WHEN my friend and colleague, Moses Nagamootoo, informed me, early in 1993, that President Cheddi Jagan had asked him to ask me whether I would be willing to come to Guyana to share my over quarter-century of direct media experience in the new democratic dispensation that followed the 1992 elections, my simple reply was: ‘When?’

My family and I soon wound-up my lengthy service as Editor of The Star (Saint Lucia’s most-read weekly newspaper) and we moved to Atlantic Ville (East Coast Demerara), from where I trekked daily by motorway to Ruimveldt, as the new Editor of the Mirror newspaper.

The People’s Progressive Party (PPP) organ was being published twice weekly (Wednesdays and Sundays) by the New Guyana Publishing Company, with two persons responsible for news and editorial content: First Lady Janet Jagan as Editor-in-Chief and former Catholic Standard reporter Robert Persaud as Chief Reporter, ably supported by Photographer George Lee and with (Director of Sports) Neil Kumar as a most-reliable non-resident Sports Editor.

‘Comrade Janet’ was also the main author of ‘Dear Portia’, a column that answered burning questions on mainly homely personal relationship affecting women, posted by mail from various regions – from Port Kaituma in the Northwest to Berbice, from Fort Island in Essequibo to communities along embankments of the Potaro River, from the Rupununi Savannah to Canje Creek.

The responses would have been well-thought-out by Mrs Jagan based on her lifelong exposure to the socio-cultural effects of ongoing economic hardships and political exclusion on the lives of the poorest across Guyana, across regional borders and ethnic or racial barriers.

She’d also consult women on staff of all walks of life in the typesetting and bindery departments, including the cook of Amerindian heritage, on some matters.

The Editor-in-Chief also insisted the paper would carry no advertisement encouraging Guyanese to ‘Come to America’ as refugee economic migrants chasing fake Dreams to Remember in Lily-White Fields of Milk and Honey.

A few reliable, well-placed persons (at home and abroad) also kept the paper’s pages alive with occasional opinion pieces or explanations of implications of new policies adopted by world, like Ambassadors Odeen Ishmael, David Dabydeen, Rudy Insanally and Bayney Karran, as well as legal, political and ideologically-based commentaries by the likes of Ralph Ramkarran, Clinton Collymore, Donald Ramotar, Clement Rohee, Kellawan Lall, Hydar Ali, Eddi Rodney — and so many others, too numerous to mention.

I married my Caribbean understanding and professional and/or political proximity to leading Caribbean politicians of all types and stripes with the Guyana reality in ways new to my new job, in a continental Caribbean state on the north-eastern shoulder of South America, far-removed from its island-chain CARICOM neighbours, where life is, simultaneously, both very different and very-much the same.

In my first four weekends at the Mirror we published exclusive ‘unlikely’ interviews with Hamilton Green, Jocelyn Dowe and Andaiye — and another with tough, constantly-harassed and often-tortured PPP stalwart involved in providing personal security to Dr Jagan, done under cover with the nom-de-plume ‘Richard Harris’.

In my column Things That Make Me Say Oh Shucks! I offered a funny-but-true Caribbean small-islander’s view of Things Guyana – linking villages with common names like ‘Hope’, ‘Good Hope’, ‘Better Hope’ and ‘New Hope’, or the Biblical connections between ‘Le Repentir’ and ‘La Penitence’, or the forever-wrong pronunciation of ‘Mon Repos’, or Christian imaginations of Heading to Heaven on a chariot named ‘Success’ through ‘Garden of Eden’ and ‘Land of Canaan’, only to end-up at Barama.

During my six-year stint I also served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Guyana Television Company (GTV) and a Director at the Guyana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC), presenting commentaries and hosting opinion programmes on national TV while hosting three popular nightly programmes on GBC, the only radio station in Guyana at the time: Action Like, Plain Talk and Issues in the News.

I also prepared weekly Broadcasts to Schools explaining international, Caribbean and Hemispheric issues and their application to local conditions, to demystify global concepts and simplify their understanding by students.

During that time too, (with Nagamootoo studying law at The UWI in Trinidad & Tobago and Trade and Industry Minister Shree Chand acting as the subject minister) satellite links were quietly established to take GTV’s signal beyond Greater Georgetown to Essequibo and other regions.

I was also Vice-Chair of the Guyana Relief Council (chaired by Prime Minister Sam Hinds’ wife Yvonne).

But never mind all these engagements, my daily job was to get to the Mirror along the ‘Back Road’ (Nelson Mandela Highway) every weekday morning to slug-away at the old typewriter I used — until 1996, when I first learned to finger a computer keyboard.

The news hound in the energetic young Robert (Persaud) ensured we always had more local items about the major weekly Cabinet decisions and achievements of the PPP/Civic administration than possible to use all in any one issue and Team Mirror always ensured coverage was as far-and-wide as possible.

Fridays at Mirror saw us working all day to put the paper to bed early-enough by afternoon to get it out to vendors and on the minibuses, ferries and flights that would take it throughout Guyana between Friday evening and Sunday morning.

I’ve never pursued the full story of how The Mirror virtually broke — whether it simply lost its clear reflection, folded-up under the pressure of competition, became a victim of Social Media’s almost-absolute dominance – or none-or-all of the above.

But my half-dozen years at New Guyana and constantly-enjoyed personal, professional and political outreach to the rest of my fellow media-worker colleagues (journalists, reporters, photographers, printers, broadcasters and others across the national spectrum) went both ways: I poured-out my knowledge and shared my experiences – and (I also) earned richer experiences and learned so-many-more new lessons, all of which helped shape who I am today as a distant but chronic chronicler of Guyana’s chronicles.

Would I have liked it any other way?
No way!