A new Guyana begins to stir
Last Updated: August 25, 2012 12:00am -- Source
We were standing on the Georgetown Seawall that holds back the Atlantic Ocean from flooding the biggest city in Guyana, South America.
The tide was out and it was stunningly beautiful. I was with the crew from Londoner Chris Basso’s Tagg TV who were there filming a segment for his Internet reality TV tourism project. We walked out as far as we could to touch the water and feel the sand.
The wall that protects the city could be a metaphor for the people of this often ignored part of the world — fragile yet strong, beaten down but resilient.
Production logistics manager and Bassoo’s right-hand man, Damien Lewis and his 10-year-old son, his shorter carbon copy, were with us. Lewis, 31, is one of the most introspective and thoughtful people I’ve ever met.
At all times, he is unfailingly polite and quietly determined.
He has been eking out a living as a production manager and filmmaker in Georgetown but it’s difficult.
The jobs he’s had up to now have paid little and have held him back. He has family in New Jersey who offered to take his son and twin daughters to be educated in the United States.
That’s not for Lewis. He wants his children to grow and help build a thriving Guyana.
“I want you to see my people,” he told me within the first hour of my whirlwind arrival in Guyana almost two weeks ago and just before a three-hour bumpy road trip along the northern coast to Berbice.
For two weeks I did. I saw their homes and businesses and the enormous gap between the rich and the poor.
I rode along their crumbling, chaotic roads and watched drivers honk their horns continuously sometimes to avoid cattle, goats, dogs, horses and donkeys. I shopped at their bustling market and avoided the garbage strewn in the streets, I drank from a coconut and sipped on sugar cane juice. I steered clear of their water supply. I experienced their iffy electrical grid.
And I met astoundingly generous people.
Something during what was a crazy, unpredictable trip became clear: Guyana is on the cusp of big change.
For two decades following its independence from British colonial rule, it languished under the iron-fisted leadership of a banana republic dictator, president Forbes Burnham who remained in power through fraudulent elections practices and political corruption.
His austerity program in the 1970s sent the masses of educated class fleeing to Canada, the United States, Great Britain and the rest of Europe. He followed it up with a plan to make the country self-sufficient and banned the importation of basic foodstuffs like flour, cooking oil and canned goods. There were nightly power blackouts and violent gangs ruled the frightened streets.
Guyana became cut off from the world and known only for having one of the shortest lifespans in the region and cult leader Jim Jones’ execution of his 1,000 People’s Temple followers at an encampment set up in Guyana — land leased for $2-million from Burnham’s government.
Burnham’s sudden death during surgery in 1985 sent Guyana staggering into the future.
The rough tides for the country, like the ocean’s tide that crashes against the seawall, began to recede. Free and fair elections were monitored by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter in the early 1990s. An economic recovery program designed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, plus support from Canada, the U.S. and Great Britain, launched in 1989 started some economic growth.
Culturally, traditional values slammed against new technologies. Communications, particularly television opened the eyes of the Guyanese to the rest of the world. Cellular communications were a god-send in a place where few could afford land lines.
Guyana is still a very poor country. The average monthly income is about $250. Crime remains rampant. Foreign remittances make up a large chunk of the economy. The infrastructure is broken. A successful government public information program fought back the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Domestic violence stories clog up the newspaper columns in what the president said is “a male-dominated society.” The minister of social services calls the abuse of women crisis — something a counsellor from the front lines said is an issue in 75-100% of Guyanese homes — is “a pandemic.”
There are areas that could help turn around the ship. Most of the country’s geography is raw, unpopulated rainforest, opening up opportunities for ecological programming and preservation. More women are attending university and taking positions of responsibility.
Innovative programs, like the Mangrove Restoration project, employ single mothers in jobs like planting mangroves along the coast — a cheap and effective ecological seawall — and beekeeping to take ownership of the ecological project.
The greatest asset of Guyana is its people, a resilient and gracious population who would, as Basso said so many times to me, “would gratefully give you their last bowl of rice.”
At no time while in the company of Bassoo’s crew did I feel unsafe. So many Guyanese told me about close relatives living in North America. A wonderful couple invited me into their home for a Eid feast I will never forget. Another man I met lives around the corner from my sister in Oakville.
The young Guyanese were charming. Yaphet Jackman, 27, a super-talented filmmaker tapped to edit Bassoo’s 50 short episodes who has a quick wit and enormous sense of humour, said he wants to finish complete his University of Guyana degree with his optional year at the sister school, the University of Ohio. His plan is to return to Guyana and teach.
I watched the ongoing love story between Rupesh and Samantha Singh, a couple with its own production company and TV show. They are shooting behind-the-scenes footage for a separate show for the privately owned TVG.
I saw the Guyanese crew welcome wide-eyed Londoners Rob Ross and Patrick Kirshner to their country and treat them like brothers.
And I got to know Bassoo, a business guy with enormous energy and what appears at first to be a kooky project that involves tourism, a Miss Canada — Jaclyn Miles — with a domestic violence platform, the Internet, and the government’s blessing.
He was born Canadian but Guyana, his parents’ homeland, is close to his heart. He is driven to show it in a positive way. Tagg TV may spark that Guyanese diaspora that fled 40 years ago to become less fearful and return to the homes they left behind.
Already the trickle has begun. Some foreign Guyanese close to retirement are returning home to reclaim the place.
That’s good news for Lewis and the rest of his people. So grateful he was for making his new Canadian friends, he wanted us to share one of his greatest days before Megan Walker, the executive director of the London Abused Women’s Centre who was there to help Miles with the domestic violence message, and myself left this week.
Everyone knew he was going to ask Reshma Doobar, his longtime girlfriend, to marry him this week. Everyone but Doobar.
And there we were, Canadian and Guyanese, side-by-side at a ornate Chinese restaurant, witnessing a wedding and pointing the happy couple into a bright future.
Hopefully, that bright future can happen across Guyana.
jane.sims@sunmedia.ca
