Monthly Archives: July 2012

Linden/Guyana: A Light for the Nation?

29 Sunday Jul 2012

Posted by in Guyana, Social Injustice

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Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars… Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. ~ Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.    ~ Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

 Source: http://www.quotationspage.com

 

Linden…

Linden is a reminder of the achievements of Afro-Guyanese under the leadership of Linden Forbes Burnham, the first Prime Minister and President of our nation.

Linden is a reminder of the treacherous defeat of Indo-Guyanese.

Linden is a reminder of our struggle for independence.

Linden is a reminder of the dark side of our human nature that enables us to turn against our neighbors: robbing them of their personal possessions, burning their homes, and raping their wives and daughters.

In 2007, I met Chitra (fictitious name), a Guyanese-American woman of Indian descent. At the time, together with millions of Americans, I vibrated with the possibility of having our first African-American president. As a democrat, Chitra faced a dilemma. “I’m not voting for a black man,” she told me. “Black people can’t be trusted.” I could only stare at her in disbelief.

Chitra was nine years old when her home in the Linden/Wismar mining region was firebombed by blacks during the 1964 racial “disturbances.” Her trauma destroyed her trust in all Africans, regardless of their origin or character. Sadly, the deviant sociopathic behavior of a few has the power to poison the mind. Fear and hatred develop and perpetuate through subsequent generations. Using this knowledge, our political leaders manipulate and feed our fears for their own purposes and needs.

Residents of Linden, I applaud your courage in publicly protesting against what you perceive as an unjust and burdensome increase in your electricity tariffs. As citizens of a nation with a people-elected government, you have the right to peacefully voice your protest in the streets, to call attention to your plight and suffering. The Police Riot Squad committed a crime in using deadly force to silence protestors. I support your stand in demanding an inquiry and justice for the deaths of three unarmed male protestors.

Residents of Linden, I urge you not to resort to violence or destruction of public property. As Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us, only love can drive out hate. Moreover, victory through violence is only temporary, as Mahatma Gandhi warned us.

Guyana is a young nation with a turbulent history of racial conflicts. Both Africans and Indians have blood on their hands. The perpetrators for these crimes remain unaccountable.  Do not offend me with denial. Do not make excuses. I, too, bear guilt for my silent complicity. All parties involved have to come to terms with this reality. We have serious unresolved issues that keep us divided, that prevent us from forming a government where all citizens, regardless of race or ethnicity, have rightful and meaningful participation.

It is time to start rebuilding the bridges that had once united us. I remember those days: those days before powerful external interests destroyed the bridges, however shaky, that made us strong and a threat to their interests.

Do we have the strength of character required to rebuild those bridges? Perhaps the residents of Linden will be the light that leads us out of the darkness.

 

A Dark Night for America

22 Sunday Jul 2012

Posted by in Human Behavior, United States, Urban Violence

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US mourns victims of Colorado shooting – 20 July 2012

 Source: http://www.channelstv.com

 

Today, I join the families in Colorado and other US states who mourn the loss of their loved ones, snatched from them by the gunman, James Eagen Holmes. It is a tragic reminder of the fragility of our lives.

As I gleaned from media reports, James Holmes had everything in his favor for a successful life. The 24-year-old was a tall, white male from a middle-class American family, and a brilliant scholar with an honors neuroscience degree from the University of California Riverside and working towards his doctorate at the University of Colorado Denver. People who knew him described him as studious, shy, and a loner: Not unusual for highly intellectual individuals. Like millions of young people graduating from college, James struggled to find work after graduating in 2010. Presumably, he too has massive student loans to repay.

Before Thursday midnight, heralding July 20, James had never committed any criminal offence. Something went terribly wrong in James’ mind to turn him into a cold-blooded killer. Dressed head-to-toe in black riot gear like a SWAT officer, he gunned down seventy people in a dark theater in Aurora, Colorado, while they watched the special midnight showing of the Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises. Of the seventy people shot, ten died on the spot, two died shortly afterward, and a number of others remain in critical condition.

As a mother of two young men, I am shaken by James’ sociopathic behavior. Such rage builds up over years, caused by any number of factors such as neglect, indifference, abuse, alienation, and loss of control over one’s life. Like most parents, we do our best, within our financial constraints, to raise our children along the path of acceptable behavior for living and succeeding in our society.

But we do not raise our children in a vacuum. They grow up in communities of other individuals: neighborhood, church, sports club, school, and others. They are exposed to other societal influences through the media, pop culture, and the ubiquitous Internet. Then there is the violence.

Violence surrounds us. We are a nation at war overseas and at war at home with the protestors of the Occupy Movement. The excessive violence used to dispel peaceful protestors is disconcerting. What does the behavior of adult authority at the highest levels teach mentally troubled young men like James Holmes?

Our electronic games and movies have become darker and more violent. Our fairy tales and comic book stories of our favorite superheroes have become violent films with dark themes. In the dark cinema, James Holmes emerged as the Dark Knight fighting crime in the world he lived in.

James Holmes is a reminder of the malleability of the human mind and the danger of making guns easily available to all.

A Hot Summer Afternoon at the Santa Monica Pier

15 Sunday Jul 2012

Posted by in Leisure & Entertainment, United States

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Santa Monica Pier – Southern California – USA

 Source: http://www.48hourvisit.com

 

Now that summer is here, I enjoy taking weekend walks along the beach. Hot, sunny days are infectious in Los Angeles. Residents gravitate towards the ocean. For my Sunday afternoon stroll along the Santa Monica Pier, I am prepared for the merciless heat: cap with visor, sunglasses, sunscreen, and water to stay hydrated. Sunlight makes my spirit soar and burns away the darkness. Under a clear sky, with the ocean stretching to the horizon, the world seems limitless. My spirit is free to roam.

Standing at the stone banister overlooking the highway below, I gaze at the pier and amusement park, and the expansive sandy beach that disappears into the ocean. In the packed asphalted beachfront parking lot, sunlight bounces off glass surfaces and stabs me in the eyes. The ocean sparkles like liquid diamond. Sunbathers litter the beach near the water’s edge.

The roadway to the pier descends at a 45-degree angle. Protective railings along paved sidewalks, flanking the access road, prevent visitors from plunging to the highway below. The descent is no problem; the upward climb punishes my knees. When the roadway ends, the surface changes to wide wooden planks secured with large bolts.

On the pier, the mass of bodies is not as dense as it appeared from above. There is lots of space to move freely without bumping into others. Sharing the same space, under the same sky, among people seeking sun and diversion makes me one with humankind. Families and friends pose for photographs: happy moments spent together frozen in time. We are all travelers on our journey through life.

I pass the war memorial: a “temporary cemetery” of red and white crosses aligned in neat rows across the beach to my right. I do not dwell on this tragedy of war, destruction, and needless deaths. Today, I want to enjoy being a part of Earth’s life-giving sunlight, air, and water.

The seafood restaurant near the entrance of the pier is a popular eating place. There are people waiting at the door for a table. Food stands offer churros, pretzel, popcorn, candy, funnel cake, ice cream, and more.

A sign advertises a photo with a Hollywood star for only $6.00. I look on as a young girl smiles for her photo next to a life-size standup poster of Justin Bieber. For another small fee, you can get your name carved on a grain of rice. An artist transforms the face of a young man into a humorous caricature.

Pacific Park dominates the pier with its giant Ferris wheel, rollercoaster, and other rides. Children scream. A helicopter chops the air overhead. A young man beats out a discordant rhythm on upturned plastic buckets and metal containers. A crowd gathers to watch him perform.  Further ahead, a beautiful female voice, accompanied by recorded orchestra music, floats on the air.

I breathe in scents of ocean spray and grilled fish. Time lingers under a sunny sky at the beach.

Moths: Beauty Concealed in Darkness

08 Sunday Jul 2012

Posted by in Guyana, Nature and the Environment

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Four Moths – Northwest Region – Guyana (Drawings by Rosaliene Bacchus)

 

Growing up in Georgetown, the capital of Guyana, I developed a dislike for moths. They were tiny, hairy, grayish-brown insects that destroyed our clothes and feasted on our rice grains and beans. They did their work in secret, in the dark. To keep them away, we placed foul-scented naphthalene mothballs in our chest of drawers, wardrobes, and cupboards.

Imagine my surprise when I learned in school that moths and butterflies belong to the same family called Lepidoptera. Next to the beautiful and brightly colored butterfly, the moth is the ugly cousin. And, as life would have it, the species of ugly cousins outnumber their attractive relatives by almost ten to one.

When I moved to the tropical rainforest region of Northwest Guyana, to teach at the secondary school in Mabaruma, I discovered a whole new world of moths I never knew existed. Up to that time, I had harbored prejudice towards thousands of species of moths based on the noxious behavior of a few.

The building where I lived was located in a clearing near a river at the foot of a hill. We had no electricity. At nights from six to ten o’clock, the presbytery at the top of the hill provided electricity generated by a gasoline generator. In the dark night, as I did my school work, my desk lamp attracted every form of winged night creature, especially the moth.

After overcoming my initial annoyance at the intrusion, I developed a fascination for the moths. My nightly visitors ranged in size from 0.3 inch to 4.5 inches in wing span. While the majority of them had varied brown tones and black markings, there were also moths of pink, orange, yellow, and green hues. Many of them were triangular in overall shape, but other shapes abound. One of my visitors that stayed until the early morning was particularly deceptive in appearance. When I bent down to pick up what appeared to be a dried brown leaf lying on the floor, the moth flew away.

Without a camera with a flash (common in those days) and poor photographic skills, I began drawing the moths and coloring them with crayons. My plan at the time (never realized) was to create a painting of moths based on their shapes and colors. The moth depicted in the drawing below was the largest and most beautiful of the species that visited my room. My now faded crayon drawing has failed to capture its beauty and rich colors.

Moth – Northwest Region – Guyana (Drawing by Rosaliene Bacchus)

The year I lived in Mabaruma turned out to be a dark period in my life. That July, when I relinquished my post as Acting Headmistress to return to Georgetown, I inadvertently ended my teaching career.

Life in not only filled with sunshine and butterflies. There are also dark nights. Yet, in the darkest night, if we let our inner light shine through, there is beauty to behold and lessons to learn.

Brazilians cannot say “no”

01 Sunday Jul 2012

Posted by in Brazil, Human Behavior, Relationships

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Tony Ramos (1991) – One of Brazil’s top actors and my favorite male actor

Source: televisao.uol.com.br

 

I first met Carlos while waiting at the bus stop outside the condominium where we both lived. A handsome young man with the likeness of Tony Ramos, Carlos was a soft-spoken elementary school mathematics teacher who had recently started to sell Amway products.

Carlos invited me to join what he claimed was “an incredible marketing system” where you make money at several levels. At a meeting in his apartment, he explained to me and two other female residents how the Amway multi-level marketing system worked.  With neither money nor time to invest in such a business venture, I only signed up to buy two of Amway’s bath products. Three months later, after discovering that multi-level marketing requires a large client base for making money, Carlos ceased selling Amway’s products.

About a month later, when Carlos began offering private mathematics lessons at a fee I could afford, I asked him to give my ten-year-old son a lesson on equations. My son’s mathematics teacher did not accept my method of solving equations. (Even in mathematics, Brazil has its own way of expressing things.) Carlos agreed to give my son a lesson on the following Saturday morning at our apartment.

Carlos never showed up that Saturday morning. Neither did he drop by on Sunday to apologize or explain his reason(s) for failing to keep his agreement. One morning two weeks later, I finally caught up with Carlos as he boarded the bus.

“I travelled to the Interior,” Carlos said matter-of-factly, when I asked him about the mathematics lesson.

“Why didn’t you tell me? We could have arranged the lesson for another day.”

“I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

I gaped at him. “That doesn’t make any sense. You disappointed me and my son by not showing up.” I struggled to match his calm composure. “I was even worried that something serious had happened to you.”

“I travelled to the Interior,” Carlos repeated, but now visibly uncomfortable…  “You don’t have to be so grosseira (crude, ill-mannered).”

His use of the word grosseira was a slap in my face.  “I’m not being crude. I’m just being honest and sincere with you.”

After that encounter, Carlos disappeared again. Assuming that he was avoiding me, I rationalized that it was better that way. How could I maintain a friendship with someone who was not honest with me?

My girlfriend at the office explained that Carlos would have been impolite to tell me a direct “no.” I had also made matters worse, she added, by criticizing Carlos’ behavior.

If  I wanted to develop and maintain long-term friendships, I had to learn the Brazilian way of saying “no” without saying “no.” I also had to learn to decipher the noncommittal “yes,” thereby avoiding unnecessary disappointment, frustration, or annoyance.

Assimilating the Brazilian way of life was far more challenging than learning Portuguese and participating in cultural events. I had to let go of habitual ways of thinking and behaving; I had to become a new person.