Sanity..
First Published in the Weekender in 2006
Sanity
A man urinated on me in front of Igloo Ice cream parlour on Camp Street. It was a Sunday evening, and there were a lot of people buying ice cream . The man was standing around begging and then started to urinate, Yes, right there in front of everybody. And no, nobody could do anything. There were mutterings around him from the crowd, some embarrassed shouts and curses, but the man was in his own world and happily ignored everyone. I passed behind him, thinking a good distance, when he turned around and moved suddenly. His face had this expression of happiness, he was smiling and his eyes were toward the sky, oblivious to any of the people around him. It is not very often you see such expressions of pure joy and glee on any of the adults around Georgetown. My preoccupation with his face caused me to neglect what was going on at my feet. What would you have done? The man did not care about any reaction from the sane people around him. I could have turned my eyes heavenward and done the same thing to him and probably be arrested for indecent exposure. Any violent reaction on my part would have delayed attending to my feet and possibly not made a difference to him.
Many people want the 'mad' people off the road because of what tourists might think of the people urinating, defecating, bathing, sleeping anywhere they want and in front of anybody . There was a recent funny exchange in which the responsibility was passed from Police to Ministry of Health to Ministry of Human Services and back again as to who was responsible for ridding the streets of the people of unsound mind. Why should we rid the streets of people of unsound mind? More people have been hurt or killed by supposedly sane bandits than by people of unsound mind. More sane people litter the streets, many sane men have no problems using any convenient spot of the Garden City as a urinal. Most of us strip naked to bathe (and one or two of us to protest), surely it is logical for those who are not inhibited by sanity and who have to use the canals or the seawall to bathe to want to do so.
We have this strange power relationship with those who we think are insane. We are never sure of their actions. We walk past them conscious of them, while knowing that they appear not to bother with us as we know ourselves. They are immune to our laws and rules and standard communication mechanisms – polite conversation, cursing, shouting, whatever. Some of us think that the sign that God exists is that the people 'of unsound mind' seem to thrive in perfect physical health despite eating from rubbish dumps or drinking from gutters,
The tourists are supposed to come in droves once we clean up the city, stop littering and urinating all over, focus on preserving the old wooden buildings and start being nice people. The few tourists who do come should probably appreciate, that unlike some countries in the world where the people who are insane are imprisoned , and that despite the madness of Guyana generally, we could celebrate a kind of compassion for those whose perceptions of reality are vastly different from ours. And that the average Guyanese, while a litterbug, not inclined to be superficially polite to strangers or to be passionate about preserving old buildings, and located somewhere on the sane end of the sanity spectrum , is probably a nice person at heart.
Sanity
A man urinated on me in front of Igloo Ice cream parlour on Camp Street. It was a Sunday evening, and there were a lot of people buying ice cream . The man was standing around begging and then started to urinate, Yes, right there in front of everybody. And no, nobody could do anything. There were mutterings around him from the crowd, some embarrassed shouts and curses, but the man was in his own world and happily ignored everyone. I passed behind him, thinking a good distance, when he turned around and moved suddenly. His face had this expression of happiness, he was smiling and his eyes were toward the sky, oblivious to any of the people around him. It is not very often you see such expressions of pure joy and glee on any of the adults around Georgetown. My preoccupation with his face caused me to neglect what was going on at my feet. What would you have done? The man did not care about any reaction from the sane people around him. I could have turned my eyes heavenward and done the same thing to him and probably be arrested for indecent exposure. Any violent reaction on my part would have delayed attending to my feet and possibly not made a difference to him.
Many people want the 'mad' people off the road because of what tourists might think of the people urinating, defecating, bathing, sleeping anywhere they want and in front of anybody . There was a recent funny exchange in which the responsibility was passed from Police to Ministry of Health to Ministry of Human Services and back again as to who was responsible for ridding the streets of the people of unsound mind. Why should we rid the streets of people of unsound mind? More people have been hurt or killed by supposedly sane bandits than by people of unsound mind. More sane people litter the streets, many sane men have no problems using any convenient spot of the Garden City as a urinal. Most of us strip naked to bathe (and one or two of us to protest), surely it is logical for those who are not inhibited by sanity and who have to use the canals or the seawall to bathe to want to do so.
We have this strange power relationship with those who we think are insane. We are never sure of their actions. We walk past them conscious of them, while knowing that they appear not to bother with us as we know ourselves. They are immune to our laws and rules and standard communication mechanisms – polite conversation, cursing, shouting, whatever. Some of us think that the sign that God exists is that the people 'of unsound mind' seem to thrive in perfect physical health despite eating from rubbish dumps or drinking from gutters,
The tourists are supposed to come in droves once we clean up the city, stop littering and urinating all over, focus on preserving the old wooden buildings and start being nice people. The few tourists who do come should probably appreciate, that unlike some countries in the world where the people who are insane are imprisoned , and that despite the madness of Guyana generally, we could celebrate a kind of compassion for those whose perceptions of reality are vastly different from ours. And that the average Guyanese, while a litterbug, not inclined to be superficially polite to strangers or to be passionate about preserving old buildings, and located somewhere on the sane end of the sanity spectrum , is probably a nice person at heart.
Comments
Post a Comment