AFTER a ‘fling’ 44 years ago, a United States-based Guyanese man embraced his daughter, whom he initially did not know existed, until a phone call three years ago.

Bisram Virapen, known as ‘Ram boy’, tearfully revealed from a relative’s home at Rose Hall Town, Corentyne recently that “it’s a lot of years. I don’t think I can make up the gap, but I can mend it”.
His eyes strayed from this reporter to his daughter, who sat in the adjoining sofa. Anna Zelena Pearson had travelled from Venezuela to embrace the man she had longed to love, even as a child.
“I always admired children with their fathers. In my heart I longed to have my father, but my mother, a quiet-natured woman, never divulged his identity. However, my grandmother would casually say, ‘He is a Virapen’, and thereafter end the conversation abruptly.”
After the deaths of the two main women in her life – namely, her mother and grandmother — the desire to find her father escalated.
“It was my Aunt Jenny Roberio who made the enquiring phone calls, which led to a relative of my father, who lived in Cayenne, French Guiana. Initially, I did not know who was the person at the other end of the telephone line, so I enquired, ‘Are you my father?’,  but after I divulged some information, Arjune Singh, called ‘Gunnie’, responded, ‘No,  your father is in the United States’.”
Interjecting, Virapen recalled receiving the phone call on May 30, 2010, while he was being driven by his only son, Michael, a US Army veteran. “I got so emotional that I had to pass the phone to my cousin who was in the car, and was visiting the United States at the said time. Tears flowed freely as I recounted those many years that had its genesis up the Demerara River.”
Virapen, then 18 years old and being armed with his GCE certificates, had left his home village of Port Mourant on the Corentyne, in Berbice, in search of a job. The pursuit took him and an accompanying cousin five to six miles up the Demerara River, where they stayed at a camp house.
“It was there I met her mother. I had a fling (and) my cousin also had a fling with her sister. Shortly after, fellow villager Basil Butcher got me a job as a toll clerk with the local authority at Mackenzie. It was a night job. I then left the riverine area and moved to Linden. Sometimes I would feel lonesome, and my daughter’s mother would travel from up the Demerara River to visit me, but at no time did she disclose that she was pregnant.
“Another job came my way with the opening of DOCOL at Linden. I was employed by the entity as a clerk.  The manager and his family relocated to the area, and I subsequently moved in with them.  But things got uncontrollable when I became involved intimately with the manager’s wife. She, too, got pregnant with my child.”
This disclosure brought an expression of disbelief on the face of Anna Person, who then learnt that there is another daughter who is yet to be located.
“Holding her hands, with his eyes filled with tears, Virapen addressed his daughter by saying, “I am so sorry that you had to learn about this in such a way.”
Virapen can’t forget that day when he was in the offices of DOCOL’s Linden operations looking through the showcase window and saw Mary Melville and Victoria May Pearson, two petite women coming towards the business place. Simultaneously, his manger was walking towards him with his wife in tow.  Instinctively he knew that the time for the entire episode to explode was close at hand.
He stood up, not knowing what to expect, but the words of the  manager still ring in his ears over forty years later, “You lucky I just came off my knees  praying, or  else ….”
Meanwhile, as Anna listened attentively, she was somewhat further disappointed after learning of her father’s decision.
“I had to make a decision quickly,” he recalled, “so it was in April 1969, I chose to take the manager’s wife with me to my father’s house at Port Mourant, Corentyne; but her two brothers came the following day and took their sister away. But my father, an understanding man, pursued them and returned with her to Berbice.
“During this period, I had filled a United States student visa form and was preparing to migrate, which I did in August 1969, leaving my paramours behind.
However, due to the complex relationship with another man’s wife, much of what Virapen  disclosed to this reporter cannot be revealed in the public domain, as the persons and their relatives may still be alive, and such revelations may reopen wounds and result in much discomfort in lives.
But, what can be disclosed is that his other daughter was adopted, and may be living somewhere in the United Kingdom or the United States of America. Efforts are being made through the various social networks to locate the woman, who has never seen the man whose input has resulted in her birth.
In the meantime, Anna, whose birth date is June 30, 1969, shared varying challenges in her early life in an effort to allow her father glimpses into her past.
“At age 13 years, my grandmother took me to Venezuela. We lived sometime in the Amaku River, and in 1985 we moved to Barrancas, a small town by the river side, where I was told by my grandmother to be a part of a polygamous relationship, as the male, who is now the father of my three children, was a good man.”
With a twinkle in her eyes as she looked at her father, Anna recalled communicating with her father via facebook following the first phone call. Then they made arrangements to meet in Trinidad, but because of a typographical error in her passport, she was unable, at the last minute, to travel. However, on that occasion, her father met his grandson, who was aged 23 years old.
Subsequently, other arrangements were made for them to meet, and on August 3, 2013, they met at a relative’s home at Mon Repos, East Coast of Demerara.
Recounting their initial meeting, Anna said, “I was awaiting his arrival from the airport. I was putting on my makeup when, on looking through the window, I saw him. I told my granddaughter ‘Grandpa reach’. I ran outside. We hugged. I could not say anything. I was too emotional”.
For Virpen, he was too taken back to see his firstborn child. “I have a lot of regrets, but I cannot turn back the hands of time. But I would advise persons not to slip away (from parental responsibilities), as it will come back to haunt you”.
As for Anna Zelena Pearson, she needs to get to know her father, and expect him to be the father she had imagined all these years.
“I know he cannot fulfill forty-four years, but I expect him to do what he can,” she said.