The Unknown Caribbeans

The Unknown Caribbeans
By John Muir

London, September 2001: They are the unknown people, hidden by the larger diaspora. They have brown skin and eat curry. But they also eat pepper pot and chow mein. Their immediate WEST Indian heritage often goes unrecognized. They are the Indo-Guyanese living in the United Kingdom where the all too popular image of the Caribbean is an Afro one.
But that should change this autumn with the first ever Guyana High Commission (UK) awards to be presented at Croydon Town Hall on October 9th by Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo if his schedule permits. These awards are designed to honor the achievements of Guyanese of all races in the United Kingdom. It would be a surprise if among the dozen of so awardees, there were not some prominent Indo-Guyanese.
The depth of talent within the community is typified by one family; the Persauds of Mill Hill, London, formerly of Canje in British Guiana. Father Bishnodat-Vishnu- is a retired economics professor. He came to Britain in the 1950's to work and study but stayed, serving his two countries and the Commonwealth as Head of the Economics division of the Commonwealth Secretariat until 1996. Some saw him as Secretary General Sir 'Sonny 'Ramphal's right hand man.
Specialized in developing economies like Guyana and St Lucia Vishnu went on to become Professor of Sustainable Development and head of the Centre for Environment and Development at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. His own record is one of distinction. But so too are his children's.
Doctor Raj Persaud, 'The Freud for the Nineties' (The Guardian of

London) has turned psychiatry into pop, made schizophrenia soluble, depression debatable and put agrophobia on the agenda.
Possessed of seven degrees, Raj has brought psychiatry to the people through the mass media, including his plain speaking appearances on ITV's "This Morning with Richard and Judy", the most popular mid morning magazine show on British television. He is also a popular columnist for a variety of publications including 'Cosmopolitan', 'The Consultant', 'The Lancet' and 'The Daily Mail'.
He writes best sellers on the subject like the recent 'Staying sane...how to make your mind work for you' and is currently writing a new block buster for an advance with several zeros at the end of the cheque.
He combines this 'pop psychiatry' with a well grounded and serious academic career at the Maudsley Hospital (which houses the Bethlem Hospital from where the term Bedlam originates) in South East London. He was appointed a consultant there at the young age of 29, having won the Royal College of Psychiatrists research prize and medal. Among his medical specialism is the healing of physicians who themselves are mentally unwell. His academic track and publications records belie those who might accuse him of media triteness and tartness. Yet, this true Renaissance man has not yet passed his fortieth birthday.
Raj Persaud's name has not to date been associated with the Indo-Guyanese or Guyana at all.'. But the Guyanese family links never die. 'It dominates the conversation at home."
Dr Raj is intrigued by the high suicide rate in Guyana and thinks collective instability may have its' part to play in that. Yet, still, there seems to be a 'fundamental disbelief in democracy by one side or the otherthey're fighting but fighting over scraps' Despite these strong caveats, he is willing to put his many talents to the national need if the call ever comes.
Professor Persaud's other son Avinash is equally distinguished. His God is not Freud but Mammon. He is the 'two million dollars plus a year man'. At 35 the younger son of Bishnodat Persaud is Managing Director of the State Street Bank's Global Market Analysis and Research department in the City of London, a job held since 1999. He is today one of world's recognised experts on currency fluctuations. As one commentator puts it 'If you want to know what's going to happen in the currency markets it pays to watch what Avinash Persaud is up to'.
In the world of international finance.Avinash has developed his own econometric models to understand these free and fast markets. It is called 'The New School' and it seems to work better than traditional methods of analysis. The 'New School' uses 'event risk indicators' and 'risk appetite indices' to try to predict small or even seismic changes in investor behaviour before they make their way through to the market place. This has

helped his company and clients to surf currency market turbulence successfully. It has done Avinash no harm either. He is much lauded and decorated in the global financial world. Yet Guyana has never tapped into his expertise. He says he is 'saddened' by this and would gladly offer his services pro bono. He says a tough period lies ahead in the next two years for the whole Caribbean. But salvation lies in their hands plugging into the worldwide knowledge economy and avoiding their road to development being 'iced over'
Before joining State Street he was Global Head of Currency and Vice President at JP Morgan. In 1997 he won the Amex Bank Review Award for Finance and just last year won the Jacques Delarosiere prize and was also a visiting scholar/consultant to the International Monetary Fund (continuing a family tradition in that). His father was a consultant to the IMF team which went to Guyana over twenty years ago to assess then President Hoyte's ERP) Avinash is today invited worldwide to share his expertise.
Currently he is the Distinguished International Visitor to the Government of Singapore.
This international economics graduate of the London School of Economics is about to endow to endow a scholarship at his alma mater-just fourteen years after leaving- in honor of his father. It will be open to students from the Caribbean. But, he is remembered as much at the LSE for his anti-apartheid stance as much as his grasp of economics.
His Guyanese heritage has so far been a well kept secret: 'Our family regard ourselves as West Indian. Maybe the reason the Indo-Guyanese have been successful in Britain is that they are stateless'.
Sister Sharda works in the City of London too. She's UK Economist for Schroeders. Her team there has managed to create a computer model of the British economy designed to predict inflation and interest rates. That has proved good enough to match anything which the government's own Monetary Policy Committee-

which sets interest rates-can come up with.
The iconic figures of the UK Indo-Guyanese community has a high profile. Sir 'Sonny' Ramphal was Secretary General of the Commonwealth, the public face of the organisation, based in London for fifteen years. He was lauded in Britain, a knighthood from the Queen, an honorary degree from the LSE, membership of 'great and good' bodies like the Brandt Commission, the Chancellorship of Warwick University (and the universities of Guyana and the West Indies). Ramphal has dedicated his life to West Indian unity. He eventually returned to the Caribbean and has only this year given up his last post with Caricom- after forty eight years of unstinting public service.
Shakira Caine (the wife of 'Cockney' actor Michael Caine) has for the past three decades been Guyana's most elegant export to the First World. She was a former Miss Guyana and is still often mistaken for as an east rather than West Indian.
Literature is in the Guyanese blood. The Guyanese Titan is David Dabydeen. He bestrides West Indian writing and the study of Caribbean culture in the UK like a colossus.
David Dabydeen is well aware of his ancestry..'(in Guyana) Indians could remain Indians for a longer period, Hinduism and Islam could continue to flourish, or people could control the pace of change as they become more and more creolized. I am an Indian in many ways; I can be obsessed by notions of purityMy sense of family, I am sure, is a very Indian attribute. '
From Guyana to England and Tooting in South London where he ended up in care in a children's home through family circumstances, David's first impressions of the motherland were very mixed. 'The England we grew up imagining was a place that had to do with snow, apples, and of course daffodils... And they would have tea at about five, and they would have scones... Those images, when they became real, were very disappointing, even the magical snow'
He confided that one of his teachers at his very ordinary school in London told him he would never make university. He did - Cambridge, Oxford, London and then Yale. And he was always writing.
'I always wrote since I remember. I remember Naipaul saying that if he couldn't write, he would die, and when I heard that - I was young then - I agreed with him'.
Today, Dabydeen is a distinguished author, novelist and academic. He is two-times winner of the prestigious Guyana Prize for fiction in his native land-the latest last year for his 1999 novel 'The Harlot's Progress'. He's also much lauded in his adopted land for his writings including the splendid evocation of the Afro-Caribbean condition in 'Slave Song' which won the Commonwealth Literature Prize in 1984.
This man of many facets says, "England is now the third largest West Indian island... about a million of us, so England is very West Indian... The West Indians have rejuvenated the English tongue by using it differently. But also the West Indians describe England through West Indian eyes, therefore they have added startlingly new perspectives on English life and society.''
Dabydeen heads the Centre for Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick and serves as Guyana's (unpaid) ambassador to UNESCO in Paris. He WILL present a BBC Radio Four mini series on Guyana this autumn.
Indo Guyanese have also excelled in sports in England. On the cricket field there is Mark Ramprakash of Surrey, the son of a Guyanese father and an English mother. While his true potential has not been realized he has been his country's test performance. And in a field that Caribbeans have not excelled in Narendra Bhairo has been an outstanding exception. A powerlifter of world class, Bhairo has been retired for well over fifteen years. But his record lives on - 75 trophies including 12 British championships and five European ones in a career that spanned nearly thirty years. He has made the Guinness Book of Records for lifting eight times his tiny body weight; a world record held from 1982 to 1990.
Born in Cornelia IDA, West Coast Demerara, fifty five years ago, Narendra was frail as a boy. he was an asthmatic and his father the pharmacist in Leonara recommend bodybuilding but the body to be built was small. "I was only small not a giant -just ninety eight pounds -seven stone". Bhairo came to England in 1964 with his six brothers and sisters and almost immediately converted from body building to power lifting. Interestingly, this sport was in his genes. His uncle had done the same and competed for the British Guiana power lifting team from 1910 to 1915.
Just a year after taking up lifting in London, Narendra entered and won the British flyweight championship. Then, after some success all over Europe, injury hit and he had to return to Guyana to recuperate and recharge his batteries. That month long Caribbean sabbatical helped. He returned to the UK and resumed training four years later, a new man.
In 1975, he won the British Championship again. Two years later, the British Team went to Australia where he was placed second in the World Championship. In 1979 he was third in the world championship games in Ohio, USA. In 1980, he again came third in Arlington, Texas, and then in 1981, the pretender became king. He won the World Championship in, symbolically for an Indo-Guyanese, Calcutta. When he pointed out this irony to one of his British team-mates he was told 'You're here representing Britain'.

Those were the Corinthian days of sport. Narendra was able to achieve all the above records, working full-time, training and paying his way on his own. No lottery money, no winners purses and definitely no drugs. 'Just grit and dhall and rice, man!' . Today, ruefully, he says of the sport he served and loved "they say they don't do drugs..but they all take drugs"
In the mid'80 Narendra went into business and stopped competing professionally. There was then a short lived comeback. Today he works in the garment trade, where he is a professional marker and cutter. The London East End sweatshops are somewhat removed from the world of snatch and jerk. But his Turkish employers and work mates still acknowledge his world beating skills
He was back 'home' three years ago, but disappointed because 'my schoolmates not there any more' and 'it was raining every day'. There was a Guyanese power lifting championship on at the time. Nobody called on his expertise. But he still hopes to return 'home' to give others the benefits of his powerful lifting skills.' If the country gets better I might think of going back to help youngsters there,' he says.
What's the connection between cancer and cassava? None you would think. Yet a British bio-chemist of Guyanese origin has made the link from the root vegetable of one his countries and the scourge of many others. It is called cyanide and it kills cancer cells..
Mahendra Persaud Deonarine is a second generation UK Guyanese. His late father, Dalgeet hailed from Port Mourant in the Corentyne and his mother, Nirmala from Number 60 Village in Berbice."
" My mum has told me stories of how she met my father. He was her teacher at Corentyne High school. In fact my father's nickname was 'teacher' as everyone knew him as the teacher"
They came to England in the big rush of the sixties after marriage in 1965. Mahendra was born the next year in that 'Little Guyana'-Tooting- and educated at the local comprehensive Norbury Manor before heading off for the dizzy heights of the Imperial College of Science and Technology in South Kensington and then Cambridge University to study bio-chemistry because
"I am fascinated by life and how it works. I have always been interested in biology and how to use this knowledge to find cures for diseases". Today he is back lecturing at Imperial College where he heads up a laboratory which has come up with some truly revolutionary research such as that cassava and cancer link. Cassava generates cyanide and cyanide kills cancer cells. The trick is to find a way to safely give cancer victims cyanide. His team has.
The team generated cyanide artificially then injected it into cancer cells and killed them in the lab. That achievement was rightly hailed as revolutionary by the British press. Now it's due to go into pre clinical and clinical trials.That is the test and an expensive one at that.
"The 'killing cancer with cyanide' research needs to be tested extensively in the laboratory and many pre-clinical trials are needed before it can be tested in humans. The human testing is highly regulated and many criteria have to be satisfied before I am allowed to do this. It will also cost between one to five million pounds, so my industrial sponsors will have to decide if they want to put that sort of money in it. We should have some clinical data in two to three years and if successful, could be treating people in five to ten years" he says.
For this breakthrough, Mahendra got an award - The London First Technology Award. Soon he is due to be promoted from lecturer to senior lecturer at Imperial College.
He still remembers his last trip to Guyana nearly thirty years ago when he was six: " I found it very hot and full of insects, especially red ants...I got bitten a lot and big bees, which scared me. I spent time visiting my cousins and grandparents, who owned a grocery store and rum shop"
Now he is looking forward to taking his own children Nirmala and Rhianna 'home' there when they are old enough to appreciate it. He would like to put his specialist scientific knowledge to the aid of the land of his forefathers but can they could find an outlet for his talents.