WE were a social class, caste and regulated society when we became colonials early post-emancipation. Georgetown, New Amsterdam and much later (in the mid-90s the rising Linden town) were the principal towns that shared the same woes of unemployment and other social problems of regimentation. Our economies remained fixed before and after independence; the Forbes Burnham government was well aware of the dangers of these impediments, thus initiatives were enacted to create a new economic sector; but despite the liberating ideology of socialism, we embraced to justify systems that would cultivate a new national consciousness.We were subject to be dragged into the economic world arena and mauled by the tides and currents over which we had no jurisdiction. With the 1973-79 oil crisis, GRL, Sunbelle products, Textile Mill, BATA, our clothing industry etc., new agricultural ideas and the practical ambitions of our manufacturing sector were gone. Our flirtations with socialism which were necessary to lift the lid that was screwed ideologically over the social evolution of sections of society had passed, the socialist management of the working class mirrored the colonial past; plus, there were the haunting memories of days before, of the macabre 60s still politically hovering.

But party politics eclipsed the glaring fact that we had emerged out of slavery in the established reality as a people rooted in small vending businesses, independent thinking and cottage industries, that contradicted socialist idealism; this was an inner reality that had returned as a friendly haunting whispering spectre alive in the ‘being’ of the people. It took eventual redeployment to realise and unleash that inner spectre, that longed expression. But, we must be reminded, that as an independent nation Guyana had entered the global ideological Cold War politics, on the natural moral side of the fraternity of third world nations, boasting of their natural resources as an asset for survival and progress, nationalising here and there, forgetting that despite these assets, we neither had the transfer of manufacturing technology, the energy resources nor had access to the market forces necessary to ensure sales and joint business development. The latter was problematic with respect to the new tenets of third world trade with the former colonial first world.

With redeployment came the foreign currency shortages, the hold-out against the IMF, which if adhered to, would not have assisted Guyana in its socialist format. These developments brought into relevance and now forgotten an army of citizens– male and female– mainly urban, mostly young, teachers, public servants, technicians– all. They became the ‘suitcase traders’ travelling to every port, with our rum, rice, sugar, jewellery for sale, clothing made in Guyana. Can you remember ‘Aladdin’s Cave’ a shirt design and production company? Vanceram’s Tie-dye and batik clothes, fish products etc. The suitcase traders were an integral link to all trade that followed and should not vanish from our consciousness. It was through those links that marijuana was imported into Guyana, not necessarily by those traders, soon after, cocaine that constituted at one time, a minority ‘spoil chile, rich chile’ market would enter Guyana in diluted forms, in the more severe and dangerous crack form, the promise of economic expansion drowned all and any reflections of the consequences on a national level, thousands have died directly from the invitation of cocaine into Guyana.

The world of the suitcase trader had expanded into a mindset that private initiatives were the way to go, a collapse of the dependency of job security and the option of ‘RUNNINGS’ overpowered any inclination to direct energies towards any new area that included study and practice. I was in 1981 exploring art and writing which were talents haunting and taunting me for years, family and friends predicted that I would go mad. Where I lived marijuana was pressed and eager mules departed for other places and trading was the active ‘Ting.’ I did some trading to the North West but had eased it. I can remember a young lady, my cousin’s partner, her child father was a dread from Tiger Bay who was what the females termed a ‘Lazy Lion.’ She was the wage earner, the sister was busted, my cousin broke into tears. ‘The lazy Lion’ smoked a spliff and departed with lamentations to Jah. We didn’t see him for a while. I came home one afternoon and there was a sombre mood. They had found him dead in the room where they lived in the ‘Bay,’ possibly from abuse and depression.

A knowledgeable sister in ACDA years later told me, “Barry ganja does put yuh to sleep, all off yuh to sleep.” This was frightening and it made me reflect on a posse from old 110th Street, as Robb and Wellington Streets were called after the famous movie. Whitney, Brave, Sailor, One-eye Bomus, and many others are gone in a puff ah smoke. I recall encounters with them in the periods I refer to as decline, and they seemed distant and trapped by choice in an alternative reality; you stopped engaging them after a while. In the literature I have read over the years on mind-altering drugs, marijuana plays an integral part in maintaining the caste system of India, of course, it is prohibited to the Brahmins and allowed to the low castes, callous but neat system. One of the last conversations I had with the late Clarence Young of the PHOENIX Recovery Project was about the incident of a youth who had tried synthetic marijuana, something called ‘Spice’ he was hospitalised, but died four days later. The products of narcotics have sadly expanded, and since whistleblowers are punished in crucial areas, matters remain the same.

Mind-altering drugs that include alcohol are also linked to insanity; why people use these things are for a diverse chronicle of reasons, traumatic events such as rape, sexual abuse, crash of an entitled ego, low self esteem, most of the inducements revolve around the promotion of drugs by pushers and addicts who come as girlfriends, problem-solving-Mystics, party buddies, offering alternative reality comfort zones to whiners, and not identifying one’s own unique responses to these intrusive instant ‘Make you happy Alternatives’  while no public information exists to be debated as alternative rebuttals to pusher propaganda about the badness of mind-altering drugs. From my end what I know, comes from what I saw, lived and experienced and the literature I searched for to find clarifications. Next, we visit what is known beyond these shores and beyond our times.