I did not go to high school
January 29, 2012
By KNews | Filed Under Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
I have been in the public eyes since I entered UG in 1974, the year of the refusal of the UG Council to appoint Walter Rodney as a lecturer. Because of my politics at UG, I made the news but I doubt since then (37 years ago), people know that in my life, I never attended high school. Well, you know now. I was never a QC or Saints or Christ Church or Tutorial or Central High boy. I was a Wortmanville school dropout.
I left school at the primary level, attending St. Thomas More Primary School on Durban Street, Wortmanville. When I was sixteen, I met a man named Boyo Ramsaroop (father of one of the AFC leaders, Gerhard Ramsaroop) who in turn hooked me up with one of the PPP leaders and former PPP Minister of Works and Communications, EMG Wilson, affectionately known as Coco Wilson. What Ramsaroop and Wilson saw in me, I never understood. With one meal in the home, no proper education, a scrawny, malnourished appearance, and some bad manners, I couldn’t understand what attracted them to me.
My life changed completely after meeting these two gentlemen. Coco gave me physical things. Boyo gave me psychological things. I studied privately for my GCE at private afternoon lessons, passed, went into UG to study history and came out with five awards including the President’s Medal. I won the Mac Master University Foreign Student Scholarship to do a Masters, then competed for and won the University of Toronto Foreign Student Scholarship to do a doctorate.
I learned a lot from Wilson and Ramsaroop, but I equally learned from my mother and six siblings (I am the last child) growing up on Durban Street. We were poor, with my big sister and brother (Lightweight Kissoon) leaving the home as early teenagers because food was scarce. My dad was a mere groundsman at Saint Stanislaus Ground on what is now Carifesta Avenue.
The values I internalized in my home on Durban Street from my mother and siblings have guided me since then. My siblings and mother never allowed my dad to pursue any wrongdoing. It was madness in the home if he ever did.
One day, my dad came home and his assistant was not with him. So my mom and sister asked him where Uncle Alim was. My father’s explanation was that he was taking too long to leave, so he came home on the bike and left him. It was a long walk from the Camp Street seawall to Durban Street, Wortmanville. There was a big quarrel, in which my siblings and mother insisted that my father go back for him.
Anything wrong my parents did, my siblings would confront them on it. It was a tremendous human rights culture in our poor, working class home that shaped my upbringing.
I have been married for 33 years and have a 22-year-old daughter who is at UG (Ms Gail Teixeira who argued for my dismissal at UG last week, had her two daughters educated at York University in Canada). There is nothing wrong or unethical or fundamentally inappropriate that I can do and my wife and daughter would remain silent. My wife and daughter refuse to lie when answering the phone if I should say, “tell him I am not home.”
The point is that in my world, my attitude to life and people is also shaped by the values of my wife and daughter.
There is no way these two women would allow me to abuse an office that I have jurisdiction over. It was indeed ironic (and sad) that Bharrat Jagdeo and Donald Ramotar ran my wife out of her public service job at GOINVEST just before the elections. My wife has never dabbled in politics and never discussed her work at GOINVEST with me. I was never interested in what she did at GOINVEST. She worked with GOINVEST’s predecessor, GUYMIDA, during the Hoyte presidency. She got her public sector job under Hoyte.
If Jagdeo and Ramotar only know that my wife in the home, just doesn’t bother with politics. I must confess that I was extremely sad that the opposition lost the Executive office in the elections because I wanted to show Jagdeo and Ramotar that my wife was entitled to work in and for her country, and would have asked either President Granger or President Ramjattan to put her back at GOINVEST.
With my wife hounded out of her job just near to the election and me kicked out of mine just after the election, my fear is that under a PPP Government, the fate of my daughter may be the same.
Against this background, it remains a mystery to me why spouses and children do not stop their patents from practicing human rights abuses. How can grown men and women use power and privilege to immorally and illegally victimize, brutalize and harm innocent human beings and the families of these violators can support their heinous crimes? How can a daughter or a son approve of their father/mother’s cruel schemes just because it is their dad or mom?
I say to the youths of Guyana, stop your parents from using their power to hurt other human beings.
January 29, 2012
By KNews | Filed Under Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
I have been in the public eyes since I entered UG in 1974, the year of the refusal of the UG Council to appoint Walter Rodney as a lecturer. Because of my politics at UG, I made the news but I doubt since then (37 years ago), people know that in my life, I never attended high school. Well, you know now. I was never a QC or Saints or Christ Church or Tutorial or Central High boy. I was a Wortmanville school dropout.
I left school at the primary level, attending St. Thomas More Primary School on Durban Street, Wortmanville. When I was sixteen, I met a man named Boyo Ramsaroop (father of one of the AFC leaders, Gerhard Ramsaroop) who in turn hooked me up with one of the PPP leaders and former PPP Minister of Works and Communications, EMG Wilson, affectionately known as Coco Wilson. What Ramsaroop and Wilson saw in me, I never understood. With one meal in the home, no proper education, a scrawny, malnourished appearance, and some bad manners, I couldn’t understand what attracted them to me.
My life changed completely after meeting these two gentlemen. Coco gave me physical things. Boyo gave me psychological things. I studied privately for my GCE at private afternoon lessons, passed, went into UG to study history and came out with five awards including the President’s Medal. I won the Mac Master University Foreign Student Scholarship to do a Masters, then competed for and won the University of Toronto Foreign Student Scholarship to do a doctorate.
I learned a lot from Wilson and Ramsaroop, but I equally learned from my mother and six siblings (I am the last child) growing up on Durban Street. We were poor, with my big sister and brother (Lightweight Kissoon) leaving the home as early teenagers because food was scarce. My dad was a mere groundsman at Saint Stanislaus Ground on what is now Carifesta Avenue.
The values I internalized in my home on Durban Street from my mother and siblings have guided me since then. My siblings and mother never allowed my dad to pursue any wrongdoing. It was madness in the home if he ever did.
One day, my dad came home and his assistant was not with him. So my mom and sister asked him where Uncle Alim was. My father’s explanation was that he was taking too long to leave, so he came home on the bike and left him. It was a long walk from the Camp Street seawall to Durban Street, Wortmanville. There was a big quarrel, in which my siblings and mother insisted that my father go back for him.
Anything wrong my parents did, my siblings would confront them on it. It was a tremendous human rights culture in our poor, working class home that shaped my upbringing.
I have been married for 33 years and have a 22-year-old daughter who is at UG (Ms Gail Teixeira who argued for my dismissal at UG last week, had her two daughters educated at York University in Canada). There is nothing wrong or unethical or fundamentally inappropriate that I can do and my wife and daughter would remain silent. My wife and daughter refuse to lie when answering the phone if I should say, “tell him I am not home.”
The point is that in my world, my attitude to life and people is also shaped by the values of my wife and daughter.
There is no way these two women would allow me to abuse an office that I have jurisdiction over. It was indeed ironic (and sad) that Bharrat Jagdeo and Donald Ramotar ran my wife out of her public service job at GOINVEST just before the elections. My wife has never dabbled in politics and never discussed her work at GOINVEST with me. I was never interested in what she did at GOINVEST. She worked with GOINVEST’s predecessor, GUYMIDA, during the Hoyte presidency. She got her public sector job under Hoyte.
If Jagdeo and Ramotar only know that my wife in the home, just doesn’t bother with politics. I must confess that I was extremely sad that the opposition lost the Executive office in the elections because I wanted to show Jagdeo and Ramotar that my wife was entitled to work in and for her country, and would have asked either President Granger or President Ramjattan to put her back at GOINVEST.
With my wife hounded out of her job just near to the election and me kicked out of mine just after the election, my fear is that under a PPP Government, the fate of my daughter may be the same.
Against this background, it remains a mystery to me why spouses and children do not stop their patents from practicing human rights abuses. How can grown men and women use power and privilege to immorally and illegally victimize, brutalize and harm innocent human beings and the families of these violators can support their heinous crimes? How can a daughter or a son approve of their father/mother’s cruel schemes just because it is their dad or mom?
I say to the youths of Guyana, stop your parents from using their power to hurt other human beings.