Tag Archives: Dr. Cheddi Jagan

“This is the Dark Time My Love” by Guyanese Poet Martin Carter

30 Sunday Jun 2019

Posted by in Guyana, Poetry

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British soldiers arrive in Georgetown – British Guiana – October 9, 1953
Photo Credit: Stabroek News (Photo British Pathé)

 

My Poetry Corner July 2019 features the poem “This is the Dark Time My Love” by Guyanese poet Martin Carter (1927-1997) from his poetry collection, Poems of Resistance from British Guiana (London 1954). Following the suspension of the British Guiana Constitution in 1953, the poet-politician composed the poems in this collection during his three-month detention, together with other political leaders, by the British Army.

For readers unfamiliar with Guyana’s history, a former British colony until May 26, 1966, slavery ended in 1834. Indentured laborers began arriving from India in 1838 and continued until 1917. Other immigrant workers came from Portuguese Madeira (1835-1882) and China (1853-1879). The population of the colony in the mid-1950s was about 450,000 people (UN estimate).

Born in 1927 in Georgetown, the capital of then British Guiana, to middle class parents of African, Indian, and European ancestry, the young Martin grows up with an appreciation for literature, poetry, and philosophy. After attending the colony’s prestigious Queen’s College, for boys only, he gains entry to the civil service, working first at the post office, then later as the secretary of the superintendent of prisons.

Aware of the oppression and despair of the sugarcane workers who toil under harsh conditions on the British-owned sugar plantations, Carter joins the political struggle for self-governance. In “Looking at Your Hands” (1), he affirms his solidarity with the plantation workers in their shared struggle under British rule. 

No!
I will not still my voice!
I have
too much to claim –
[…]
you must know
I do not sleep to dream
but dream to change the world.  Continue reading →

University of Guyana: Fifty Years Serving the Nation

28 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by in Guyana

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University of Guyana - Turkeyen Campus - GuyanaUniversity of Guyana – Turkeyen Campus – Guyana
Source: Google Earth

Fifty years serving Guyana since its inception on 19 April 1963. A remarkable achievement for a young developing nation with a population of less than 800,000.

The University of Guyana is the legacy of a leader whose mother never went to school and father who left school before he was ten. Ignoring the naysayers, Dr. Cheddi Jagan, an American trained dentist, had pursued his vision for Guyana’s future as an independent nation. Together with other founding members, he initiated evening classes in the country’s top secondary school building and rented buildings around Georgetown.

Dr. Jagan knew that realizing a big dream started with small steps.

From a small beginning of 179 undergraduates, the university has grown to over 5,000 students at its Turkeyen Campus opened in October 1969.

Small beginnings did not mean low educational standards. Socialist scholars in the United Kingdom and the United States assisted in staff recruitment. Academics from renowned universities designed and assessed the curriculum.

The founders of the University of Guyana saw the crucial need for preparing Guyanese to take their roles in developing the nation after its independence from Britain. Very few citizens could afford pursuing higher education overseas. A nation needs qualified teachers, nurses, doctors, agricultural and industrial technicians, high-level public service professionals, scientists, and much more.

They also envisaged the university’s role in on-going research and as a means to creating a group of intellectuals capable of defining the goals of a young nation and finding solutions to persistent socioeconomic deficiencies.

Over the past fifty years, the University of Guyana has indeed played a vital role in the nation’s development.

As a member of the alumni, I can say that my years of study at the university have made an invaluable difference in my professional life and, as a geographer, the way in which I perceive the world and my role in contributing towards a better society for all.

Today, we live in different times. We have different needs. We face different challenges. Since 2008, the world struggles to recover from a global economic crisis. According to a news report from the International Labor Organization, global unemployment rose again in 2012. There are not enough jobs available for all the graduates leaving our universities. Private companies continue to cut labor costs to remain competitive. Governments have to tighten their budgets and reduce the number of civil service jobs.

University graduates cannot apply their knowledge in the service of their communities where job opportunities do not exist. Are they prepared to take control of their own careers? When they fail to obtain job placements, are they equipped to work freelance, start their own sole-proprietor or small businesses?

If high unemployment rates persist worldwide, will our young people still see a university education as a means to achieving their goals in life? Will the University of Guyana still remain relevant in its mission in serving the nation? Will it survive for another fifty years?

International Women’s Day 2013: Remembering Kowsilla of Leonora

03 Sunday Mar 2013

Posted by in Guyana, Social Injustice

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Kowsilla - Leonora - British GuianaKowsilla of Leonora (1920-1964) – Guyana

Source: Article by Vanessa Narine (www.angelfire.com)

I learned about Kowsilla, also known as Alice, while researching Guyana’s history (1950 to 1970) for my first novel, Under the Tamarind Tree. Her involvement in the sugar workers’ struggle for better working and living conditions and her final act of courage on 6 March 1964 at Plantation Leonora made an enduring impression on me.

Leonora, located on the West Coast Demerara, got its name from two Dutch children, Leo and Nora, during the days of Dutch occupation before the British took control of the colony in 1786.

On 6 March 1964 during a general sugar workers strike, Kowsilla was among the men and women who formed a human barricade by squatting on the bridge leading to Leonora’s factory gate. In so doing, they prevented African scabs, hired by the factory manager, from entering the factory to work.

Following instructions from the factory manager, an African scab set out in a tractor to disperse the squatters. The details of what happened next are lost in time. Several squatters jumped off the bridge into the punt trench. Fourteen of them were severely injured.

Based on the severity of their injuries, Kowsilla and two other women – Jagdai and Daisy Sookram – defied the onslaught. Kowsilla’s body was severed in two. Jagdai and Daisy suffered broken spines. Kowsilla died on the way to the Georgetown Public Hospital. Jagdai and Daisy survived but remained crippled for life.

We know little about Kowsilla. Born in 1920 in Seafield, Leonora, of poor, hard working parents, she bore four children and worked as a huckster to provide for them. An activist for improving the lives of women within her community, she became Leonora’s leader of the Women’s Progressive Organization (WPO), formed in 1953 by the wife of Dr. Cheddi Jagan – Premier of British Guiana (1961-1964) and President of Guyana (1992-1997).

Forty-four-year-old Kowsilla must have known the danger of defying the sugar plantation owners when she left home that Friday morning in March 1964. As leader of the WPO in Leonora, she must have stood up in the center forefront on hearing and seeing the tractor approach. What went through her mind as she faced the African scab worker at the wheel of the tractor?

I hear the tractor driver shouting at them: “You-all ain’t hear what the Boss-man say? Get off the blasted bridge before somebody get hurt.”

East Indian and African workers were both pawns in the hands of the sugar barons.

“Don’t budge,” I hear Kowsilla tell Jagdai and Daisy, standing on either side. “We can’t let the rich man thief we children-them future.”

In defying the corporate powers of her time, Kowsilla made the ultimate sacrifice in giving her life. In choosing not to yield, she taught us not to let fear trap us in a life of corporate servitude. Freedom from greed and tyranny requires sacrifice.

Alice Street - Seafield - LeonoraAlice Street in Seafield – Leonora – West Coast Demerara – Guyana

Named in honor of Kowsilla a.k.a. Alice

Source: www.guyana.org