‘Boy, is how yuh think, not ‘cause yuh poor’

THERE’S a misconception across Guyana and other Caribbean nations that the private sector has all the answers to diversifying our ‘stiff’ colonial inherited economies. The fact is that business people are fixed in what they know and understand; what has been successful and are not inclined to invest in anything absorbed in the unknown; that will lead them by hand financially into probabilities that represent a maze where they have to depend on a knowledgeable instructor they have no complete control of. Most at the time unorthodox businesses that have emerged as defining successes on the world market today started off as underdogs predicted as fads that would fail. Take the automobile versus the romantic coach, train vs stagecoach. Though in WWII horses were used on both sides as an able means of transportation, yet it was useless and a great sacrifice when deployed as cavalry against machine guns — like the very Gatling guns that were used against African armies in the colonisation of Africa from 1885 onwards.

As young nations, we have got to learn from history and quickly recognise that we need to accelerate because our markets are not necessarily our collective small populations, but the world. Our greatest hindrance is the Creole term ‘Hand to Mouth mentality’ and its nuances. ‘Hand to Mouth mentality’ as interpreted by my father and his workmen buddies, was discussed during a tragic event when a ‘bad man’ who bullied and took money from lesser financially able citizens and subsequently had his hand chopped off. That tragic incident was so classified, because this man by choice had made himself a screw to be used conveniently in another man’s toolkit, and would be casually discarded when no further uses are necessary. After that sad event, none of those he served was by his side, as if saying, step away from the fallen fool. This is applied to governments, in respect to ours in the context of not recognising that each prime resource, rice, bauxite, timber, sugar, gold and diamonds had by-products that were equivalent to a new industry or several of such, and never tapping into the very talents of the people as a significant resource.

In all fairness to President Burnham, he understood this mental state more than any. He didn’t comply with upholding any socialist proletariat caste, of romanticising the poor, but while he was condemned for not fixing enough roads, though he built our major highways, he invested in young Guyana. Institutions such as the Youth Corps, the National Service and Pioneer Corps groups generated a new breakaway mindset of nationalism and the feeling that there was no class sector one could not enter because you didn’t belong to the right school fraternity etc. He wrestled with the beast of ‘Hand to Mouth mentality’ and prevailed in many, but not all the way.

I covered the negative impact of the oil crisis on Sunday, March 17, 2019. A few years ago, a neighbour two houses east from where I used to live on Robb Street was murdered for a property she had through a legal process inherited. The killers were arrested. But the sponsor of that murder walked free, the provider of the weapons was not even arrested, though everyone supposedly knew who he was. The only fools to feel the full force of the law were the ‘Hand to Mouth mentality’ executioners, too broke to think, now with decades of their own lives betrayed by their own stupidity. I only hope for their sake that they are too dumb to feel remorse and save themselves the burden that the torturing angel of guilt brings. The execution of the law in many ways is badly fractured, and in that case, it was.
The worst lure that entices the dismal currents of the ‘Hand to Mouth mentality’ according to my old man, is a false notion of entitlement. The foolish idea that there is a shortcut to the nice life without personal ambitions, a credible or not-so-credible career choice, whether you run a CHIC-CHIC board, sell second-hand books or clothes, these are efforts at independence that will evolve and motivate other options, because people need services, not services of destruction.

The old man thought that Burnham was inspired by his favourite American President John F Kennedy, whose favourite quote was, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” This quote also inspired me, but, I also learnt through the years that bigger countries also have many of the obstacles that smaller countries have with respect to instantly responding to out-of-the-box initiatives. There is the accustomed, and our designation of expertise through certification alone is flawed; this has made it difficult for an innovative leader to convey a vision that his subordinates do not have an inherited template of.

It is natural for people to support and exalt a delegated leader by first understanding the programmes that he/she has put in place for the present and long-term sustainment of their livelihood. It took 34 years after Burnham’s death for his nationalist character creation and ideas to reach home. In Guyana, despite new media and the vision of how this country in 2019 has been transformed, yet the ideal collective development is still shrouded by the miniature mindset of the ‘Hand to Mouth mentality’, exalting the self-serving bribe into legitimacy. This is another manifestation of how it works. I know a fellow by a casual acquaintance who sold various stocks along King Street outside the old Crescent Cycle Store. He had a strange notion of political deeds that he was executing for the PNC. I asked my old pioneer buddy Boyce if he knew about this person’s activism, and he didn’t. Back in those days — the earlier 2000s — we were in and out of Congress Place; however, I let it drop because I have met lots of people who say they were here and there but were nowhere. I met him late last year and he said that he had gone across to the other side, because this side hadn’t done anything for him. “What were they supposed to do?” I enquired, I reminded him that there’s the Small Business Bureau that I used time and time again for small loans. What he was doing was overcrowded. Only he could determine the direction of his business, but the ‘Hand to Mouth mentality’ was adamant that somebody had to be responsible for giving him an illusion to hold onto. He also had some delusional ambitions about prescriptive rights for the seemingly abandoned Crescent Store, which I cautioned him not to encourage himself into, however, the tragic arson at the corner building took all that away.

Our Creole equivalent of the biblical proverbs is indeed a source of enlightening guidance as long as we understand what they mean, now we know ‘Hand to Mouth mentality’ and it is frightening.