Coil: Talk and no other actions on social cohesion, suicide prevention and violence prevention

by Vidyaratha Kissoon

Waiting on the car to fill up. Woman talks about vegetarian food and healthy eating. We talk about places which sell vegetarian food. She talks about not eating food cooked by women who are menstruating. I don’t say anything.

“You are Hindu, right?”

“Yes, yes”

“You workshop Lord Shiva right?”

I say , um yes.

“You is Hindu, you should be a vegetarian”

I squirm a bit, I know I know.

Black woman in the car,  here sounding like one or two of the pandits and devout Hindus I know.

We talk about Navratra – season to worship the feminine form of God. Shakti.

“I keep my fast during Navratra, I don’t eat salt, I do ‘mudda work’ too”

Mother work is the workshop of the forms of Shakti – Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati.

The car was small and I did not want to fight about menstruation and draw attention to the contradiction that worshipping Mother while stigmatising menstruation makes no sense.

The motives are selfish in that I was more concerned about reaching home at that point than reaching out to break stereotypes and prejudices.

There are some awful Hindu traditions which ban menstruating women from the house and farm lands and places of worship, and there are some Hindu traditions, like the Ambubachi Mela which recognise menstruation as integral to Mothering.

“You have to stop eat rank man, you will get a good spirit” she told me with a smile.

This conversation was easier to deal with though, than one earlier in the week convened by UNDP and the Ministry of Social Cohesion.

I accepted an invitation to be part of the Ministry’s Strategic Plan Peer Group. In September 2015, the Ministry had a public Social Cohesion Roundtable. There was wide participation , except from the Opposition who picketed the opening of the event.

The report from the Roundtable , and from the planning meeting lists some of the recommended actions. Some of the recommendations are calls for  systemic changes such as Constitutional reform, while others should be fairly simple to implement.

The Ministry was to use the recommendations to develop the Strategic Plan.

10 months later, the Ministry reconvened a group of people, which includes politicians from the Opposition.

To my surprise, it seemed that the Ministry wanted to do another round of asking people what to do about social cohesion.

In the months since the Roundtable, I have joined the protests against Minster Harmon’s no apologies for the Ministerial salary increase, and for the replacement of Minister Lawrence as Minister of Social Protection. Minister Amna Ally had indicated that the PNC/R stood behind Minister Lawrence and her support of their candidate who had been accused of child abuse.  The response of the Minister to the deaths of Antonio George and Joshua George seem to indicate a lack of concern about the quality of care available for children.

In Guyana, the elections seasons usually sees the boiling over of racial tensions, which has simmered down this time to shouts of racism every now and then. The Government does not seem to hurried to establish the new Ethnic Relations Commission and to resource it to deal with some of the issues affecting social cohesion.

A country which is serious about social cohesion would be working to repeal the laws which discriminate against sections of the population . This week, Quincy McEwan and others had their appeal against the cross-dressing laws postponed to October . Surely a bill to repeal the cross dressing laws would be a sign of a commitment to social cohesion ?

The political system in Guyana thrives on division. It is probably easier to talk than it is to actually do anything about building a cohesive society. The trouble is, that the culture of talking and doing nothing else prevents the transformation in all spheres of life.

The violence continues. It seems that there is an intensity of violence between people who know each other. The justice system is not a deterrent.

President Granger reportedly hopes that sociologists and other experts could advise on preventing interpersonal violence. The President is probably not aware, that there was a convening of National Committee for the Prevention of Interpersonal Violence. This committee according to Commissioner Nicole Cole, one of the members, has already made 83 recommendations.

The President might want to encourage his Government to start work on implementing the recommendations and not get more talking about what to do.

In the last few days, I heard of four people who killed themselves. The President in April had addressed another National Stakeholder Forum on Suicide Prevention. There was mention of a plan. 

There has been no mention of what is in the plan or how it is being implemented or who is responsible for its implementation. In May, the Guyana Press Association with PAHO/WHO had convened a training session for media workers. I had participated in the training and was relieved to see that there were guidelines being discussed.

Training and ‘awareness raising’ are usually critical action points in any plan for transformation. They must however be supported by accountability and support mechanisms so that the people who have been trained could implement new skills.

One simple guideline is including the numbers of helplines in stories about suicide. It is sad though, that since the training workshop, it seems that the guidelines have not been uniformly adopted by the media. The Stabroek News seems to be the only agency which shares the helpline numbers.

There are people who are tried of the division and recognise that the division impedes progress.

This week, I facilitated a training session on prevention of gender based violence at No 68 Roadside Baptist Skills Training Centre. A young woman in her evaluation comments at the end of the session said that “I am glad that we came here, Black, Indian, everybody, all religions, everything to work together to deal with this problem, and I look forward to working with each of you”.

Fortunately, social cohesion seems to happen in places outside of the leadership circles and is not affected by the risk of talk talk and no action.