Coil: Gutter mentality

by Vidyaratha Kissoon

The woman at the media workshop on suicide prevention said, “I thought it was interesting, I thought I heard Minister Hughes say that the media has to keep the negative stories off the front page or people might not come for the jubilee” . Another woman said “The President talked about the history of state media, and not interfering in state media.. but it was strange he did not say anything about suicide prevention’.

I was not too bothered about who said what as my mind was on my dry feet on a rainy morning. I had just walked on clean pavements. Pavements which the overnight rains had washed. There was no slushy mud . There were some flooded gutters and roadsides on Camp Street between Lamaha Street and North Road. The pavement outside Bourda Market near the City Constabulary Outpost did not have the perpetual puddle which had been a feature during the last years of the PPP Administration.

There were some places and gutters and alleys where the water was high. There are some places where puddles gathered because there was no outlet to the nearby gutters. I have a vision of the beautifully dressed Mayor and Deputy Mayor with shovels showing the Town Clerk and workers how to dig some of the outlets.

Some outfalls might not have been cleared as intended. The stagnation from the lack of culverts in Subryanville had taken its toll on my psyche and there is an obsession with lack of progress.

I walked on the road which would have been flooded, each step matching a rhythm ‘ eh eh  I do not believe it’ .. no this can’t be true. It was easy to step off the pavement near the betting shop and the road. The pavement had only the wet betting form and some icicle bags .

A woman who lived in North Ruimveldt said that she could not  believe that there was no flood on her road. The water raised but it drained off fast.

I was staring into gutters. The covers had been lifted in some places. Uncovering Guyana in a way. the water seemed to be moving in some, while in others, the water was stagnant.

Progress and lack of progress.
The decorations of Styrofoam and plastic were reminders of the voters who are not too bothered by jubilee or the image of Guyana. Some store owners still had sandbags.

Cynicism – that something wrong hey.. dis water mussee flowing to another part of the city, dis is a farce is part of the problem with those of us who  are negative  about Guyana .
I wanted to find flood pictures. There was news that places in South Georgetown and Linden flooded as ‘normal’.  The gutters are covered by metal grills in some place, in some places broken concrete slaps and in other places bits of wood.  Diversity in the  covers like in Guyana.

A man from Kitty told me he also looked at the drains as he walked out – watching how the water flowed from a small drain he had never seen before into a larger drain.

So with my mind in the gutters of Georgetown, I was not too bothered about images created by the media. Minister Hughes asked people to keep the gory and grisly off the front page, while the President said that the media had a duty to keep the citizens informed.

One of the reporters said she was busy so she could not stay for the workshop – Gunmen had invaded the Ramada Princess Hotel, there was an accident and a baby was killed, and a couple of other things. She was busy.

The Guyana Chronicle on Friday 29 April, 2016 had a fascinating headline “A National Security threat -Situation at Georgetown Prison poses threat to national security –Sources”  (They removed it from their website, it is not clear whether all known copies of the paper will be burnt or distributed to fish vendors far and wide.) Despite the Minister Ramjattan’s assurances that he is not threatened, I have been wondering myself whether the Prisoners are determined to be a part of the Jubilee

Celebrations in their own way, and that some massive liberation event is being planned to coincide
with the celebrations.

The bandits and so seem not to be scared of jail time. There are arrests but maybe the Facebook updates from jail show nice images which are not deterrents and the gratification of the money could be a risk worth taking.

The stories from those arrested sound so ordinary. Ranchal Singh involving his girlfriend in the cleaning of his taxi after the murder of Simone Hackett, Abishai Caesar telling the woman he abused, and others about killing a woman and two children and then continuing life as a barber; Devon Browne helping his friend with transporting the body wrapped in a plastic bag.

Since the Chronicle removed the National Security Threat article from its website, Seeram Singh from Parika has been killed and a young artist, Rixon Williams was shot in his home.

My memory is going and I had to go to Google to find the name of the Joint Services Operation which was supposed to be in operation to deal with crime.  The last time it seems we heard of Operation Dragnet was in February 2016 when Minister Ramjattan said crime rates were reducing.

There was something launched called “Exercise Assurance”  which is supposed to be in progress.
There are no reports of how Assurance is going.  There must be strange assurance for Rixon Williams or for the relatives Seeram Singh or for any of the others who have been killed , injured, robbed or attacked ; or for the rest of us who wait to hear of the next one and wonder if we will be attacked.

The rain fell again during the night. The yard and road did not have water. Maybe the drainage is working in a kind of a way, or maybe the rain falls with less intensity.  The images of citizens walking with relief on dry pavements and streets might not make sense to ‘overseas’ people who also see the crime reports and think it better to have their own jubilee celebrations overseas.

There is a scenic image of  a river on the front page of the Sunday Chronicle, and an image of children playing in water on the Sunday Stabroek front page. The Guyana Times has a picture of a pot hole which they claim is in a recently refurbished road, and Kaieteur News has a puzzling image of a pavement with a few cars and a capton ‘legal/illegal – a taxi service is obliquely opposite this home on EBD’.   The road though looks wet with some puddles and not floood and there are cars and nice looking gates. There are no gory or grisly images.