My neighbour's blood on my hands in Guyana 2021

 

Blood

"Somebody get shoot?" the boy asks me politely.  I say yes. "But we aint seeing the blood.." he says..

I smile to myself. they come looking to see the blood. I say "it deh inside the yard.. .. but I have some on my hand .. look" and I show him my right hand which has my neighbour's blood.  

Saturday afternoon in a usually quiet area

Nice breezy Saturday afternoon.  Two shots which could have been anything else. My neighbour's screams.. 

 'Don't go outside.. don't go .. ' my mother shouts at me. But I don't hear the shots really, I am concerned about the scream. And I know people say while other people run from bullets, Guyanese apparently tend to run towards them.

As I write though, I am  fed up with a place where we live in fear of virus and guns and so many other things. And that in growing fed up and weary with the stupid country, that the "fellow citizens who might have recited the national pledge to love their fellow citizens" and that bullets and love apparently go hand in hand in Guyana.

Three shootings in Georgetown on Saturday 6 Feb, 2021

The people in the ambulance said they just come from another shooting. Reading the news on Sunday. The citizens who shot my neighbour were doing their national loving duty like two others during the day. Citizens shot and robbed a woman at Bourda Market first, another citizen fired a bullet in the air (as you do) and killed Aulden Cush.

There might have been other shootings.. who knows? Who cares?

Neighbour

The normal interaction with my neighbour is Hi, hello, how things.. last week.. telling a budding racing care driver that our street is not a practice track. Not the pain and screams.

Another man is there trying to help.  A stranger.. turns out he was visiting a friend.. looking at football and heard the shots and came out. He is shaken too.. hollering at me to get something to tie the leg.

He looks confused... get something to tie. I run back in my yard and find the old shirts downstairs.. tying is important. I watch enough crime shows to know. And that she must lift her leg.

I go in.. my neighbour is on the concrete.. blood is around her. She is okay.. managing to get the phone.. talking to her husband who is far away.. 

She hands me the phone.. and I see her husband.. blood drops on his face and on my image at the top of the screen. 

More people come. The guys from the house behind. Barefoot.. masks, no masks.  Security guard in the complex next door calls ambulance, police, his other guard colleagues. 

Some of us who grew up in the area are trying to help. Decision made to go to the hospital instead of waiting on ambulance. 

No masks 

The citizens who came to do their patriotic duty with their gun wore no masks "they looked up directly.. not even trying to hide their face'. The kind of confidence which comes from knowing that you wouldn't be caught anyways. And even if you are caught.. what then.. ?  

The nation which has every child reciting about loving their fellow citizens apparently has communities and families nurturing men mostly to walk with guns to go and shoot their fellow citizens. 

And not wearing masks heck.. so bullets and covid must be passing.

Quiet Neighbourhood

The street is quiet. The morning before the shooting, a man was trying to stray a kitten on Church Road. The kitten though went under his car and the man didn't know what to do.. tried to tell the man to take the kitten to GSPCA but he was busy. In the night after the shooting, I hear like a kitten is crying then it stopped crying.

Saw another neighbour watering her plants on my way to market. Had a nice gaff and catch up. Covid has us locked in a lot.

Helping  neighbours.. was about going to help push a car. One time a neighbour had to help come break a lock which had spoiled. One health  crisis was when an elderly neighbour had fainted on her step after she had come home from Ronald Waddell's funeral. Another health crisis to help a neighbour to get an ambulance to go to the hospital when she did not want to go.

Men shot and killed Ronald Waddell five streets away one night. Another night one man shot and killed his young neighbour Jason De Florimonte who grew up in front of him down the road. Another night , police and bandits had a shoot up. The bandits had rented a house - described as quiet people by the neighbours next door. A man who lived next door to me had threatened to kill the coolie people and so and has come back to steal and so .. not with guns though.

Subryanville is a nice quiet area.  Thieves come through, things from the line. mangoes.. things in the yard.  Night time mostly.

Blood on the hands

Neighbours talking... police taking notes.. checking footage. Nice breezy evening. I come to the pipe.  Get some soap powder and wash my hands.. so ordinary.. so normal.. like if i had done gardening or something and it was mud on my hands. Some blood in a cuticle and I scrub a bit more.

On being okay

Trying to think of the others who have had to deal with guns and chops and stabs and who have gone to help. I am not alone. This is not new to many people. The guys who grew up in the area who also got our neighbour's blood on their hands and bodies.. not sure if they have had experiences like this.

Remembering a man I knew who had found his friend's dead body. Citizens had tortured and killed the man and have not been caught.

I come up.. prepare dinner. Make the social media post .  Watch some TV junk and chat and LOL with two people.  Night is not bad.. sleep good.

On not being okay

I am remembering how easy it was to wash my neighbour's blood from my hands. On going back to chat with the people who returned to secure the h ouse and seeing how the blood was drying on the concrete. On being calm.  I am okay... but I am not okay with being okay.

Trying to avoid the news from Trinidad.. the horror of the war the citizens who have survived their oil book are waging on other citizens.. women. The news from Jamaica where my fellow citizen goes into church and kills a woman. Far away really.. though coming close, too close.

What the hell does being okay mean now, recovery? 'Be careful' people say..  .. what does a healed and recovered state look like for my neighbour and others who have survived attacks from fellow citizens? 

Wonder if we will measure the amount of blood spilled as we contemplate oil produced? Wondering whether there will ever be any vacancies advertised and calls for all citizens who rob and shoot other citizens to come and talk.. discuss how much money they need to not shoot other citizens?

But is it only money? The shooting and the gun thing? Or is it thrill and so on.. power.. which no amount of money can buy off?

I am okay, but terrified, horrified that I am okay.