Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Feb 22, 2009 Features / Columnists, My Column
Every year at this time I remember the first Mashramani celebrations way back in 1970 and with each passing year the desire to go out and watch the younger folk tramp behind the various bands diminishes. And it is not that I am hating the event or anything; it is just that these days I find it so much more rewarding to stay at home and lie in bed.
Everyday I look forward to lying in bed longer because my bed talks to me. It says to me, “Adam. I am so cool and the best friend that you could ever have. Stay with me a while longer”. I try to comply until the phone goes incessantly. Someone wants to talk about something or the other.
Invariably, it is about something that would make the news. It is amazing how people always seem to know what is going on in various parts of the country and then conclude that I must know because I can do something.
Yesterday was a classic case of this. There I was trying to shake off the effects of some vodka from the night before when the telephone rouses me from my pleasant slumber. The police have shot and killed three men in the Bartica area.
My mind flashed back to the days when the gunmen ruled the roost. There were the calls informing me of some shooting or the other and of course, I would try to be the first to get the news.
There was this time when gunmen shot a man who turned out to be related to Tshaka Blair, who himself was killed by the police in his home at Buxton. I was at a friend when the phone rang. “Adam a man just get kill in Buxton. He lying down pun de road right now.”
I expected the police to be there by the time I got to the scene. This was not the case. I had by then summoned a reporter from Kaieteur News and a friend who always wanted to be where it was happening. Royston Drakes has not changed. He still wants to be in the thick of things.
We went into Buxton in the dead of night and there it was, the man lying where he was shot. Every home in the vicinity was locked tight; the street was empty except for one man whom I happened to meet just before finding the body.
This man had to pass the body yet when I asked him for directions to the body he told me that he saw nothing and that he could not say. Those were the days when people saw nothing and heard nothing. I supposed they lived to see another day.
I took the photographs, got the name of the victim and went to get the story in the newspapers. I of course called the police and was told that they would go into Buxton at daylight.
The Commissioner, Henry Greene, somehow or other, got them to go that night and they found what I had. But the crime scene had been compromised because people like me had gone there and had done just about everything except touch the body.
So when I heard about the Bartica shooting, I told myself that the police had gone full circle. They were now hunting criminals in every part of the country. They had done that when they confronted three men on a Berbice foreshore, losing one of their own in the process.
This time they had gone into the bush after some men who were bent on making their money from the businessmen in the community. They killed three somehow and sent a message to others in Bartica who might have harboured the notion that they can sow terror in the small community.
Bartica was a place where people could have left their home open and go out. I did that when I lived there and returned just as I did early yesterday morning with enough liquor in my system to float the Mv Makouria. There were the petty thieves who contented themselves with the odd hen or the food in the home of some old person.
Bartica was the place where I helped organize the first Mash tramp in 1970, and it was a heck of a tramp, with people joining in from every nook and cranny. Today, as is the case in the city, people feel safe in their homes and would hardly venture out after dark and if they do they would move in large numbers.
And this once more forces me to ask about the newfound ability of the police to get information about the whereabouts of criminals. They were able to track the men into the bush acting on information provided by the community. Similarly, they were able to arrest two who had robbed a businessman and who were trying to leave the community for the city.
It just goes to show that if a community wants to rid itself of criminals it could by simply passing on information to the right people.
Tomorrow, there are going to be those who would go out to see the float and there would be the others seeking a chance to grab a chain or a cell phone. The police are going to be there in plainclothes and trust me, the court is going to see a few of the criminals, all of whom would plead not guilty although they would have done the act. How can I get caught in the act and still say, as Shaggy did, “It wasn’t me?”
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
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