A FEW months ago, I had a discussion with a friend in Alberttown concerning groups of mainly male youth that seem to just hang on to the drug-influenced culture and the political fringe hierarchy that attached itself, as both physical and psychological beneficiaries, preying on a disabled generation old and arrogant enough to defy their parents and guardians, but not culturally wise enough to analyse their own stupidity.

In fact, a regular toll has found that many a youth from that area have lost their lives and direction of substance, as a result of the lures of that period of our modern history that I have coined the ‘Whispers of Badness’ [the above scenario was repeated across the nation at that time].
The discussion I had with my street-wise friend in Fifth Street revolved around getting those youth to fill up forms to apply to a specific source of employment. They were directed to go and enquire and get the application forms, and I would assist in the filling up. This was during mid-2016.

A week later, I saw my buddy along Cummings Street, and he explained what he had done, and where he stood with our little project. Then he looked at me and turned away, saying that less than a handful had complied; that some boasted that they wanted to be ‘gun men’, while others were negotiating to open ‘Ganja Blocks’.
In reality, he conceded that in double checking on the more boisterous and those that just followed, illiteracy was rife. Of course, there were some males and females who were also too bright, and had conned themselves into envisioning shortcuts to easy money, ego-tripping reputations as tough guys and divas that had ruined their productive years through jail time, substance addiction and the cultivation of self-esteem issues due to bad choices, with the realisation that the infant generation using them as ‘De what not to do’ were running ahead, while the ‘Joker’ of life’s Tarot Cards they played would torment, along with the memories of others, school friends who murdered and were murdered, and the memories of souls ruined would still linger.

‘The Whispers of Badness’ did not, however, strive on imaginations. Practical evidence of official corruption predominated; an official fraternity of abominable physical tastes pervaded the stage of opportunity, if one had the stomach to define such as opportunity at all.
In January 2018, the Guyana Youth Corps will return. This was the organisation that salvaged many of us over forty years ago from the Shadow of the underprivileged.

SORELY NEEDED
This organisation is needed now more than ever, for in unleashing the ‘Whispers of Badness’ in twenty-three years, the last administration has damaged two generations far worse, by time-scale, than the self-hating colonial conditioning that took 150 years to achieve, that was inherited with Independence.
The post-Independence artisan, tradesman and merchant took pride in his product and services. When a tool was bought, it worked; a shoe lasted beyond two months, and there were no nails in local furniture. The public knew the better and best of the trade services being offered, and instalments were the custom of the day, without any fear of broken confidence.

Today, everything is a hustle. The space that ethics occupied is saturated by deceptions and unfair barter; the presence of drug addicts has unleashed a mass of cheap labour that is indiscriminately exploited, and has devoured the value of labour which has now transferred to most areas by employers, leading to the in-house hustle, especially in the private sector, where, again and again, employees collaborate with external forces towards ripping off employers that they complain pay them as if they’re ‘junkies’.

The other side of the coin is that would-be job seekers are wont to ask, “How much yuh paying?” rather than “What does the job entail?” That shift in relationship to employment is related to the all embracing hustle culture established by the after-1992 administration. As a result of this, callousness and contempt replaced the value for labour, to the point where a wealthy businessman was known to have placed twenty-five thousand dollars in an envelope and sent it as a bribe to a senior media editor, whose mentorship I and many others have benefitted from, and thought that he should be happy, because that is what this businessman had valued his worth to be.

The “Phantom” killers were paid $40,000 for every human life they took. How different is the consciousness of the businessman from the architects of the phantom death squads? And they had links to the political administration, and to their many sponsoring business affiliates.
It will take the uncompromising enforcing of the law to put the Whispers of Badness to final rest; to fix Guyana, but it has to be fixed, because the majority of its people want the force behind those Whispers gone.