Dear Editor,
“The rich man in his castle, The poor man at the gates” (All things bright and beautiful – Hymn). Around the age of Adriana Young, I sang the hymn above at the Redeemer Lutheran Church in Camp-bellville. Six decades later, I now understand the nature of “gated communities”, where the poor man can only imagine the luxurious lifestyle of the rich as he walks by these communities, a heaven on earth. Franz Fanon’s “Wretched of the Earth” captures the prison the poor lives in, outside of those gates.
The Campbellville Housing Scheme built in the early sixties had a parity with the other houses on the other side of the divide. A number of two-story concrete houses began to appear on the “empty lot” as we called it, which was classier than those of the housing scheme. Then there was “Jofre House”, a gleaming yellow, huge structure. We would warily ascend the back stairs to buy a “flutie” on our way from school, a heavenly treat. Our idea of a gated community was the school gates, guarded by a teacher armed with a “wild cane” for those who sought entry after the school bell had rung out its warning notes.
The idyllic notes of “green pastures” in one hymn did not need an imaginary setting as we dodged cow dung and holes in the huge field that stretched several acres alongside the school. Our reading book, with the story of “Hannah, the milkmaid” was easily a part of our experience. Mr. Joe’s Farm and Mother Hen and her chicks, could readily fit into the scenery. Today, Orwell’s “Animal Farm” would be the reality of our lives.
In the colonial setting of the late 1950’s, the posters that graced the school walls were those of our “honourable ministers of government”. Our Independence struggle ripped aside the idea of honour in government. Today, six decades later, thievery, corruption, rape, murder, etc., seems commonplace. The “money changers” from the temple with the indictment that “You have turned my father’s temple into a den of thieves”, describes our parliament in a down-to-earth manner. The banning of the word “corruption” seems to be an honourable admission of guilt. One philosopher noted that in the old days, Perseus put on his magic cap and disappeared; today we pull the cap over our eyes and make things disappear. Our rulers have not learned much from history despite our Jonestown experience and the dire warning that “Those who forget the lessons of the past are condemned to repeat them”.
Walter Rodney reminded us that Black slaves “humanized” Guyana by moving twenty million tons of wet clay to create the modern environment we occupy, during two hundred years of murderous toil, shedding their blood on the soil. Indian indentured servants, over a period of one hundred years after slavery, outnumbered the Black population. From a trickle to a flood, with universal adult suffrage, Indians had effectively seized political power.
For six decades in the post-independence period, this racial struggle has dominated the politics of this nation. “And then it happened, it took me by surprise, I guess you felt it too, by the look in your eyes….This magic moment…sweeter than wine”. Oil, oil, and more oil. “The cow jumped over the moon…The dish ran away with the spoon”… “….”The king was in the counting house, counting out his money”…,”Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool” Alladin’s oil lamp and its genie, “Your wish is my command”… “Oh! What a rat race”.
There was a scene in the movie “Penitentiary” where the prisoner grasped the prison bar of his cell and shouts: “These bars do not imprison me. They protect me from the world out there.” I wonder if the wretched man outside the gated communities would make the same claim, that the iron gates do not imprison him. They protect him from the vultures out there, as he inverts his reality to safeguard his sanity.