Guyanese Christmas hope

Charles Dickens’ great accomplishment was to chronicle the turmoil in the lives of ordinary people in London during England’s wrenching transformation wrought by its Industrial Revolution. It is a salutary corrective to recollect the misery he described in the newly launched “poorhouses” in 19th Century England, even as we reflect on the hardships faced by present day Guyanese.
In his novel “Bleak House”, Dickens writes against the background of political reforms that would also abolish slavery here in 1834. According to one biographer: “Dickens… rolls out the dark, dirty English earth and sky to set the theme of the book. It will take on the worse aspects of the legal system – its inhumanity, sloth, corruption and obstruction – as a basis for a larger matter, the bad governance of society as a whole; and it will show the physical sickness of London – its toxic water, rotten housing, bursting graveyards and festering sewerage – as part of the effects of that bad governance.”
We celebrate Christmas today against the backdrop of the 2017 Budget that was just passed by the Government using its one-seat majority in Parliament and the rains than inundated Georgetown immediately afterwards, raising the filth of the drains and canals into the streets and stores. And it is clear we need a local “Dickens” to describe the Guyanese reality today.
Once again, the houses of Albouystown had water reaching the mattresses of their beds in their bottom flats. Can we expect the “Joy of Christmas” to suffuse their lives as sewerage from the canals suffuses their furniture? How different are their lives from the inhabitants of the slums of London Dickens described so well? Many of their womenfolk are among the vendors removed from the Stabroek Market “clean up” to facilitate the launching of the Independence Jubilee floats at D’Urban Park. They are still wallowing in filth and anonymity behind the Parliament that promised them and the rest of Guyana, the “Good Life”.
Across the river from Georgetown, the people of West Bank Demerara face more than a “bleak” future as they contemplate their lives after the closure of Wales Estate and sugar manufacturing, which had undergirded their livelihood since the 18th Century – even before Dickens. Will the Government be opening up poorhouses – a la 19th Century England – to deal with the increase in malnutrition – if not starvation – that will certainly ensue?
Wales would be the perfect setting for a Guyanese version of another Dickens’ novel, “Hard Times”
Dickens also wrote what is arguably his most famous work, “A Christmas Carol”, in which he expresses hope that those with the power and wherewithal to improve the lot of the poor, may still do so, if they are exposed to the harsh realities in the lives of the masses.
The “establishment” is represented by Ebenezer Scrooge, a wealthy miser who refuses to relent even at Christmas. In Guyana, “Scrooge” would be the Government that imposed VAT on water and electricity but refused to give even a dollar bonus to sugar workers. Or the “substantial raise” they promised Government workers, even as they awarded themselves 50 per cent salary hikes, million SUVs and .5 million scholarships.
Dickens uses the device of having Scrooge being transported by the Ghosts of “Christmas Past”, “Christmas Present” and “Christmas to be”. The first Ghost takes Scrooge back to his past, which in our case would be the first PNC regime, during which our nation was destroyed and we all sunk to the level of Haiti. The second would take our establishment to our present, in which, notwithstanding their poverty and hardships, Guyanese will still go “all out” to have a merry Christmas.
Finally, Scrooge is taken to his future, where in Guyana the establishment would see its rejection by the people of Guyana and its own sordid fate. Shocked, Scrooge decides to reform himself and help those around him.
May the establishment follow suit and ensure the Guyanese people have Merry Christmases henceforth.