WITHIN days, during the first week of December 2012, Guyana lost two writers: Jan Carew and Randall Butisingh. One of the two writers was born on the East Bank of Demerara in a village called Agricola, which one commentator labelled ‘a post-emancipation’ village, while the other was born on the East Coast of Demerara, in a village called Buxton, named in honour of abolitionist, Thomas Fowell Buxton.

Randall Butisingh (1912 – 2012)
He’d just passed another milestone. On December 1, 2012, Randall Butisingh turned 100 years of age. A few days later, he crossed into another sphere: From life to death.
In life, Butisingh was various things to different people. But for most, he was the world’s oldest blogger. He was a teacher and educator, and once served as Chairman for the Adult Education and Study Groups, Chairman of the Community Centre and part-time Welfare Officer.
Out of school, he continued his role as educator. In 1976, he became a member of the Guyana Hindi Prachar Sabha, an organisation which sought to propagate the teaching of Hindi in Guyana. He was the editor of the organisation’s journal, GYANDA.
Randall Butisingh was awarded a Poetry of Merit certificate by the American Poetry Association in California. In 2003, he was conferred the CIMBUX AWARD by a committee of Buxtonians in the U.S.A. for his contribution to education in Buxton and Guyana.
Quite early in life, he learnt the ‘Three Essentials for Life’:

Life cannot be dull
If you’ve something to do
To keep you quite busy
The whole day through.

Life cannot be blue
If you’ve something to love,
For no one truly lives
Who does not truly love.

Life will not be dreary
When hope fills the breast,
For this brings content
That will give the heart rest.

So bear this in mind
When you need to complain,
That work, love and hope
Are the balm for all pain.
(From ‘Love’s Balm’ – 1998)

Those ‘three essentials’ formed the foundation of his life and work. And he was forever working, loving and hoping.
He produced three collections of poems: ‘Love’s Light’, ‘Wild Flowers’ and ‘Love’s Balm’. Most of his poems were written in the 1970s, inspired after reading the life of the late Helen Keller, blind and deaf humanitarian.

Jan Carew (1920 -2012)
My name is Wind and I am lonely. Look at me and wonder, for now you see me and now you don’t….For countless moons, I kept my loneliness to myself, but the day came when I couldn’t bear it any longer….Because loneliness was my lot, I searched everywhere for company….(From ‘The Coming of Amalivaca’).

I’d like to remember Jan Carew for such beautiful enigmatic prose. But Carew was much more than a writer of beautiful prose: He was a writer, educator, thinker, philosopher, diplomat and activist who made his mark wherever he worked and lived — Trinidad, London, Spain, Ghana, Canada, Mexico, USA, Czechoslovakia, France, Guyana.

And he discharged his responsibilities with the singular fixation to right the wrongs of discrimination and marginalisation, and even gender inequity, fighting the ‘same cause’ by re-writing and righting history. Whether supporting the People’s Progressive Party or the People’s National Congress in Guyana; whether living in Ghana or Canada, Spain, Mexico or the USA, he cherished his independence, emphasising equity and relative truth.

Carew was also advisor to many nation states, engaging mighty men and women of the world like Cheddi Jagan, Maurice Bishop, Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah, Maya Angelou**, and Claudia Jones among other persons of note.

Carew was born at a time when the empire was at its height, and according to A Sivanandan, Director of the Institute of Race Relations in London, when “the pus of racism was seeping out from the sores” of imperialism, breeding hatred and silent remonstration, giving birth to a liberator and philosopher that eventually took his ideas wherever he went.

For his writing, Carew won, in 1964, the London Daily Mirror’s award for Best Play, ‘The Day of the Fox’; the Pushcart Prize (U.S.A.) for his essay, ‘The Caribbean Writer and Exile’; and the Casa de Las Americas Prize for poetry. He is also the recipient of the Caribbean-Canadian Literary Expo 2003 award, organised under the auspices of Caricom Consular (Corps).

His plays include ‘University of Hunger’, first performed at the Theatre Guild here in 1966; ‘Black Horse, Pale Rider’; ‘Street of Eternity’; ‘Sea Drums in my Blood’; and ‘The Day of the Fox’, in which the legendary Sammy Davis Jr. played the lead role.

As a cultural historian, he wrote ‘Rape of Paradise’; ‘Moscow is not my Mecca’;  ‘Ghosts in my Blood’; ‘Grenada, the Hour will Strike Again’; and ‘Fulcrums of Change’, setting to right history that is contrary to Eurocentric bias designs previously forced upon us.

Carew was best known for his novel, ‘Black Midas’, first published 1958, where the author, according to local arts critic, Al Creighton, “exhibits the way history may become legend or folklore and both may become myth.” His other novels include ‘The Wild Coast’, ‘The Last Barbarian’ and ‘Green Winter’.

The writing legacies of both Jan Carew and Randall Butisingh ought always to resonate with us.

(To respond to this author, either call him on (592) 226-0065 or send him an email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com)

What’s Happening:
•     ‘From Historical Paths to the Cultural Processes between Brazil and Guyana’ was recently launched on the University of Guyana Campus. This book is the first major literary collaborative effort between the two countries.