By Francis Quamina Farrier

PLEASE permit me to announce that tomorrow, March 12, 2018 I’ll be celebrating my 80th birthday. I am hard pressed to realise it since it seems to me as though it was only last year that I celebrated my 18th birthday. Now here I am at 80 years of age! Goodness, gracious, me! So it gives me great pleasure to relate to you, just a few of the things which happened in British Guiana/Guyana and the rest of the world, during the early and later portions of the past eight decades, and which I enjoy talking about from time to time.

The very first thing which I must mention includes some of the hot topics which I heard during my first seven years of life. Yes, I do remember many of them clearly. Issues related to that raging Second World War, were the principal ones. It was a World War in which citizens of this country volunteered and fought in, for King and Country. I can clearly remember the older folks talking about British Guianese having to learn to speak German, as Germany, after invading neighbouring Poland in September 1939, was defeating country after country in Europe at the time.

The name Adolph Hitler, and the name of the American heavyweight boxer, Joe Louis, were mentioned quite often in British Guiana of the late 1930s and the early 1940s, especially after the African American, beat the German Heavyweight Boxing Champion, Max Schmeling, in their second boxing encounter in September 1938, defeating the German in a blistering first round knock-out.

That was just five months after I was born, but it was something which was spoken of for years after, especially since it was an African American who had demolished one of Adolph Hitler’s (white) “master race” boxing champions.
There was greatness in both of my parents; my father who migrated to British Guiana from Grenada, always planted fruit trees when moving from one location to the next during his hinterland working years. My mother, a Guyanese, always trained her children from a very young age, never to hit, or allow ourselves to be hit by anyone. There was no domestic violence in our home.

In my McDoom Village home, photographs of Boxing champion, Joe Louis, of the USA, and Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, along with Jesus and close members of our relatives, adorned the inner walls of the house. Conversations included famous American athletes such as the Olympic champion sprinter, Jessie Owens, and the popular baseball player, Jackie Robinson. Both were African Americans, at that time referred to as “Negroes”, and were also spoken of very much with admiration in those early years of the 1940s.

I also heard lots of talk that the butcher of the 20th Century, Adolph Hitler, the ultimate dictator of Nazi Germany, wanted a world populated only with blond hair, blue-eyed people. Hitler had millions of people killed for that and for achieving world domination. That is what I heard the older people saying. Then, one day, I heard the news that Adolph Hitler had placed a loaded gun to his head and pressed the trigger, blowing out his brains. Germany had been finally defeated and the rest of the world exhaled.

Let me tell you about my growing up in British Guiana from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s. It was in McDoom a village neighbouring Agricola. All the six races were there, and so I knew what Social Cohesion was, way back then, which was long before that term became official in usage. During those early years, British Guiana was a country – actually a colony – in which there was active apartheid.

Many whites lived in exclusive communities, especially on the sugar estates, the timber grants and the bauxite and gold-mining operations, to which non-whites were not permitted, except the maids and the gardeners. There were no “WHITES ONLY” signs as they were in the United States of America at that time, but the locals knew where they were not permitted to be; where adventuring into could have landed them in jail for trespassing. They also knew that there was a ceiling in the Public Service to which locals were never promoted, no matter how educated and capable.

During the mid-1950s and into the 1960s, I recognised lots of political and trade union activities. There were national luminaries such as Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow who I saw in person a few times. There was Joseph Pollydore, also Richard Ishmael, the educator, trade unionist and businessman; he was the founder of the Richard Ishmael Secondary School located on Woolford Avenue in Georgetown. There were political luminaries such as Forbes Burnham, Cheddi Jagan, Janet Jagan, Peter D’Aguiar, Jainarine Singh, Jane Phillips Gay, Sydney King (now Eusi Kwayana) and Ashton Chase, the latter two are still with us, and in their nineties.

During my 20s, I saw a deep political divide in the country, which developed into a racial divide. But through it all there were those patriotic citizens who would have none of it and took the high road, extracting from the National pledge, “… to love my fellow citizens”.

Since this is a Feature article, and of a limited length, let me briefly mention just a few personal highlights of my 80 years on planet Earth: Winning First Prize in the Primary Schools division of the National Road Safety Essay Writing Competition; winning Best Actor at the 1965 British Guiana Drama Festival; being commissioned by the Programme Director of Radio Demerara, Rafiq Khan, to write “The Tides of Susanburg”; winning the First and Third Prizes of the National Independence Playwriting Competition; receiving a private grant from the author of the best-selling novel and hit movie, “To Sir, With Love”, E.R. Braithwaite, to attend a Summer study-course in Journalism and Voice at the Banff School of Fine Arts, the University of Alberta, Canada.

At age 29, my marriage to someone who I rate as among Guyana’s top twenty, best-ever secretaries, Patricia Bernadette Blackmore, is one of the highlights of my life. Last April, we celebrated our 50th Wedding Anniversary. I certainly have to mention the birth of my two wonderful daughters Arlene Zoisa and Venita Ayodele, as great events in my life.
Another highlight, which was being the recipient of the National Award of “The Medal of Service” in 1978, takes a pale second place to my award as “The Bishops’ High School Parent of the Year, 1987”. In more recent times, I have been presented with quite a number of “Life Achievement Awards”. That certainly gives a factual signal that time is running out, even though I know that there is still much more work to be done.

Although a firm law-abiding citizen, I have to admit that I had two brushes with the Law: my unlawful detention in Antigua by rogue immigration officers, and my unlawful detention by rogue police constables at the Aurora Police Station on the Essequibo Coast, here in Guyana. In the former instance, just before I decided on litigation, I received an official apology from the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, the Hon. Lester Bird.

In the latter case, I was awarded $30,000 in damages by Justice Carl Singh in the Guyana High Court, where I filed a litigation against two members of the Guyana Police Force (GPF) and won the case. Both ranks involved in that unlawful detention were subsequently fired from the force for other rogue activities. My attorney in the court case was Mr. Nigel Hughes. Continuing to press for a written apology even though I had won the court case, a written apology finally came to me from Police Commissioner Laurie Lewis.

I have to say that arriving at age 80 is like arriving at a beautiful city which I had helped to build; you do remember my Radio Programme Series, “The Eighty Plus Club”, which was on the air for a 15-year period. One of the regular listeners of the show was President Desmond Hoyte, who in a letter to me when I sought permission to interview his mother, Gladys Hoyte, mentioned that he would be happy to be a member of The Eighty Plus Club, should he reach that special age. Sadly he did not. Tomorrow, God’s willing, I will.