Eyes Wide Open: What does Mr. Jagdeo see on his frequent foreign trips?

I have no idea whatsoever why two lovely Guyanese girls committed suicide recently. I know both fathers, though I would say I am a friend of Lincoln Persaud, the father of one of the girls.

From reading the newspapers, we learnt that both were educated in the US; one returned home after her first degree and the other to complete high school. Both were pretty young. Both, according to family members and close friends, showed no emotional strain in their respective lives.

But supposed they did and successfully and tragically kept it deep within with no visible outward signs. Any experienced person in life, without having to have a psychology degree, can tell you that humans can cover up their inner torment for an interminable period of time and loved ones would never know.

Could it be that what bothered them was the country they lived in. This is the inescapable plight young people encounter, who after spending time abroad, have to return home.

Then the comparison is made and the inner torment begins. The reason why so many young people choose to remain illegally in Caribbean islands, Suriname and North America is that after their first visit, they become contemptuous of their country’s lack of modern facilities.

It is a troubling aspect of life for Guyanese in their twenties and older. There hasn’t been one exception where I have met a labourer or a semi-employed person who made a trip to Suriname and returned with zest for Guyana. It always is, “Boy that place is nice man, more developed than Guyana.”

This is a global village in which we live. The peoples of the world are mixing more than they did twenty-five years ago. Guyanese have relatives, friends and family members living and working in all the modern nations on earth.

When Guyanese see the face of modernity outside, they do not want to return home. I could never forget the time when a hurricane completely devastated Grenada and this country offered its facilities to Grenadian students to complete their CAPE studies and not one came.

They frowned upon this land, because in a global village news spreads, and we are seen as a place where modern infrastructures do not exist.

The nightmare Guyana lives with is that our leaders do not accept that comparatively we are seen as a primitive country. The horrendous implications of that are that these leaders are not going to acquire 21st century things that all states need to have.

I am in my twenty-third year at UG and I never had or was given the basic necessity of a telephone facility in my office. Countless other lecturers endure the same semi-civilized employment conditions.

The late David de Caires once wrote that Guyana may be the only country where an ocean runs right through the capital city. What may be true also is that Guyana must be the only country where such a phenomenal site exists but is not enjoyed by the population because of the dirty and nasty conditions that characterize the Georgetown seawall.

In moments when he is alone, one wonders what goes through the mind of President Jagdeo.

Does he feel a sense of shame when he reflects on those endless trips to endless countries and the amazing developments he sees in those foreign lands? When he was at Columbia University last month to give a lecture, he must have felt sad when he saw the polished, air-conditioned, wall-to-wall carpet classrooms as compared to the squalid mess UG students have to use.

He was at another University in Canada recently and he must have observed the inviting physical surroundings of that campus. Mr. Jagdeo will be in Trinidad for the meeting of Commonwealth Heads and no doubt would be given a tour of the ultra-modern Academy of the Performing Arts.

Did Mr. Jagdeo ask himself how a country of less than five million people, Norway, could afford to give Guyana US$50M every year for the next five years? Did he ask himself how our neighbour, Trinidad, could have spent a similar amount just to host a meeting of reigning Heads of the Americas earlier this year?

All over the world Governments spend money, not on modern constructions but ultra-modern things.

At the last annual general meeting of the Guyana Press Association held at the Theatre Guild, I turned to Gordon Moseley and said to him that the average high school in the US has a more spacious and modern drama club than the Theatre Guild. Pity we didn’t get those expected billions from the LCDS.