Open Spaces

So I was being driven home past the Parliament Buildings last night and noticed the the open space right opposite the said building fenced off with metal railings (it also registered recently that the Non-Aligned monument down the road also had metal railings to prevent people from removing the stone busts out of sheer 'worthlessness'). 
While I admire an acquaintance trying to change things that didn't seem right to her, I reflected sadly that loss of open spaces within an urban environment can affect us subtly in ways we might not be aware of. I digress to remember being in Halls of Residence in my fourth year after leaving Guyana to study and how I became aware I was grateful that I was high enough and on the 'right' side to look out directly onto a patch of open space while surrounded by the concrete jungle of the Barbican. That patch of green remained through the winter months and it was the first thing my eyes looked at and unconsciously looked for while looking out of the window. Now that I think about it Parks in England have had to fence off over the years to prevent the indigent from camping out and sadly likewise in Guyana where it seems the amount of people unable to cope with the 21st Century have increased.
I mentioned my acquaintance because having a high social awareness she was active in leading the 'camping outside' Parliament and 'deter Chris Brown from coming to Guyana' protests. Unfortunately she is also convinced that the HPV vaccine is not a good thing and her next pet project is to get Medical Terminations of pregnancies done through the Public Health system. As trained personnel don't just drop out of heaven this would realistically not be feasible until another 3-5yrs or so but there ought to be some sort of Forum where citizens can voice their concerns and direct all that energy and passion as my view is I prefer to hear them rather than the horrible apathy at seems to pervade and suck all the Life Energy out of you.

Show them how it's meant to be New York!

I note in today's Stabroek News that the teenager who performed exceptionally well at High School and was rewarded with a car by his parents had the book thrown at him up in NY where the family had migrated.
A brief recap of the story - the 17yr decided to go driving in Long Island at 3am with three other friend after they had smoked marijuana. As a provisional driver he needed to have another licensed driver in the car with him. Of course a cocksure young male would speed and subsequently lost control of his vehicle at a tricky turn - the three friends died. The papers reported that last Friday he was charged with aggravated vehicular homicide, vehicle manslaughter and driving while impaired with drugs (Ha to Colorado who just passed State Laws allowing personal use quantities of marijuana!) and could face 25yrs in jail-- unlikely to have to serve the full sentence in America's overcrowded jails- AND the parents were both fined a small nominal fine with the possibility of jail-time.

Now I didn't read of any protesting, burning down buildings etc-- the people accepted their penance for their stupidity meekly. Not so in Guyana where it seems the more aggressive you are on the Roadways 'you win'. It is de rigueur for ignorant males ( usually) to be cruising along with a cell phone here on the Streets of Guyana, frequently past a Traffic Cop-- I have heard of instances where people have been charged but it's usually the ones the Police think they can bully - shame the same treatment is not meted out across the Board, in a small country-- it's usually who you know who can get you off the hook.

Ironically in the same papers - very next page in fact-- there was a photo of World Day of Remembrance of road traffic victims. With the Government being proud of the fact that they have no viable Public Transport Policy and that carownership has exploded within the last two years while no planned major improvements on roads designed for limited traffic plus the perception that the general level of intelligence seems to have dropped inversely proportional to aggressive behaviour - as exemplified by the current lot in Parliament on all sides, we are all set for a SERIOUS rise in Traffic Accidents.

It's not like we don't have sensible Laws, simply that they are not enforced and the Courts are a joke - you get the feeling that the mice are in charge, the cats gave up and migrated  leaving just the Fat indolent ones!

Trekking to the Top of Roraima -1

Strange how sometimes the most incredible things that we do, we do without thinking too much of it -- like producing a child (women), met a guy who casually said he designed a water system to move water from a stream about 70m to a house above in the interior and I trekked to the top of Roraima from the Venezuelan side with my unfit self complete with weak knees and ankles!

The top of Roraima is said to be one of the wettest places on earth due to the almost constant billowing clouds and frequent rainfall. Standing at the highest point of Guyana where the borders of Venezuela and Brazil meet, it is roughly 2700m high, being flattened on the top - called a tepui in these parts (mesa in the US, table-top in South Africa) which means temperatures often fall below freezing when the sun is not present.                

Odd Rock formations and ever-present mist

The top of Roraima on the Guyana side--  too rough for even a helicopter to land

                             

The adventure started in Lethem where we got conned/persuaded to change money into Rials being told that it was a better rate of exchange here than in Venezuela (wasn't) but as we had the Time and now Brazilian money we eschewed a taxi directly to the Venezuelan border for the Public Transport bus from Bom Fim to Manaus where, we were told that we could get another bus to the border. Mich chatted up an Amerindian man and his family to find out how we should pay and we were blown away at the low cost! Unfortunately when we got there we discovered that we had JUST missed the Bus to the Border which apparently decided to leave early. Spirits still up we booked into a hotel near the station whose charges ate up whatever we saved on the taxi (and more!) and wandered out into the rainy night to one of the open-air eating places-- Brazilians love to eat al freso.

The next day we got the bus to the Brazil-Venezuela border and the scenery was pretty spectacular in places once we got off the savannah lands so I was glad we travelled during the day. The bus was freezingly cold! A quick snack and then we walked to catch a couple of taxis to get into Venezuela with another Brazilian/Guyanese Amerindian family. Our main thought was to not get conned so we pretended to be part of the family-- the border Guards obviously need spectacles because we obviously didn't look like the family in ANY way but I can now sleep easy knowing how secure the Borders are from the Druggies and Terrorists. The taxi dropped us off to the hotel in St Elena which was tightly locked - we tried calling at the family house opposite but the woman had apparently gone out.  Not wanting to look like the obvious tourists that we were we booked into the competition next door-- Hotel Michelle then wandered up the road to the Square, took some pictures of the inevitable Simon Bolivar, chatted with a Spanish woman selling trinkets to finance her 3yr South American tour and collapsed gratefully into a Chinese Restaurant for a meal.

Siesta time over, we made contact with our Tour Operators and found out that one of Mich's previous work colleagues was one of the Porters!   

Opting for the easy way out-- we agreed to pay Carlos to lug our main backpacks up the mountain - money well spent I may add - and then wandered around to check out the shops - walked to someone's home that was a living museum of the some of the Crystals found on top of the mountain - depend whether you believe they have mystical properties or not but we took turns to stand in the Circle and absorb some energy - nothing like making sure you have all bases covered for coming down in one piece!

A Hot Country by Shiva Naipaul

This short very readable book gave a snapshot of Life in Guyana in the period just before 1980.
On reaching the end of the book I felt sorry that no modern Guyanese writer was able to capture the nuances of being Guyanese like the this author and Mr Battacharya of Sly Company fame. I thought Mr Naipaul's style reminiscent of Edgar Mittleholzer's. I liked very much how he captured the little familiar things like a mother warning her child not to let the coconut water get on the clothes and certain Guyanese phrases- 'catch as catch can'.
The story is about a well-meaning Middle-aged man realising his noble aspirations for the country and its people has all been in vain; even his marriage to an introverted secretive 'cold' woman is a far cry from the aspirations of his youth. The book struck me as a long 'short story', and while giving a good picture of what life was like in Guyana in the late '70's, the naked racism jarred with my 21st Century sensibilities - the book opens with the comment about Amerindians being expressionless, one also mentioned by Mr Battacharya but having been in contact with quite a few of the different tribes I tend to see them as having a very optimistic view of life  and generally jovial; further in the book the derogatory remarks about 'black people' also jarred but I concede that both reflected common views at the time and who knows- even now?
It was interesting that he managed to merge Georgetown and Port-of-Spain in his description of the Capital City in the book and being familiar with both I recognised the non-coincidental locations! Shame our Guyanese writers can't do something similar.

Running the Gauntlet

 I've been told this Blog has a bitter angry tone.
So I want to record the fairly good job the Police did on Monday night to withstand the taunts, missiles and provocation when the disruptive crowd came out again to impede the flow of traffic on the East Bank Road.
Someone commented to me that he was surprised that the Police withstood so much abuse and it reminded him of the Police in England last July when primarily London exploded. There were minimal disruptions but several cars had their Windscreen damaged by things thrown.
Sadly I have found out since that women of a certain race were bodily picked up and and forcibly carried off and raped on the previous Thursday- I am stunned to think this is Guyana and where I pass every everyday practically!  Minibuses were discharging their hapless passengers at the edges of the troubled villages and I suppose the women made a bad judgement call to continue the journey to the other side by foot.
As usual it is not those people stirring who have to live with the dreadful consequences-- regular people had their Windscreens broken by missiles - an additional expense to the Family Budget that many would not have foreseen.
Several people are predicting a repeat of the troubles of the 60's.

J'accuse

With apologies to Emile Zola...
.... the traumatised dwindling remaining Middle Classes stayed off the roads early today after the blocking of the Major East Bank Road yesterday from 4-9pm.
This following the preliminary trial of the three Policemen who apparently shot a 17yr old in cold blood. They were apparently sent to take him in for questioning for planning an apparent robbery but something went wrong. Especially emotive after immediately following the deaths of three people during the closure of the Linden road-- and that in itself is controversial as the Attorney General went on the television to inform us that the bullets recovered from the three bodies did not 'match' any of the weapons issued to the Police - bullets being highly-priced and closely regulated apparently.
So apparently after the family and friends of the shot young man  protested outside the Magistrate's Court from 8am-- it apparently didn't dawn on the Powers-That-Be that the protest could possibly spread to the closure of the East Bank Road in that village which is strategically placed to inflict major disruptions falling before the division of the road into the two main branches.  Often when I pass I notice a Pick-up load of police in Riot Clothes hanging out- so very short-sighted of both the Police Force and indirectly the Government for not anticipating this move!
As an aside- sorry - the major Housing expansion seems to be in the canefields heading South on the East Bank.  It clearly never occurred to the Bright Sparks that there needs to be accompanying infrastructure such  as roads as there is also a non-existent Transport Policy - seeing as most of the decision makers live on the East Coast and have the privilege of a sirened Police Car accompanying them - they are out of touch of the reality the rest of us have to live with! Up to 20yrs ago plans were suggested to create another Highway Type road from the Airport (Timehri ) bypassing South Georgetown and connecting to the East Coast road. Those forward-planning people have clearly pegged it by now (died) and the reckless people in charge clearly are hell-bent on starting something and leaving the next set of people to grapple with the problem of poor planning!
So now to my heading--- two government spokespersons - the Attorney General and Minister on Governance - interrupted the American Vice-Presidential debates (why would Guyanese be so interested to see that I wouldn't know but it showed on at least three stations?!) to get on the air to accuse someone in an Opposition Party whom they clearly see as a threat - this went on ad nauseum while I waited for them to tell us of their strategy to deal with the problem and went back to my book when they got whiny and accusatory saying that the blocking of the East Bank Road was clearly part of a wider strategy -- mmm-- so in effect the Opposition can outsmart them and they the Government have the wisdom of Hindsight and not Foresight! Don't know if they really have my sympathy for crass stupidity. They are standing tight behind the Minister of Home Affairs who has a long line of Gaffes behind him, refused help from the British to train our Policemen and bring them up to the 21st Century. I have long thought that when chaos ensues the hustlers stand to make a big killing - sadly unlike Thomas Friedman's Golden Straitjacket - they seem oblivious to the fact that the Country makes a big step backwards or simply don't care.
The road re-opened and there was another hugh backlog of frustrated people at 10pm - I suppose most people got home at about Midnight.

To what levels are we sinking?

I pulled my piece on Suicide after being advised it was libellous and since then read a hypothesis from the last Century that postulated that it was the lack of Human Connectedness/Community that was a major contributing factor to suicides. This was after a Peace Corp volunteer found disturbingly high levels of thoughts of and actual suicides in the Black Bush Community, alcohol being another factor-- whether on a self-medicating basis or people's response to alcoholism in the family.
A sad case of a drug-addicted 21 or 23yr old reached the papers last week who followed his two female relatives to the Backdam to strip coconut leaves to make the local pointer brooms. Apparently it was discovered/suspected that he had been short-changing the Principal whose house he had been staying at- 'his aunt' - and his solution to the problem was to chop her to death. The woman took along another younger woman who also subsequently got chopped to death and the young man before he died (ingested poison after the acts), claimed that he would not have chopped the Aunt's sister who was invited on the trip and who declined, as he didn't have a problem with her and he would have made her sit and watch!  THIS has got to be some stupid deranged Hollywood script superimposed on a drug-addled ill-formed brain - oh the dangers of imposing the 21st Century on a 16th Century brain!
That was in the rural environment - in the Urbanised environs of Georgetown a few days ago, two teenagers had a history of a dispute - the father was walking home with his 16yr old son when the other teenager attempted to grab his Gold Chain from his neck, the father pushed off the attacker and who knows maybe did more-- what arrogance and lack of judgement would a teen have to be attacking a 'foe' in the presence of an older male--( mind you and I digress to the the West Coast of Berbice- a 36yr old was walking with her 16yr old daughter and husband when the 32yr old man who liked to 'trouble her' decided to take offence at her statement to the effect that her husband was with her and boxed her to the ground- he was subsequently arrested). The teen with a more bruised ego than bodily harm went to his house nearby and got HIS father who lashed the first man/father with a piece of wood while the mother and brother and him pinned the first man down and gouged out his right eye -- I kid you not-- this happened for real.
I remember sitting next to a Surinamese man on a 'plane trip who was in their Government's Fishing Department and he noted that unless the Law and Order side of a country functioned there would be no progress in that country. How ironic -- the one profession the we churn out in abundance is those in the Law Field!