Coil: Black, coolie, Guyanese in 2017

by Vidyaratha Kissoon

Minibus is playing loud chutney music – man want to be single fah evah. Bus is full of coolie people and on the front seat behind the driver there is a strategically poised wooden coffee table, and a rolled up red based Oriental Rug. Normal thing at Christmas time.

Later the same day , a woman holds a big black bag with shopping and the man with her has one of the red based Oriental Rugs on his shoulder. Black man and black woman and I imagine the owners of the other rolled up similar rug in the minibus.

Rolled up carpet. Fixing up House at Christmas.

More than jubilee Independence, elections and the contrived Mashramani, the colonial Christmas is probably the closest we would get to any festival which is organically national.

More black people and coolie people and other Guyanese probably have some Christmas in their 

house than any national flag or other symbol of belonging to the Nation.

In December 1997, the post-election protests ceased so people could have Christmas. The protests resumed in January 1998.

Christmas Eve post flood Georgetown is busy. Nice bustle. Plenty good natured vendors around. Umbrellas out.

I buy bananas which have a nice fragrance from a lady with tubs with mangoes – “Buxton spice” – star apple, and long mango.

I want to ask her if the bananas are imported but they don’t look so.

The woman asks me , “You want some apples and grapes too?”

I laugh as I think of some of the people who are still frustrated at the apple and grapes fascination.

Burnham’s food fascism experiments have left their mark. The resistance to the fascism probably continues in the tradition of apples grapes and walnuts at Christmas.

Black people and coolie people are selling and buying the apples and grapes and a lot of the other things which were not available during the latter days of the Burnham years.

There was a year when banned garlic was allowed for Christmas for people to make garlic pork. It might have been more than one year.

Rice flour black cake didn’t hold together and nobody bothered with upgrading cassava pone to a rich fruit cassava pone. Black cake would have been made with illegal flour.

Most citizens became agents, criminals against the Co-operative Socialist Republic as part of the conspiracy with smugglers, police and customs officers to access food items.

The food importing has gone haywire though. This week the Ministry of Public Health managed to reject spoiled sardines which originated from China .

I learned 25 or so years ago, that imported fruits are also a treat at Christmas in England. Satsumas 

(which taste like tangerines) were the Christmas fruit , and oranges.

Grapes were also imported into England , and the colonies. I like the small white seedless grapes which don’t seem to be available in Guyana.

I end up enjoying the tangerines which are in season this Christmas.

Farren mindedness must be a Christmas thing.

Farren minded is usually a curse imposed on those who do not appear to be Guyanese enough and who might want things which are not currently Guyanese.

Things like equality, and social justice.

A young coolie man told me that in his Region , there is discrimination against coolie people in employment in the public sector.

The recent reported decision by Gifltand Mall to charge an fee to avoid ‘limers’ was seen as covert racism against black youths.

There is no Ethnic Relations Commission to resolve claims of racism.

There is no room for investigation , or for resolution.

The politicians continue to play the race card in different ways. The PPP claims racial victimisation but has not made any recourse to any of the institutions which could deal with those claims. The youth arms of the Governing coalition parties took on Giftland.

I don’t know if the youth arms of the Governing coalition would take on the case of the young coolie man who feels that he was discriminated against by the Regional officials.

The APNU+AFC Government has not made any commitment to convening the ERC. The ERC was one of the ‘farren’ things introduced in the 2001 Constitutional reform along with other human rights commissions.

Human rights is difficult to talk about in Guyana. Human rights gets shut down when you talk about ending rape culture, and tell people is time to stop beating children and that LGBT citizens are equally human.

Human rights gets shut down because when the talk seems to surface only when rights of people 

accused of crimes come up for discussion.

There was a debate about the humanity of the young men who lost their battle with the police recently. The police killed them in a shoot out. My instinctive response was that yeah.. when you leave your home with guns to go rob and possibly kill other people, you have decided to break the human contract.

The last two articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights speak to the responsibilities of 

citizens and the State for not abusing the human rights of other people.

So , I would not mourn the death of those who decided that living by the gun is better than say living with any of the youth initiatives which the Government has made available.

The trouble though with my instinct, is that throughout Guyana’s history, the police have killed and wounded citizens who are not robbers. The police who we want to kill bandits, also killed Ron 

Somerset, Allan Lewis and Shemroy Bouyea during the 2012 protests at Linden.

The police have killed and wounded sugar workers who were striking or protesting.

So the vigilante approach to policing might seem a good thing, except that any one of us could at any time find ourselves at the other end of the police gun. As some found during the days when the crime was trading in flour and bread.

In 2017, I hope that the surviving bandits who are caught would tell their stories about their choices.

There is a lot of irony in the black and coolie collaboration in some of the crimes.

Like Christmas, black and coolie and other people have survived crimes. And black and coolie and other people are getting fed up of the disconnect between the ‘official crime statistics’ and the everyday experience of crime.

Something though about the politics in Guyana, something about the reliance on the politics, that there has been no mobilising of black, coolie and other citizens to demand serious responses to the crime.

There are other criticisms of some of the current practices of the Government. Many people continue to be disappointed and horrified at some of the revelations. Others are defending what they know is indefensible. A few are afraid of speaking out as they were under the PPP.

The PPP has said they will be reaching out to the disgruntled supporters to get them to vote in 2020.

This pendulum of the vote is the huge wrecking ball which swings from one lesser evil to another lesser evil and leaves thousands of disappointed and angry people in its wake. Apparently, that is the state of Guyana’s proud democracy.

Two young men who are studying abroad joked about a need for a third force. Their time abroad probably gives them some space to abstract themselves from the daily grind.

The last third force, the AFC, has become part of the madness. There is irony in that the Office of the Prime Minister, rather than the Parliament, would be assuming responsibility for Constitutional Reform in 2017. The last Constitutional Reform process was spearheaded by the National Assembly under the Herdmanston Accord.

The vacillating 2am curfew Minister makes and breaks his own promises . Is there a reason why there is no serious approach to dealing with the crime situation and police reform and there is no certainty of when the 911 would work?

There was another third force a long time ago – GUARD, which sought free and fair elections in 1992.

Some of the people became part of the PPP madness.

The third force assumes that the current system of Governance will work if there are well intentioned 

people who will not abuse power, get scholarships and buy expensive vehicles when they become Ministers.

There is probably a need for a citizen-force or first-force which is not interested in the political power and trappings, but in consistently demanding accountability from those who hold power. A force which demands good governance at all levels.

A first-force which enables citizens to demand their rights.

A first-force which does not wait for the divisiveness of the electoral power politics to take over but which nurtures other possibilities of Guyaneseness beyond selling and buying applies and grapes fixing up the house at Christmas.

A force which would tell Mr Granger or any President that while they might have lower standards of performance for their Ministers, the country suffers when the Ministers are not performing to high standards of governance.

The country suffers when Ministers do not resolve allegations against their friends who are accused of child molestation. The country suffers when party favourites get bond deals.

A force which knows that calling slap-and-strip-bheri Honourable is a travesty.

On Christmas Eve morning , I was preoccupied with flood and the not working pumps and the mud remaining from the water and frightened at how places in Berbice flooded for the first time.

The security guard at the place I went to buy water was dancing and singing to the tunes on the radio.

I said ‘man you look really happy’.. she said ‘Yep.. I choose, nobody cyan put me down no matter what dey try’.

Her kind of happiness would be needed to catalyse the first force.

(Coil has gone out in favour of fairy lights , fireworks and squibs. If all goes well coil would reignite on 8 January. 2017.

Thank you to all who have not been repelled by the smoke. )