance from this politics of old the PNC/APNU is digging in its heels.

By this act of what is nothing short of personal political persecution the PNC/APNU has ostracized legions of right thinking Guyanese who might have been leaning or wanting to lean in their direction.

It also tells me that the PNC/APNU list was not constructed entirely on the basis of merit.  By meritorious placement Aubrey Norton, on any scorecard, must rank highly.

Further in what will be a brutal National Assembly where every contribution counts substantially how can seven political unknowns and somebody’s lil girlfriend leap frog Norton?

That is injustice of the most barefaced brand.

Norton is no one’s favourite politician. He is rough and gruff, has a penchant for acrimony, his checkered shirts and over-sized jackets make him look clumsy and he is ruthless. The members on the government side will be relieved to see him absent. He kept them honest by holding them accountable.

At a time when the opposition has the constitutional power to best utilize a dedicated and fearless Parliamentary powerhouse as Norton, PNC/APNU allows him to be victimized.

APNU campaigned on inclusive governance but now when they are put to a minor but instructive litmus test they cannot include one of their own who is deserving but with whom they have some operational differences. How can the people trust them to include, if they were to ever form the government, those with whom they are philosphically separated by thousands of miles?

Moreover the PNC/APNU does not understand, it would seem, that outside of its support base people do not trust them. APNU did make inroads on building the levels of trust. They began the work in chipping away at the mistrust people harbour and win the quiet confidence of the wider society. There have been some mis-steps and setbacks.

Now in one fell swoop, the heavy hand of Corbin in causing this Norton Scandal has railroaded the process. Who will argue against the PPP bottomhouse campaign which will appeal to the people with “look yuh see, dem is de same ting like we, so why yuh gon change we fuh put dem?”?

Finally, what the Norton Scandal illustrates is that Granger, now that the campaign is done and dusted, has his limitations in reach and influence. He is not truly the man in charge. He held this illusion up until November 28th. Thereafter we have seen slippage and a truer picture of who is really in charge.

So on the one hand we have a President who is being directed and puppeted by the Puppeteer-in-Chief. And on the other side the old Palm Tree boss is running the show with a tight fist. And so the nation, despite the reluctance of the people who have delivered the most historic elections results ever, drifts back to square one.

The seawall tells the story.

An older man hustling cane politely enquires of a group of boisterous young men whether they are interested in his stock.

The loudest of the lot takes umbrage.

“Cain kill he brudda Abel, I ain’t know wha he go do to fockin me! Me ain’t want no fockin cane. Mek yuh ites!”

The hapless cane vendor, head bowed, shoulders drooped, ambles away. His disappointment reeks, not of not having made a sale.

A well oiled group of young people. Two car loads of them. The men accessorize their cars, the women their bodies. They gather and gyaff and laugh. They drink just short of two dozen well chilled beers brought in a medium sized cooler carried by two of the abler gents. They nibble at this and that before deciding to make their way to some other spot. They walk away from the clutter of bottles and half empty packets of gas station bought imported chips, past the empty garbage bin, into their cars and they’re off.

A small group of young ladies walk past. One has borrowed a phone from another and is on a call. She walked ahead to speak in private and is eating away at what must be limited credit.

“Curlesa! Gyurl bring meh fockin phone!”

Curlesa ignores the demand.

“Dis fockin gyurl tek she fockin eyes an pass me!”

There is no consideration for the many folks within ear shot. There is no inclination towards discretion.

A tall body builder type guy arrives quietly and joins two young ladies, one of whom he is freshly courting. The body language between them is awkward. He does not yet know her preferences so he must enquire before he buys a drink from the leaking cool down cart on the grass bank in front of us.

He, not unexpectedly settles for a Guinness, two Smirnoff Ices, one each for his target and her blackcaking friend.

After an hour they leave. His bottle is empty. Her’s is just past half. Blackcaker sucked hers dry. The bottles join their cousins nearby, sitting on the wall, making a chorus of low howls every time the wind picks up and jars against their uncovered tops.

The cussing and the littering are not isolated misdeeds in the grander scheme of things. They speak to the degradation of that social fabric, the rotting of the society, from the head.

Those who have limed at Oistin’s, Maracas Bay, Gros Islet, Emancipation Park in Brown Kingston and in various public gathering spots of the ‘other’ Kingston would not have been witness to such thoughtless littering nor would they have had their ears assaulted by unsociable language.

But there, there is thought, consideration and care by authorities. In those societies, not devoid of ills, there is still a genuine respect for culture, there is an unrelenting emphasis on the value of education and the virtues of a decent life.

Amidst their difficulties and sometimes turmoil they have not gone adrift from respect for their fellow man at the most basic level.

The Sunday Seawall Lime is a well established cultural tradition yet the authorities do not see it fit to have roving cleaners or litter wardens to maintain cleanliness. Neither have they seen it fit to position portable toilets for the evening, so men and women piss everywhere where there is limited lighting. Some care not, low lighting or not.

In an unaccountable society where the ones at the top are flagrant in gorging unchecked the lesson for the man at the bottom is do wha de fock yuh want. Nobody kay and nobody ain’t kay about any body. Decency is close to death.

A dog eat dog world is more real here than most other places. Too many find it easy to snarl, snap and abuse each other, the seawall, the environment. It is the lesson they learn from their leaders.

They let indecency loose at, and litter the seawalls. Their leaders do it in Parliament Buildings, at ministries and on New Garden Street while brandishing shiny guns from SUVs.

The war should not have been on bad manners. There is need for a war on bankrupt, self-serving, careless leadership. Until that war is fought and won the scrawny dogs, the empty bottles and food boxes and the filthy language will rule on the seawalls and most other places in our beautiful Guyana.

He advises that I need to pay more attention to the craft for greater literary acclaim; that I should agonize and re-edit and enter the Guyana Prize.

I ponder. I agonize. I try.

In the nearby living room, through the open door a gruff police officer expounds on 98.1 in that inimitable Guyanese police style about police security measures for the Christmas season. I’ve seen them out, in Georgetown and Vreed-en-Hoop. Prominent, weapons at a ready, finger on the trigger guard. They walk around smiling with the season, looking for a raise but no need to fire, only pose.

Remember. The craft. Agonize. Here I am at a ready. Fingers at the keys. Nothing. Posing.

I’m surrounded, in this two prison cell sized study, by books. They are everywhere. On shelves, on desks, on the floor. In Dell computer boxes, in oversized Rubbermaid bins, in baskets, on chairs, on boxes, on top of now flattened Christmas wrapping paper from two years ago. There is room only to leap and shuffle, not walk.

Her law books and novels and my books on just about everything else but mostly on cricket, communications, people, society, and politics. Someone please ensure that Ian McDonald never sees the ‘cricket’ in the previous sentence. He might interrogate and find out that several years ago I had shipped several boxes of very hard to find cricket books from obscure county book sales in rural England.

• The Mensa Book of Literary Quizzes
• Ground Rules – A Celebration of Test Cricket
• Caribbean Constitutional Reform
• Rasta and Resistance – From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney
• New Rules by Bill Maher
• The Ideology of Racism
• What Sport Tells Us About Life
• Economics of Adoption of New Agricultural Technology – The Case of The Guyana Rice Subsector
• Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media
• Themes in African-Guyanese History
• Transnational Communications

And on the fire engine red arborite topped desk on top of a stack of photocopied law class handouts and study notes (written in multi-coloured extremely fine print to maximize space) rests one of those black and white animal print Composition note books.

In the Name line is written ‘Intellectual Property’ in strong black ink in her typically strong handed style. How ironic, I think. They study Intellectual Property… (wait, wait, wait) in Guyana.

A green can of Off! insect repellent. ‘Deep Woods’ it reads and I think we are but on the coastland, which Enrico Woolford likens to nothing more than a big dam. It’s strong enough to repel mosquitoes that may carry West Nile Virus. I think of malaria. I think of the time several years ago when my cousin was laid low and rendered bed ridden by dengue. I think of the last time I had vaccine shots and come up empty. Need to restock on Off!.

A pair of Gray Nicholls batting gloves. A full sized hand painted paddle, the only recollection of some GuyExpo, then and now marketed as the biggest and best trade fair in the Caribbean. Some legacy that.

A clutter of flags stuffed tight into a burnt auburn coloured vase. One of a pair of sand covered Sri Lankan bed side lamp shades. The other will be exhumed someday.

A Kindle sized silver case containing one of those thousand-and-one interchangeable screw driver sets. The pliers is missing and the tools have begun to rust. A shiny new set in the stockings might be thoughtful.

A Snickers wrapper. Hers. A Tunnocks Caramel Milk Chocolate Waffer wrapper. Mine. A Shirley Coconut Biscuit packet. Not sure, more likely mine. I eat plantain chips and egg balls, she Doritos and croissants.

A navy blue spectacles case resting on Alan Furst’s The Foreign Correspondent resting on James Chambers’ Genghis Khan resting on India in the Caribbean by David Dabydeen and Brinsley Samaroo. And so the resting goes on.

Caught in Action – 20 Years of West Indies Cricket Photography by Gordon Brooks. Fishing for Dummies. Louise Bennett’s Selected Poems.

Three-Mile Bus

Weh yuh dah kick me basket fa?

Push i back eena place!

Ah have a mine fi pick i up

An lick yuh pon yuh face.

Ah lick yuh yes! Yuh tink ah fraid?

Yuh just galang, yaw, mah!

Ef de basket tear yuh tockin

Dat no gains de law, mah!

Yuh can cuss me, yuh can beat me,

Yuh can call me al de ‘it;

Do anything yuh want wid me

But lef me basket

For dis basket is me all-in-all,

Me shillin, pence an poun;

It is me husband an me frien,

Me jewel an me crown.

Me ha six pickney – an sence me

Stop teck dem Pa to court

Dis dutty, brucksy basket yah

Is dem ongle support

So yuh can always pick me up,

But pudung me basket –

For me wi spen de res a me days

Up a Rae Town fi it!

Not Yeates or some dead Slovakian essayist. A simple Jamaican storyteller telling stories of struggle and pride about our people of our time.

Doctor, the Honourable Miss Lou, rest, rest. Assured be your spirit that never will your teachings and observations be exposed on the op-ed page of any Sunday Stabroek. For, in their eyes you an yuh brucksy basket message betrayed their stockinged craft.

Last evening after pit stops at Jerries (the best beef patties in town), Bourda Market (coconut water) and JR Burgers (potato wedges) a combination of blackout and boredom caused me and my fiancée to pass by de seawalls to check it out. To our pleasant surprise while there were quite a few people it was by no means congested.

We unfolded our chairs and as an incomparable breeze soothed the spirits we took in the people, the traffic, the conversations, the sales pitches (corn braff/good fuh de shaff/when yuh go on yuh doan want come off) and the good Guyanese atmosphere.

There were some observations, signs of these troubling modern times.

The most immediate was the couple. He, no younger than 55, darted out of his car and across the four lane carriage way. His hair neatly parted and slicked back, he was desperate to not be the focus of attention. His anxiety to reach where more people were in an attempt to blend in was palpable.

He cut the picture of a not unsuccessful businessman. His polo shirt was untucked but immaculately ironed. The seam of his sleeve could cut paper. He either has a world class maid or a wife who took pride in how he is presented. Perhaps both.

She, in her high heels struggled to keep up with him but did so nonetheless. She was beautiful, slender and would not look out of place in a Miss Guyana India Pageant. But she was loud and flighty. If I had reached over and knuckled her there would have been echoes inside what her loosely pony-tailed, crunched hair covered.

She spent the time squealing into her cellphone, flaunting her barely covered upper body and littering. An even barer friend of hers, curiously walking alone stopped briefly. She enquired of the friend where her man was.

“He gone an kerry he chirren dem to de circus. I gon see he afta.”

She walked off whispering into her phone. She appeared a tad more discreet.

He never spoke above a hush. He did not care for this rendezvous but it was an obvious part of the package. New jeans, shoes and a top which, inch for inch was inferior in size to a hand rag needed exposure. The top remained in position by barely finding lodging on the extreme end of her left shoulder. Her unstrapped bra on the right side remained mostly exposed. Every time she half-lifted her left arm the left side bra would go on display. She looked around to ensure men were noticing.

If a bad oman career does not prove a success, professional stripping should bring untold dividends.

He counted out money, a few bills more than was needed and handed it to her. She waved it around as she scampered off to satisfy her mind’s impulsive need for Nicky’s fried fish. She picked at the fish and realising that her stomach was not in agreement with her mind, flung the opened box into the wind. The contents scattered on the sand upon landing. Rogue dogs found unexpected energy to scurry to the fish feast.

She was on parade. He wanted to meld into the concrete but he had made up his mind. He would endure the looks of scorn and the possible risks, to enjoy his own feast later.

His head darted from side to side, recognizing every person within 40 feet to verify that they were not a threat to exposing his deed. He behaved like a man committing a crime. He must have felt that way. She was no older than 16. Her almost naked friend, whose man had taken his kids to the circus looked no more than 14.

The nation of Galabana is located somewhere on Earth,western hemisphere, south of the equator. It is dominated by two races – the broolies and clarks – who are politically polarized. There are also several religions but three are prominent – Crishtunanity, Lislam and Hirduism.

The people of Galabana seem to be happy to pretend that Galabana does not really have a genuine problem of race. Galabanese seem to want it represented that the ‘race problem’ is just a minor issue which is being exaggerated by certain elements. The Galabanese have heard it said and seen it written numerous times over. Galabana doesn’t have a race problem per se. And then there are various explanations about what problems the Galabanese really have which seem or appear to be race problems but they really are not race problems.

Galabanese politicians speak of how their parties are truly multiracial and how the Galabanese people are united as a nation. At elections time they concoct artificial imageries of unity and togetherness and bombard the nation. Galabanese politicians chant One Love and flaunt symbols of unity. Then they return to the divisive ways of old.

A writer can find eloquent language in an attempt to dispel this notion. A writer must allow the most eloquent of words suffice.

It’s all bullshit.

The experience of one Galabanese is different. So too are the experiences of thousands of other Galabanese.

This Galabanese, wid his broolie looking self (though he is not really a broolie as his mom is broolie and his father clark) walk on the road with his clark fiancée and people say, to their faces and behind their backs, how ‘nice’ they look. Some don’t say anything, they just look that kind of look that makes it difficult to mask their thoughts. It’s not uncommon. They’ve become used to it.

There are more of their type these days and there is greater acceptance but it still feels, to them, very much like a novelty. There are still broolies who believe that he has disgraced the broolie race by being with a clark woman. There are still clarks who find it abominable that she is with a broolie (looking) man.

And then they are liked as a couple by others, in part because people, broolie people and clark people, see them as the couple that they wish more people would be like but that they themselves could not be like.

The broolie fella grew up in a typically broolie home with his broolie grandparents. His grandmother and grandfather were poles apart in their orientation towards race.

His grandmother was a racist. It is not acceptable to say to some Galabanese but she, in her own mind, may have thought that she had reason to be racist.

She suffered some sort of race-based discrimination in the mid 1960s when there were intense race problems in the then Britush Galabana. She never spoke of it.

In the early 1990s, a month after her life partner, the broolie fella’s grandfather, died, four clark bandits broke into their home in the dead of night and beat the grandmother mercilessly.

Some years later, when the young fella was still a Fruslim (the follower of Lislam), a clark brother joined Lislam and after evening prayers told him how hungry he was and that there was nothing at home to eat. Without hesitation and knowing that they had food at home the young broolie fella invited the clark brother for dinner. He went over, the broolie served him dinner. They ate. He left.

After the clark brother left the young broolie fella received a scolding from his racist grandmother about bringing home a clark man to eat her food, in her plate, at her table, in her house.

Years later the broolie fella had a clark girlfriend when he had just started the University of Galabana and took her home. His grandmother cursed incessantly about her presence while she was still there. Embarrassment is not the word to describe his racist grandmother’s behaviour.

Now the broolie fella has been in a relationship with his fiancée for over ten years. His grandmother went to her grave never having met his fiancée.

These are his experiences. He has observed countless other racist incidents, on both sides, in private and public in Galabana. He has heard the talk of racism within the ranks of broolies more than he has heard in the ranks of clarks. He believes that more broolies are racist in Galabana than are clarks. He believes so based on his experiences and observations. He also believes that there is a growing number of enlightened Galabanese who believe that the colour of one’s skin should have no bearing on how they treat and relate to each other.

Anyone who articulates the view that there is no real race problem in Galabana cannot be expected to be taken seriously by this broolie looking fella . They do not live in the same Galabana as he does. Or they are being untruthful.

This is not a story of hearsay or conjecture; his is a story of reality. Lived reality.

And so he believes that until, as a nation, the Galabanese confront, head on, and without that convenient veil of denial, the percolating issues of race which are prevalent in Galabana, the nation will remain stunted as it has been since its independence from the Britush Empire.

The refrain now is that Donald is a good man and that we should give him a chance to see what he will do. I am not so sold.

The signs against giving Donald a chance are too numerous.

First, as I have noted earlier in this piece and prior, of those who voted, more of them voted not to be presided over by Donald and ruled by the PPP than those who did. I have a fundamental difficulty with being comfortable with a president who the majority of Guyanese do not want as their president.

Beyond that point is the fact, despite whatever propaganda Freedom House dispenses, that Donald was handpicked from political obscurity by Jagdeo to be his successor. In the PPP culture such acts of seeming benevolence do not go unpaid or unrewarded, whether it is benevolence rooted in self-interest or not.

Further I have seen not a single indication from President Ramotar (whose language, disposition and mannerisms seem to strongly hint that Ramotar is having a difficult time convincing himself that he is in fact the president) that he will depart from the policies and approaches of Jagdeo. He made bold declarations during the campaign that he will continue Jagdeo’s work. So far he is delivering dutifully on that promise.

• President Donald’s Cabinet is exclusively a Jagdeo Cabinet. There has been not a single non-Jagdeo appointee.
• The deranged Kwame McCoy remains at the Office of the President much to the utter disgust and bewilderment of the nation.
• Dr. Roger Luncheon remains Secretary to the Cabinet and Head of the Presidential Secretariat despite long having breached his sell by date.
• Government maintains a despicable and reprehensible monopoly of radio.
• Government media continue to be unapologetic government mouthpieces and anti-opposition in their reportage.
• President Ramotar is yet to stamp his own authority on anything. Since his swearing in it is as if the mantra has been ‘business as usual’ as per campaign promises and declarations.
• Allegations of rape were made against the Commissioner of Police and the government is mum. This is even as the Commissioner, controversial as he is, continues to be the Commissioner when virtually everyone outside of the PPP believe that he has no business whatsoever as Commissioner.
• State agencies are headed by the same incompetents who headed them under Jagdeo.
• Not a word on curtailing the flood of corruption throughout the upper echelons of government.

There have been some meetings and gestures which some have interpreted to be hints at a desire to work together. Again I am not so sold. I have seen similar meetings and postulations from previous PPP presidents which have come to naught. These seem like classical PPP tactic when in a weakened position so as to buy time, regroup and realign. In the past these have been little more than shallow gimmicks and I have seen not a single iota of genuineness to suggest that these meetings won’t reap the same non-results that previous meetings have.

There may be disappointment with the fact that I am not prepared to give Donald a chance. But Donald has done nothing to signal to anyone that he has any genuine inclinations to work in the best interest of all Guyanese. He has in fact, given every indication that, like Jagdeo, he is a President for the PPP, not Guyana; that his raison d’etre is to protect the interest of Freedom House at all cost, regardless if it means sacrificing the better interest of the Guyanese people.

He continues to speak of ‘us’ (the government/PPP) and ‘them’ (the opposition). To paraphrase some of what he said at a function this week, “We in the PPP have always held up our end of the bargain but we in the PPP have not always seen similar from those in the opposition.”

Donald’s ‘we’ is equal to PPP. Until and unless his ‘we’s’ begin to refer to ‘Guyanese’ he does not deserve the benefit of doubt from the Guyanese people. But each Guyanese will have to make their own individual decision based on what they hear Donald say and see him do.

I had known of Samuel before having seen him selling various items around Georgetown, the West Demerara and East Bank Essequibo.

Samuel’s foster parents died and he had to fend for himself as of age 13. Gino Persaud has been helping him along the way for a long time now. Today was a memorable day for Samuel. Following Gino’s posts on his own FB wall and in the RAISE Guyana group there was an outpouring of support and pledges for Samuel.

Samuel, Gino and I had lunch and it was then that I properly met Samuel. He spoke of his loving wife of three years and his son Isaiah who turns one tomorrow. He spoke of his challenges in life but never dwelled on them. He never once made it sound as though he was mentioning them to seek pity or sympathy. He spoke of his will to never give up and holding firm to the strong values instilled in him by his foster parents before they passed.

Samuel is intelligent, hardworking, industrious and unrelenting in his desire to make a better life for himself and his family.

Sadly in addition to the many, many obstacles which he has had to overcome and which Gino and I have mentioned in previous posts Samuel is also battling a vision problem. His albinism has caused complications with his sight. He cannot see well at distance and struggles to see properly to read. What was stunning to me was that throughout the afternoon it seemed as though all Samuel was keen on talking about was his desire to study. He is desperate to pursue studies despite his vision challenges. I know of persons who have none of the difficulties that Samuel has who have no desire to study and educate and uplift themselves.

Samuel is ambitious and he has drive. I admire him. He has quickly become an inspiration to me and a hero in my book. He wants to become a successful businessman and a social worker. He enjoys the simple life and that is why he now lives at Parika where he, along with his wife, do some of their business. And by business I mean sell DVDs.

Without complaint he walks long distances in hot sun, in rain some days and sells to make money to feed his family. While we know of complaints from vendors in Georgetown when they are asked to remove from the sidewalks etc, Samuel does not complain, and he did not confine himself to Regent Street or Georgetown. He explored new areas and saved and went as far as Port Kaituma where he travelled to by ferry and where he says he has been able to do fair business.

A kind friend of Gino’s made a substantial no interest loan to Samuel which Samuel will use to buy stocks tomorrow to resell and make some money so that his family can enjoy a decent Christmas.

It was heartening to see the outpouring of care and cash for Samuel this afternoon. Samuel, Gino and I went around Georgetown collecting funds for Samuel to help pay off the balance for his houselot. Gino facilitated the opening of a bank account for him at NBS and some of the monies collected were deposited into the account.

So many people gave from substantial to meaningful contributions. Not a single one was below $10,000. I wish I could mention names but to a person they did not want their names mentioned. Gino will give a full report of how much was collected in total and what the balance is to meet the $250,000 to pay off for the house lot.

Not that there was any doubt, Guyanese are a caring people, sometimes too caring and to a fault but today so many of us stood up and reaffirmed that status. Amidst all the problems and political issues we have we are still people who have a goodness in our hearts.

And that goodness was shared with Samuel Stewart today. I am proud to be Guyanese and to be an acquaintance of,  a friend to and just know some of the people who demonstrated real humanity, brotherhood and love today. It was a moving and emotional afternoon.

I salute Samuel for his heroic life. So many others in his shoes would have given up, would have lost pride, would have slipped into mendicancy. Not Samuel Stewart. Times are hard, it is not easy to make a dollar in Guyana. Samuel conquered the odds but he needs help. He has fought bravely and unrelentingly to live a decent life by dint of hard work. I salute too, Gino who has for years stood quietly by Samuel and been there for him and helped him along and counselled him. It is now time for us to join hands with Gino and ensure that Samuel is able to own a home of his own and make a decent life for himself and family.

You may ask why ‘Guyanese hero: Samuel Stewart’? Samuel is a hero because he has survived. He is not the only one. There are many like him out there.

I know poverty is widespread in Guyana but I can honestly think of no one who is more deserving of support than Samuel. He has not sat back and waited for help. He has been out there on the streets, working, selling and earning his keep. He deserves our support. I ask others who can to donate whatever you can to help Samuel. He does not need to do anything more for us to be proud of him but I am sure he will. He is an inspiration and he will be more of an inspiration for us all in years to come.

A simple visit to conduct the most routine business, say a driver’s license renewal, should confirm that the system is well below efficient. Ministers and senior government officials won’t know of this. They have everything hand delivered to their offices by their fawning minions.

The whole system seems to have been designed by experts at building cow paddocks but to whom ‘customer service’ and ‘humanity’ might be other-worldly concepts.

For someone who is not familiar with the procedure of whatever business they are there to engage in the natural thing to do would be to approach one of the two information desks at the front of the building and ask a question. Even before one utters a word one knows, from the disposition of the brusque information desk security personnel, that they will be treated either with disdain or as if they were an annoyance.

‘Good mornings’ and ‘pleases’ are met with two word answers such as ‘round back’ or a point towards a sign on the wall.

No politeness, no smiles, no welcomes, no humanity. Rude contempt is all one gets.

When one manoeuvres one’s way through the filth strewn along the narrow walkway and gets around to the back one is confronted with a surprise. The nose meets a burning stink smell reminiscent of a not-been-cleaned-in-months piss house of a back street rum shop in a far flung village.

Hold your breath and climb the stairs. (No facilities for differently abled.)

Collect the relevant form from, then get past the oversized brown shirt wearing, bulby finger-nailed, little barking police cum security guard and take a seat on one of the eight chairs. Be diligent and play musical chairs until you reach the head of the class and to the ‘lady by de counter’. Lapse at musical chairs and little Mr. Short Temper will let you have it.

“Move up! Move up!”

Multiple offenders will cause him to burst into what seems to be a well practised lecture tirade.

“Listen meh! Yall need to move up as soon as somebody go up. Yall got to move along! Good? Good!”

He runs an unforgiving ship.

From the top of the line you submit your form and ID and whatever else is needed. If you are uncertain about how to answer any question on the half-sensible form and you let it be known the lady behind the counter will tell you in no uncertain terms “ah doan worry bout dat”. Speaks to the importance of the form, or at least elements of it.

You submit and you head back into the herd to “wait til yuh hear yuh name call”.

If you choose to stand while there is an available seat Mr. Short Temper will be at your throat.

“Siddung pon de bench!”

You jump and make sure you are not at the Immigration Section of the Grantley Adams International Airport and you sit. And wait. And wait. You observe. You see the floor, made of plyboard. One third of it still has the cheap tiles. Worn. Pattern almost unrecognisable. The rest of the floor is bare. Wobbly in some places.

On the wall, a hand written sign on pink cardboard in this, the computer age.

“Notice. STOP! Only staff and authorised persons beyond this point. By order of management.”

It looks like it was written by a Prep B student who needs to improve their penmanship.

You realise that the girl, not lady, who next has to attend to you is gorgeous. She knows it and is not interested in anyone who she has to attend to. Her Blackberry, tucked into the barely big enough breast pocket of her stylish forest green top causes her head to jerk towards it every time it vibrates with what must be a BBM. Suitors are acalling. Her head jerks a lot but she must resist looking at the message, she only looks at the phone blinking. There must be some rule against use of phone in the office.

She carries an angular Olive Gopaul face adorned with B version pouting Angelina Jolie lips. The lipstick is painted on thick but with care. An image of her comes easily to mind. It is 7am. She is sitting before her AH&L Kissoon mirror. She paints her lipstick. She spends less time painting and more time staring, beyond that wooden framed mirror against the wall of some house in some place like Tucville to a New York life of 50% off Gucci sunglasses and knock off Fendi hand bag sold by a stubby Korean man at a Brooklyn street corner.

You would have seen her type before. All style, material, not much substance. 8 to 4 she is a drone. She works to earn so she can claim to be an independent woman but she still lives at her mom’s place.

Her longing to be out of there and out of here hangs fresh on her face. The first time the embassy slips and gives her the right stamp she’ll be on Caribbean Airlines the next day.

98.1 pitches high, sometimes low, in the background. When Nicky Minaj comes around Ms Blackberry in Green Top’s head begins to bob and her lips repeat the words as she scribbles digits onto small bits of paper before she haltingly bellows names.

Ram.Barran. Pa.Riss. Mo.Hamed.

Woe be unto the person who makes her have to repeat. MO! HAMED!

You go up to her and offer salutations. She never looks up at you. Remember she is not interested in you, only the men on her BB and the lady at the embassy. She pushes your ID card past the stacks of faded green folders so overstuffed with paper that they cannot close. She hands you a two inch squared bit of paper with some sort of code written onto it and she instructs.

“Round front”.

It doesn’t matter that you do not understand what ‘round front’ means. Don’t ask any questions of her. Just go ‘round front’ and bother the people there with your silly questions.

Muster the courage and return to chubby sour face at the info desk. Ask her what the coded paper means and she will point you inside. No words.

You go inside and you are confronted with a line of people sitting on badly aligned benches in the corner. They are all waiting for a cashier to surface. There are three cashier counters. None is occupied. You wait. Again. Men at the other side of the room on other business quarrel about how the system is good but ‘is de people in de system who doin stupidness and causin all dis frustration pon people.’

A short, bespectacled, neatly uniformed girl behind the counter is apologetic then disinterested. She scuttles away from the quarrelling man. She must just want to get back to Enmore to cuddle in her bed and watch the latest edition of Choti Bahu on MTV Channel 65 while daydreaming about the real estate agent boy from Richmond Hill who promise fuh come back and go round de marrow wid she.

In the middle of the room are cattle rails. Appropriate. Genius even.

You wait for the Guyanese disease – no cashiers working – to be remedied. As soon as one surfaces from somewhere at the back the bench people scramble to their feet and brace against the peeling black cattle rails and wait their turn.

The man across the room frets on, another man joins. You wait. The line inches forward. It is not insufferable so it does not need improvement. A man in the line who was formerly on the bench murmurs behind you.

“Meh nah know wha he a cuss fa. Is Guyana, dah is how tings is, he got to just relax heself an wait lil bit til he get thru.”

Improvements are on the way. Give it another decade… or two.

That is what she has become. She was once the envy of the neighbourhood. Her assets, her splendour, the talk of the envious who flocked around and tried to enjoy her bounties.

Then, as my grandmother might have said, she started to go round wid bad company. And she started to lose her sheen and suppleness. She began to look haggard and the people in the neighbourhood started to pity her. The neighbourhood people did not flock anymore and her children started to hold hands with them as they walked away.

Her skin and her face became worn, tired, beaten.

She wandered and wandered but then she distanced herself from the company she kept and picked up with new company. An improved future beckoned. A clean life she had for a spell.

But she was deceived. She left a brothel bully and for a few years found herself in the arms of a caring trier. And then the trier passed and she ended up with his bastard successors who turned out to be street-corner gangsters. They pimped and raped her til she was left sprawled half dead.

Her children stood and watched and murmured in her defence a little but took no action to free her of her torture and misery. Her blood stained the gangsters hands but her blood also drips from her children’s hands. They stood and watched and watched. Their mother, tortured, brutalized, raped, violated, dehumanized. They stood in silence, thinking that their excuse is that she is a crack whore who deserves no better.

But every crack whore has a past and every crack whore has a future. I have seen crack whores who have found redemption; they may not reclaim past glories but they live a life of decency, respectability and contentment. They have replenished their skin and their face glowed again. Examine closely. The scars never disappear, but they fade and her beauty shines through.

Crack whores need a helping hand. Their children who stand by in silence need to act, liberate her from her oppressors.

I hope your children act as you lay sprawled, half dead, for every country has a past and every country has a future.