AVID readers of my column would be aware that my one-year remigration anniversary is only mere days away. In the midst of a global pandemic and our own local political circumstance, I will be celebrating a full year of living in Guyana. And what a year it has been.

When most people choose to migrate, they often move to countries they perceive to be better than the country they planned to leave, however, I tend to do things differently. Having lived in London for 20 years and having experienced everything the UK has to offer, I decided it was time to move on. Come ‘home’, settle and make a difference. Being fully cognisant that Guyana is ‘not a real place’ I embarked on my mission to re-migrate, settle and find something meaningful to do.

Guyana is a beautiful country, truly, and Georgetown is a wonderful place to live for many reasons. I still maintain that despite the current political crisis and global health pandemic, Georgetown and Guyana has the potential to rapidly accelerate as an economical powerhouse in the Western hemisphere and world. Like most Guyanese, I believe the oil wealth is closely connected to the actualization of this advancement. So now we have a situation where 27+ days past the March 2 elections, we still have not sworn in a government or declared the results of the elections.

Its unprecedented. Nonetheless, this year has also shown me that Guyana is a fun, almost too laid-back, vibrant place to live with a unique and beautiful culture which is expressed in our people. We usually all get along well enough to live cohesively together but recent events might have you believe otherwise. I have personally experienced extraordinary acts of kindness from people who I would deem strangers in this wonderful place we call home. The natural beauty is only outshined by the warmth of the people.

But what we are seeing play out now and the narrative being told in the media concerning our recent elections is not representative of the Guyana that I have come to know. I still maintain that we have come very far in terms of race relations and social cohesion, but I also agree that there is still much more work to be done before we achieve the utopian society we all dream of. And that is also why it is important that we as Guyanese control our narrative. He who controls the narrative wins the game. With increasing frustration, I have paid close attention to those who would seek to promulgate a false narrative that our society is deeply divided along ethnic lines.

The local “bad boys” and cowboy politicians are more concerned with power grabbing than they are with the needs and concerns of Guyanese citizens. With a global pandemic that could easily wipe out the miniscule population of Guyana, the power grabbers nonetheless have continued their schemes without so much as a nod to the encroaching COVID19 health pandemic. So much so, that even though the government has been advising citizens to practice social distancing and to stay home where possible in order to curtail the spread of the virus, the “protectors of democracy” remain camped outside of GECOM offices in large groups.

The would-be arbiters of democracy have gone so far as lobbying western governments to impose sanctions on government officials and Guyana in general. What is even more disappointing is that there are Guyanese who have also joined calls for sanctions to be imposed on Guyana. Whilst many Guyanese have made themselves comfortable in the diaspora, let us not forget that those privileges have been extended by the very same governments that have engaged in illegal wars of aggression and often trample on the same democratic principles that they would impose upon developing nations such as ours.

Quite frankly, with the same zeal that they would impose sanctions on Guyana, they could return you all to these very shores in one fail swoop, much like they have been doing in the UK if we consider what the Windrush scandal really achieved and the institutionally racist home office which has been arbitrarily deporting Caribbean natives for quite some time, largely undetected by most.

The complexities of politics in Guyana is much more nuanced than I previously understood. At the same time, it is not dressed up in finely tailored suits and under pretenses of legitimacy. It is raw, its calculated and aggressive. The litigious meanderings of the March 2020 elections will be spoken of and studied years from now. For that is the importance of these elections.

Elections and politics aside, we are living in unprecedented times as a species. The current corona- virus COVID19 health pandemic and the resultant global shutdown of cities and nations worldwide is being felt by everyone, everywhere. The societal, economical and political impacts are also being felt by everyone, everywhere.

The rapid implementation of legislation worldwide curtailing COVID19 has been staggering. The world is at a standstill as we all grapple with curtailing this virus. We are now living with the reality of many countries across the world having curfews and lockdowns of non-essential businesses. Children have been sent home and parents are either working from home or staying home to take care of their children. Everyone has been truly impacted by the coronavirus.
Like most of the world, Guyanese are fearful, frustrated and are wishing for things to go

back to ‘normal’. In my opinion, normal was not working and if we look at what COVID19 is really doing to our society, I don’t think anyone should want things to go back to normal.

Normal is a reality in which most people, the world over, are living on the breadline, mere steps away from abject poverty and this is not only in Guyana but in many western and developed countries. The real impact of COVID19 will be felt months and possibly years from now but it has done us a favour in exposing the vast inequalities we continue to condone within our societies.

In one year, I have accomplished a great deal living in Guyana and it is my sincere hope that once we have weathered this storm, we will all seek to address the issues that are being exposed within our society in order to create a new normal; a truly utopian society. Guyana has the potential to achieve this and more, but progress must be allowed to continue.