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By Sean Brijbasi |
Maryland, May 18: I was born in Skeldon, Berbice Guyana. My parents moved me to the good ol' US of A back in 1973 when I was a mere 5 1/2 years old. What little I remember of Guyana, I remember vividly. I remember, for instance, living by the ocean. I remember horses running scared by the water as they were being chased by vagrant dogs. I remember the head of a chicken being lopped off by my grandmother. I remember sitting on my grandfather's hat.
These memories are mine and will, no doubt, mean very little to most other Guyanese, and absolutely nothing to non-Guyanese, because you can't really get the flavor of a country by a few memories, no matter how vivid, of a five year old child. So when someone who is not West Indian asks me where I'm from. I say, 'you mean where I was born?'. And then they say 'yeah'. And then the game starts.
You see, if I just say "Guyana", they give me that dumb look, like they're expecting me to continue. If I say "Guyana, South America" to further clarify, the first question from out of their mouths invariably is 'Do you speak Spanish?'. What a jolt to the psyche it would be if I told them that Dutch, French, Portuguese, and English are spoken in South America, not to mention the indigenous languages. So, 'no', I say, 'Guyana was a British colony. It's the only English speaking country in South America. It's north of Brazil and east of Venezuela.'
'Oh, okay. Venezuela is in Columbia right?'
And then I play my trump card.
'You know Jonestown. Jim Jones. Where those crazy people from California drank that kool-aid and killed themselves.'
Now they get it. They still don't know where or what I'm talking about, but this dumb stranger and I finally have a reference point from which any further discussion about my distant homeland may continue. Unlike other countries that really are "on the map", Guyana is a mere footnote to a self-proclaimed messiah who led his flock to a stream of poisoned kool-aid. So for me to say, "you know Guyana, where Walter Rodney was born", would basically be the same thing as me saying "you know Guyana, where I sat on my grandfather's hat".
You see, Guyana isn't a country that's on the world stage. Anybody who's been anybody in Guyana is fairly unknown outside of certain Caribbean/cricket/academic/secret (the CIA did know who Walter Rodney was) circles. Whether people like to admit it or not, if a fringe country wants to put itself "on the map", it either has to be involved in a war, suffer some great tragedy, or produce a famous pop star. Most people know where Afghanistan is. Most people know where Ethiopia is. Most people even know where ABBA came from. But Guyana has none of these. Even Guyana's famous tragedy (the aforementioned kool-aid incident) was a tragedy not of it's own making.
So I say that it's time to put Guyana on the map. But where to start? Well, I happen to have a suggestion. The next time somebody asks you where you're from, offer them a kool-aid and say, "Guyana, you know, Guyana, where that writer Sean Brijbasi was born". They'll still give you that dumb look, but it's better than disrespecting Walter Rodney.