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Nov 29, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
I haven’t set foot in the building of the Georgetown Cricket Club (GCC) since the middle of the sixties when my father was the head groundsman. I was just a little boy then. I never set foot onto the ground too of the GCC since that time. I never looked back. The memories of the GCC were too painful. My father was a dark-skinned labourer in a club exclusively white. He became the chief groundsman after “Badge” Menezie retired. The expected happened. It was bound to happen because my father would talk back. He would argue for his rights. But he had his vulnerabilities.
If you are going to confront your bosses, then you cannot give them an excuse. My father imbibed too much alcohol. It was his downfall. I internalized that lesson. I took it with me for the rest of my life. I went to work at UG and I argued for my rights just like my dad did. But I was no drunkard and I did my work. I was a good teacher at UG. My students said so, the authorities knew it, and my research earned me my contract renewals. I became a columnist with the Catholic Standard. My writings captured the eye of then Stabroek News boss, David De Caries.
I was invited to become a columnist with the Stabroek News. Like my dad, I stood up for what I believed in at the Stabroek News. My columns were terminated by co-founder, Mr. Miles Fitzpatick.
Glen Lall, owner of Kaieteur News called me in. The rest is now history. My dad’s most crucial mistake is that he didn’t have anything to fall back on when he confronted the European aristocracy at the GCC.
I have blocked out the GCC from my mind since I was twelve years old. I forgot all those memories until Thursday, November 25, 2010. I was there to support the Women Against Violence rally, co-sponsored by my fellow KN columnist, Stella Ramsaroop. It would have been immoral not to be there because Stella Ramsaroop deserves our support. I met Stella for the first time on that day, being unable to have lunch with her when she was here a few weeks ago. Stella Ramsaroop is one of those persons that intuitively you know you can get along with. I look forward to having cappuccino moments with Stella in the future since she told me she would be visiting Guyana often. I think Stella will be the one to do the paying.
I stepped into the building of the GCC with a heavy heart. I cannot compare it now and then but I do know it is falling apart. There are hundreds of photographs on both the lower and upper levels. I looked desperately to find the face of my father and my uncle, “Badge Menezies (he was my aunt’s common-law husband). There wasn’t even one. The GCC is committing a nasty sin against the nation of Guyana. It is in the process of erasing history. I was extremely, (believe me I was) upset to see how dozens and dozens of those photographs are fading, some of which have already been lost to posterity. Here is one example; two of the photographs of the 1984 tour of Australia to the West Indies are completely faded.
The GCC’s membership has always been made up of rich Guyanese. From the beginning of the 20th century to 1980, the Portuguese commercial classes dominated its halls. They were wealthy enough to buy preserving chemicals. Since the eighties, very rich East Indian men have been in control of the club. How expensive is that chemical? It is not. The GCC’s photographic walls are hard to appreciate. It borders on philistinism. I am contending that even an untrained mind would do a better job at juxtapositions
Your eyes would fall on an item about cricketers that was snapped in the 1930s. Then next it would be a frame of a 1998 event that is not related to cricket itself. It was deeply disturbing. How can any person fix those photographs so randomly? I am sorry to say but this must be a morbid expression of incompetence. How much training does one need to know that you arrange photographs in sequences. How can you have a group of cricketers from the 1940s and next to it, is a frame of the club’s chairman receiving an award in 1998? An abandoned freezer is pushed in a corner blocking dozens of historical snaps. Can someone save this period of Guyana’s history?
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