‘OLE ENGLAND’

By EWALT AINSWORTH               11 03 2011

There is an old Guyanese maxim that “family cutlass does only bend but it don’t break,” may be a stress test for my uncle and aunt.  They have both lived their allotted times of three scores and ten and now their  political persuasions, retirement place of abode and determining an encore professions, are being left unanswered..  They have talked with a mental health team, their pastor, family, Lodge group, rolled the dice and have played ‘abna-babna lady sne, ocean portion sugar and tea; roast potato English tea out goes you.’

Just when they made a decision to move from current citadel in East Orange in a few days a time, up came the Guyana elections date to snarl all the plans.  The intuitive selves have informed them to stay put while a spiritual healer/contractor, is telling them to make another move.  They do not know who to believe and who to trust.   

My dear uncle and savvy aunt, do not understand the GT politics…”the us or chaos” refrain and so they will abstain again.  They also feel that none of the slated parties have plans for re-migrants, senior citizens, retired professionals and denizens who can pack a good punch and skip rope.   “Deportees seem to be the rave because they can blend in to the toxic environment,” my uncle on my mother’s opined.   Good governance and government is about looking after the social needs of aged citizens, the indigent, mentally challenged and others with various and varying levels of disabilities.

A punitive government is always short lived, bitter and exacting. Much is desired in a society where the elderly is cast aside, medicine and mental health is expensive/non-existent, abrupt and sporadic.  Your family name, community of origin and ability to make a deposit, makes a vast difference as to whether you live or die in the 592 republic.   More people die after and during medical attention as against going untreated.  My dear uncle: “Just between us two, you are better off sending money; do not come; your life time warranty expired the day you left”.

This column is about blood-family; to hear them plan, disclose their ambitions, volunteer, and draft working schedules – it is profound. My Uncle left home at the age of 25.  Earlier this year my Uncle and “Auntie celebrated 50 years of marriage and 50 years living abroad:  25 years each in England and the USA.  Unfortunately, things are not the way they used to be and it is not global; it hinges on the fact that they simply want to be home.   The union provided four children, all of them born on the same date in December.  Uncle celebrates his 75^th birthday on December 4 and his ambition is to be in the yard, come hell or high water.

Auntie has her mind made up and mimics a violin player, singing the ‘Gilbert &Sullivan’ tune ALONE AGAIN NATURALLY.

In actuality, they are confused.  None of the people that they played hop-scotch, dog-and-the-bone or bathe in the side-line trench with are on Facebook or the paperback phone directory.  Most importantly, they have not remained in their ancestral homes.  Those who are not deceased have migrated or simply dislocated.

Auntie is of mixed heritage (Portuguese, Amerindian etc).  She has a preference for everything and is often loudest.  The problems are perennial and now they are having difficulties calibrating their energies and resources to find a mutual community. .  He has one foot in Seafield, another in Victoria, another in Linden and yet another in Lethem.  Auntie is a city girl with cheeky nieces and nephews in South Ruimveldt, the Continental Divide and Durban Backlands.

Apparently Uncle’s last job in GT took him to the Region Nine, Upper Takatu/Upper Essequibo, in the balata fields.  My uncle had play days and he hopped on a Joe Chin charter flight from Annai to Piarco, bypassing Atkinson/Timehri like exam.  Once in Trinidad with deep water harbors, uncle was well on his way to pick up a sailing ship to London.  During those two to three weeks, you had to bring along your own bible, candle, text book, stuff newspaper in your shoes to keep out the cold, Vicks, Phensic, exercise book to write back home, toilet paper, black sage for tooth brush and Canadian healing oil in case you had a bout of the flu or a leak developed.

In those days, you had to walk with your own ration and supplies.  You liked rice: you walked with a hundred pound bag of rice.  You liked provisions, you brought on board 40 pound sacks of Tania, dasheens, cassava, eddoe and several bunches of plantains, ripe and green.  My uncle liked goat meat and so he brought a live goat on the plane, London bound.

In those days, all planes were cargo planes; passengers were secondary.  Europe had to be fed and so twice a week, Joe Chin would operate charters bringing beef from the Rupununi to Trinidad for the onward flight.  My uncle was not the only one with a goat and somewhere between the two ports of call, the goats started a brawl.  My Uncle’s goat was losing; the other goat baked it up against the main exit door, cutting the rope that held it together, and started a downward spiral into the deep blue sea, six thousand feet below.

Pandemonium set in.  The plane started losing altitude.  The pilot evacuated from the cockpit and told everybody to form a human chain, lying face down along the bench seats and told my uncle, my dear uncle,  to be the one to extend his body out of the plane, grabble the rope, pull in the door, slamming it shut, bolting it and retying the knots.  He did.  For more than 40 years he did not fly again.  It affected him in more ways than one but that is a matter for a different discourse.

My uncle wants to settle in West Berbice; Auntie is a city girl.  November 28 should have been the date they were travelling “but we cannot handle the drama and trauma; the “us or chaos” nonsense.”

Their life lessons and experiences have always been with them and even though a postponement was easy, it seems like  they may very well return to London from New York where health care, respect for the aged, access and leisure activities, are built in to daily living.  My Uncle verbalized “ole England may be our best bet; only thing this time we not taking any goats.”  Grands and great-grands by appointment only.

The Author: Ewalt (Waltie) Ainsworth

This article/story is one of many on this site that has been written by Guyana-born Ewalt (Waltie) Ainsworth.  He left Guyana in the early 1980′sand now lives in New Jersey. He is now almost totally blind but this impediment has not stopped his academic studies or his ability to craft his interesting and sometimes amusing stories about Guyana, the USA, and life.  E-mail: jenewalt@aol.com