Experiences of a migrant Guyanese in London

Feb 12, 2021 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

Kaieteur News – In a KN letter of Feb. 06, Dr. Vishnu Bisram paid tribute to Guyanese Sugrim Ramjeesingh who had migrated to London in 1956 to pursue medical studies.
Unfortunately, much of what Dr. Bisram wrote in his letter lacked credibility since he had no personal knowledge of events and conditions of the period he wrote about. He however, stated that the information was told to him by his associate Sugrim, who sadly is now deceased and is not around to concur with the contents of his letter.
Air travel to England was available in the 1950’s but it was too expensive for most Guyanese students and their preferred mode of travel to the imperial country was by ships. I left Georgetown via Port of Spain for England in 1953 on a French Liner bound for Le Harve, France with stop-overs in Martinique, Guadeloupe and Southampton. The voyage took 13 days and was pleasant. On board were many other Guyanese students and passengers from Suriname, Trinidad and Venezuela.
Dr. Bisram stated that Sugrim had related to him experiences of racism, which he endured in London which manifested themselves when he was looking for a job, a room to shelter, travelling on public transport and to get into a university. I lived in London from 1953 – 1961 and most of that time, I was a boarder with English families. I learned a lot about their culture and way of life and I did not find them racists because if they were, they would not have taken me into their homes to live with their families, since I was a foreign ‘coloured’ student.
In the 1950’s, England was recovering from a devastating war and the loss of its crown jewel – the British Empire. English Landladies in order to supplement their income were renting vacant rooms in their homes to the flood of foreign students in the country with certain conditions – no drinking, no loud music and no sleep-over girlfriend. Dr. Bisram did not seem to comprehend that there were cultural differences between the Boundyard Port Mourant Guyanese and the English in London. The collision of these differences during interactions was often interpreted as acts of racism. Many English Landladies found the lifestyles of several foreign students living with them intolerable and they had no alternative but to throw them out of their homes. Others were so traumatized that in their vacancy notices for new tenants, there were footnotes – No Coloureds.
While in London, I had a secondary education at Woolwich Polytechnic; from there I went on for a college education at Imperial College, University of London. I never experienced any racism in the educational institutions, which I attended or while travelling with public transport. My education was paid for by my poor rice farming family living on the Island of Leguan. At the time also, I did not consider the education fees, which I was charged prohibitive as was claimed to have been stated by Sugrim. In fact, they were subsidized.
In the 1950’s, many Guyanese went to England to study medicine and were successful. It is a very competitive and demanding profession and only those with good entry qualifications were admitted into medical schools. There are reasons to believe that Sugrim had failed to obtain the requirements for entry to a medical school in England and as he stated also lacked the financial support for a medical education. Apparently, he was not fortunate to get a scholarship. He nevertheless made a successful business career as was noted by Dr. Bisram.
Most homes in London in the 1950’s had no central heating or showers to bathe. A rented room would have a coal-fired place for heating in the winter and a bed with 2 – 3 woolen blankets. One free hot water bath was available per week but more baths were allowed, provided the tenant paid to heat the water. The bath tub, toilet and wash sink would have been in another room.
It is inconceivable that in the 1950’s, a Guyanese student would travel to England for a tertiary education without adequate financing to pay college fees as well as for living and incidental costs. At the time, England did not have a system as was in the USA where jobs were available for part-time students with work/study programmes well organized for tertiary education.
Finally, Dr. Bisram should be informed that the premier high school in Berbice in the 1940’s and 1950’s was the Berbice High School in New Amsterdam and not the Corentyne High School at Rose Hall.

Yours truly,
Charles Sohan

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