‘SILENCE’ IS defined as the absence of sound. Another emotional plea in the form of a letter in Sunday Stabroek (18-07-2010) ‘Why can’t boom boxes be outlawed except at certain events?’ was published. Lord knows, sometimes the only place people who are being affected by persons who are so inconsiderate can turn to is the newspaper.  The writer in the letter, like many writers who have written to the press about noise nuisances over the past years, have detailed the horror and utter disgust they experience, even as it was 6:30pm—nightfall in Guyana. People work hard these days, and no one deserves to be tormented at those times of the day by loud annoying music.
I know far too well what the writer is going through, and what so many other Guyanese live through—days of suffering, as if their eardrums would burst; days when they’re edgy and when they face the harsh sound of that thing that I detest so much: noise.
It is 8:30 p.m. at the moment I am penning this essay, and my neighbors are still blasting their music. They have a business. They fetched their boom- box and placed it in their backyard. My room is just opposite their backyard. They believe they have done a good thing by moving their boom box to the backyard, so it wouldn’t affect happenings in front, but they are giving me hell here. All through my UG exams, I had to put up with it. I say nothing because I am a person who builds anger silently from within. One of these days, I say….one of these days I will blow. I am writing with anger and frustration here.
Well, as if it couldn’t get worse. I couldn’t shut my eye earlier today (Sunday). The other neighbour has a guttering business. The banging and lashing and clanging hurt my ears and my head. Sometimes, as early as 5am the banging and knocking begins, I wake up a very angry person. It is my daily suffering, and there’s no one you can tell. There is a village office nearby and no one there is telling these people anything. No police, —no one. It’s all a waste of time. And so, I am sandwiched between two very noisy neighbors. How I wish sometimes to just run away and live away from the general population. But sadly, everywhere in Guyana is becoming noisy and downright loud. The laws in parliament are there just sitting, too, a waste of time. There are no noise nuisance laws in Guyana. If there were, citizens of Guyana would have peaceful days and nights in their homes. Do you know the agony when you’re affected by noise, when you can’t even hear your voice or hear the telephone ring? And if these neighbors were playing anything worth listening to, I might—just might, have recanted my position on the whole noise situation. Just a few weeks ago, myself and others were in a lecture at the University of Guyana, around 4:00pm in the afternoon, and out of the blue, there began playing this loud annoying music from a residence at Tain on the Corentyne. We had to deliver our presentations amidst the noise when we could’ve barely heard ourselves. There we were, in a university, presenting a paper, and our lecturer too seemed confused and angry. This is a regular practice around the University of Guyana Berbice campus, which should not be happening.