Latest update March 28th, 2024 12:59 AM
Nov 19, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
The picture of a security guard, with the involuntary movement of his muscles as he lay dying on the Mon Repos public road, is an image I will never forget once I remain a columnist writing about the existential wasteland that is a country named Guyana. There he was, lying face down, his muscles twitching as the bees ate him.
This was a very poor citizen of Guyana. He was a security guard. He was riding his cycle on Mon Repos public road, which we refer to as the East Coast Highway. Imagine in the 21st century you can die from the attacks of bees while riding a bicycle in the hot sun on one of the country’s main highways.
Anyone can die from an attacking swarm of bees in any country. It all depends on where you are. It can happen in the US, in the lovely tourist island of Barbados, in the beautiful country of Italy. But surely not in the open environment of Bridgetown, Manhattan or Rome. This man was not in the backdams. He was not in some desolate countryside where trees are so tall they touch the sun. He was on the main highway of the East Coast of Demerara. Where did those bees come from? Here is where Guyana becomes a horror story but then again, it was always a horror story.
While the man lay dead on the parapet, citizens of Mon Repos told the media that for quite a while now, the bees have been attacking people, and many victims ran into the nearby Republic Bank. One angry man shouted into the camera that the authorities knew about the savagery, but no action was taken. It would not have lasted for more than half an hour if the Ministry of Agriculture’s technicians had moved in to exterminate those insects. This is the same Ministry that has a section that kills puppies and dogs at the Ogle Airport if the owners cannot prove Guyanese birth, as reported in both the Chronicle and this newspaper.
No one is going to call for the resignation of the Minister of Agriculture over the guard’s terrible tragedy. And why should they? In a country where the lives of poor people are expendable, why should the Minister resign because his ministry failed to act in removing a nest containing bees that killed a mere security guard? Remember, a Minister completely locked down the main east coast highway early this year stalling traffic on both the highway and the Railway Embankment, thereby creating unbelievable pandemonium, and no one called for his resignation.
I am not on Facebook, but I was told that some congenital fools have posted criticism denouncing the naming of some obscure street after a Chinese city. This is not only a country of clowns, but zombies.
With so much morbidity eating away at the collective moral and mental fibre of this nation, people have time to go on their computer and comment adversely on the naming of a street. What about a young man put on remand by a magistrate for possession of one cartridge, a single cartridge? What about the death of this security guard? Will the Facebook postings consist of angry denunciations of the authorities who could have intervened earlier?
If that poor guard was in his SUV, as our middle class leadership is accustomed to, he would not have died. But he had a bicycle. What I find hard to understand about life, despite reading tons of books on philosophy, is how unfair it is to the poor and powerless of this world. People in higher authority who could stop the suffering of poor people never get hurt. But it is the poor classes that do.
There are those in authority who get an income a million times more than the dead guard – and who drive SUVs that the security guard would never had been able to buy with his earnings even if he had lived to be two hundred years old – and they were not the ones that the bees stung. It should have been them, because they could have eliminated the bee nest, as they had the power to do so.
I wrote about flying debris that is going to blind passersby from those weeders who cut the public parapet. I am a thousand percent certain that when that happens it will be some poor child from an impoverished area that will be the victim, rather than the aristocratic class of power-holders that couldn’t be bothered with implementing preventative measures.
I would suggest you travel in a car when passing Mon Repos; Alfred Hitchcock’s bees are waiting to attack.
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THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
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And people stood by videoing on their phones then posting on Facebook, Guyanese trying too hard to be like foreigners they call outsiders, dying in the heat but rather to dress in winter boots and tight jeans.
Sad what happened to this poor man.
Freddie
Stop blaming the Ministers. Try the PS who is in charge of managing the Ministry.
The most senseless article I have ever read..that swarm of bees could have attacked a school child..or some other innocent person..who didn’t had to be poverty ridden as the unfortunate watchman..Why is the writer attacking our Guyana society ..while contradicting himself saying that it could have happened in any foreign country..Oh please;…where is the gist of his story..or just want practice his writing skill..That bee attack could also be termed as an act of nature on anyone..unfortunately it had to be on the watchman..May he RIP