Now that the dust has settled somewhat after it’s been pronounced that Adrianna died by drowning – although the air is still ain’t CLEAR – your Eyewitness has been ruminating on the phenomenal reach of her story. Like most Guyanese, he’s got friends and family dispersed to the four(?) corners of the world, and he’s been not only getting emails and texts on the subject, but actual VOICE calls! And not just on free WhatsApp!! How exactly did this happen??
Well, first of all, there’s the story itself!! Innocent, carefree kid, fresh from the rigours of the NGSA, is taken for an outing, and disappears just like that – POOF!! According to her grandma, who had taken her to the hotel pool, NOW she was in it with other kids, and THEN she wasn’t!! Refusal of the hotel owners and police to search the entire hotel – even after getting an order from a government official who’d joined the crowd in front of the facility – only deepened suspicions that something was fishy. That a man had been killed in the same pool a decade ago only increased the frenzied speculations.
Sacrifice in demon worship was one trope latched on to; another was rape-murder.
Remember your Eyewitness hysterically talking about our local “Bates Motel” – alluding to Psycho’s notorious “stabbing in the shower” scene??! And all of this to an innocent child?? That was the angle that snagged attention.
But then there’s the SPREAD of the story. They ask: if a tree falls in the middle of the jungle, with no one to hear it; did it fall!?! Well, this young sapling fell in Tuschen – in the middle of the sticks – far from the maddening crowds of Georgetown, but it was heard across the world. How come?? And the answer is “smartphones and social media”!!
And that’s a story in itself that your Eyewitness wants to tell: the medium has become the message!! Everyone in the family, who turned up on the grandma’s call from her smartphone about the missing Adrianna, also had their smartphones; and they started filming the stonewalling of the owners and police, which they uploaded to their social media platforms. And since on these platforms someone in Tuschen is as close to someone in Timbuktu via cyberspace social media connections, it didn’t take long for a story that used to be defined as “having legs” to now take wings!!
And that’s now the new reality that will have ripple effects to wash away not only the walls of official stonewalling, but hopefully build and strengthen the bonds of commonality that rose to the surface over Adrianna’s demise.
Sadly, there are some who sought – and will seek – to exploit the story’s wings for their own nefarious purposes. Those we must condemn and guard against!!
…trust
Guyanese are very upset that so many Caricom members – among them Trinidad and Jamaica – still retain Britain’s Privy Council as their apex Appellate Court. “Colonial mentality!”, we sneer for them rebuffing our own CCJ. So, what do we say to the recent Opposition parties and partiettes’ recent demand in regard to Adrianna’s death: “An impartial investigation led by an internationally credible law enforcement body such as Scotland Yard, the RCMP, or the FBI, with constitutional collaboration from the GPF”?
So, our Regional Security System investigators aren’t to be trusted?? THEY can be corrupted, and not those from Scotland Yard, the RCMP, or the FBI?? Do we have to regale the Opposition with the latter’s own various and sundry official enquiries into the operations that identified their corruptibility?? Not the least that they are all uniformly racist??
But your Eyewitness knows, from our experience with the Henry Boys’ investigation done by the RSS, that the Opposition feels “the white man is fairer”!! The Govt should humour them!! They’re also looking for a white consensus candidate!!
