Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Apr 07, 2018 Letters
DEAR EDITOR,
On the subject of mosquitoes, some years ago, while watching a TV cookery programme, I learnt that garlic and mosquitoes were natural enemies. Thus, a question that had puzzled me from age 12, was solved for me at age 70+.
When I spent a holiday with my Indian relatives on the Essequibo Coast, while the insects ate me alive at nights, my relatives were left alone – they ate garlic-laden meals daily, I did not. Problem solved. I named it “the Dracula effect”. So, some garlic kept nearby may help.
Unexpectedly, I came back to the city suffering from malaria, which none of the private doctors that I visited recognised. Until a primary school doctor guessed what it might be. My mother was advised that Dr. Bettencourt-Gomes who was the specialist in the field, was contracted to a private hospital, but a written request from a highly-placed person might help.
My mother got such a letter from the then Bookers Managing Director, Mr. Follett-Smith, whose son she ‘minded’ at one time. Problem solved – malaria, which none of the practising doctors had come across before. The specialist acted promptly, gave me a prescription for the medicine required – quinine, dispensed at the Georgetown Public Hospital. I gradually got better and finally recovered.
The ‘top layer’ we got rid of served a hidden positive purpose, now no longer there.
2. About policing. In the 1990s, I observed how young police officers on the beat behaved towards citizens when there was no need for it. Outside the Bourda Market on one occasion, when a simple request would have achieved the action needed, so many swear words were used instead, that I found it necessary to observe audibly “Why would anyone want to visit Guyana”? I was at the time a temporary resident, accustomed to polite UK standards.
Things have not changed much since those days. Back to the drawing board!
Geralda D.
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
Apr 19, 2024
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