Today is a significant anniversary
October 6, 2013, By KNews, Filed Under Features / Columnists, My Column, Source
Today is an anniversary that seems to have paled into insignificance, perhaps because it comes one day after the ruling party acceded to Government sixteen years after the incident that touched me so much.
The year was 1976 and a bunch of us young people had completed our national service at Papaya in the North West. We did not consider doing national service degrading because it fashioned our minds. I still remember the year because West Indies was playing England in England. There was this young fast bowler, Michael Holding, tormenting them. He got fourteen wickets in that match on a pitch that was considered unhelpful to fast bowlers.
Some of us were heading to Jamaica, some to Europe, and some to Cuba. Many of us had never left this country, so we were looking forward to life in another country, even if it meant leaving family behind. My friend Arnon Adams was heading to Jamaica with me to study Mass Communications so it did not take much to know that we planned our departure right down to the wire.
We booked on SLM to leave on Wednesday, September 29, 1976, and that was what we did. The following Wednesday there we were looking at the black and white television in the living room we shared with Dudley Ellis (Arnon had his own apartment) when the news came. The date was October 6, 1976.
I remember too, that KFC had not come to Guyana, so we in Jamaica considered it a treat. We drove to the outlet in Liguanea and bought a bucket. The news flash said that a Cubana airline had crashed off the coast of Barbados. It had been blown up.
Initially, there was no mention of Guyanese being on board but we were shocked never the less. International planes do not crash in our corner of the world. Then we heard that the plane had blown up.
Before the day was over, the names were coming in, and we recognised our friends who had shared Camp Papaya with us. There was Jacqueline Williams, a young light-complexioned girl who was so full of energy and who saw life as something to enjoy. There was Jeffrey Thomas’s brother, Rawle, and so many others. Arnon and I were in shock. So too was Dudley, an oncologist now working in Barbados.
We called the High Commission and spoke with Ms Waveney Pollard, trying to get as much information as we could. Not much was coming out of Guyana. The telephone was not as ubiquitous as it is now and communication was not as easy. Telex was still the key means of communication between the High Commission and Guyana.
By nightfall we knew all who died and then reality set in. Had Arnon and I delayed our departure by a week and had used another airline, then we would have been forgotten in the same way our friends have been forgotten. Some of them would have been very good doctors and some would have been agriculturalists.
I am not sure what the mood is in Guyana about the people who became known as the victims of the Cubana disaster. Hammy Green tried to erect a monument at the corner of Lamaha and Camp Streets, but the Works Ministry objected. The government then took the decision to erect a monument in the compound of the University of Guyana.
I remember the rally at Square of the Revolution when Burnham begged Barbados to try the perpetrators. Tom Adams said that he had no jurisdiction because the aircraft went down outside territorial waters.
Burnham then begged that Guyana be allowed to try the people since its citizens had been killed in the explosion. That did not happen either.
Venezuela offered to try these people. As time passed it was left to the Cubans in Guyana to host a remembrance ceremony. It was as if Guyana had forgotten my friends.
Imagine that Britain still observes the Queen’s birthday; Venezuela still has a holiday to Simon Bolivar who is seen as the Liberator and of course, Guyana observes the coming to power of a political party, but it ignores some young people who died in pursuit of education to help develop their country.
I still remember the letters and the questions I had to answer when I came home that Christmas. And to prove a point, I travelled on Cubana Airlines. Some of my relatives who knew that I was leaving thought that I was on Cubana. My mother knew that I had left, but she was not sure if anything had happened between Guyana and Jamaica and I had deplaned somewhere before proceeding to my final destination.
Every year when this date comes around, I pause to remember my friends who did nothing to anyone but who were targeted and killed. Many of them would have been in their late fifties and sixties today. They would have had children and grandchildren of their own and they would have been professionals. They never got that chance.
I still remember them and I always will.