Guyanese at the movies

Jan 08, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths…

By GHK Lall

 Kaieteur News- Guyanese are watching a real-life movie unfold before their eyes.  They are doing more than watching it.  They are living it.  What Guyanese are getting, though they don’t know it, is a sneak preview.  One that is primed to last over forty years.  It began in 2016, is set to continue until 2057.

The posters and trailers were seductive, with lots of the deceptive embedded.  Naïve and gullible Guyanese were all excited, readying themselves for the time of their lives, with a rich, sweet ride expected.  It was the first exercise in national delusion.  I say this because this real-life local movie is a bittersweet one.  Lots of pain.  A barrel of tears.  Hearts torn asunder.  It is sweet for Americans and their business partners; they range from the PPP Government, to the opposition, to other commercial collaborators.  It is what is bitter for the Guyanese people.  He who lives it, knows it. How can you mend a broken heart, that plaintive cry from the Bee Gees fits neatly into Guyana’s circumstances?  Or, more fittingly, perhaps, that evergreen American folksong: Where have all the flowers gone….?  I can hear the Kingston Trio, the Brothers Four, and Peter, Paul, and Mary.  But remember what Guyanese are living through is not a song, but a movie.  They should remember that wistful wail from a good ole gal of America’s Deep South, Sue Thompson’s “Sad movies make me cry.”  Now for the film.

I thought it best to present the movie that Guyanese are watching (forced to watch) in the form of a full paragraph advertisement (paid for by me, of course).  This is the flyer:

 

Exxon’s Great Guyana Oil Steal

Produced, Written, and Directed

Alistair Rouledge

 

Starring:

 

Irfaan Ali, Bharrat Jagdeo, Anil Nandlall

With a cast of thousands

 

 

Special Guest Stars

 

Aubrey Norton, Nigel Hughes

 

By now, every Guyanese reading this should realize that this is a horror movie.  For the Guyanese people.  Guyanese were delirious with edge-of-their-seat anticipation of a thriller movie.  The substance of their frightening reality, however, is a full-blown horror movie.  All it takes is just one look at those stars, and it is obvious that it’s not Where Eagles Dare, but Guyana’s version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  Where is Exxon now based?  What kind of fright night character has director Alistair Routledge turned out to be?  There shouldn’t be much more left to know, to expect.  Look at the names of the Guyanese stars in neon light brilliance.  One has to be a desperate mother or an out-of-work maternity ward nurse to get their hopes up.

Director Routledge has the Guyanese stars on a short leash.  He points them in one direction (Exxon’s) and they run.  He directs them towards another (Exxon’s again) and they trip one another up in their hurry to comply.  With breath-taking acceleration.  With high octane energy.  With blind determination and passion.  Yessir, Bob, that’s the way Exxon’s Guyana oil movie has unfolded in scene after scene.  Alaistair Routledge does the deep thinking, the hard work, and the hard driving.  He is programmed that way with a chip implant from Texas to Guyana duty-free.  He writes the scripts, commands the local stars to perform, and they are off running without a second thought, or one glance at what he wrote.  They already know, because they, too, are programmed.

No! to calls for renegotiation of the contract.  Don’t play it no more, don’t play that song… (you lied, lied, lied, [and it is not me].  I shudda been Ben E. King.  Somebody made somebody an offer they didn’t refuse, probably enthusiastically accepted.  No ringfencing, with all kinds of sly verbal sword fencing (aka dialogues, monologies, and travelogues at free Thursday afternoon matinees).  They are known locally as horrific verbal explosions and McCarthyism run rampant in the United State of Guyana (number 51).  Who is paying for this picture, is it not the Americans?  Who has written the storyline, if not the Americans?  Who handpicked the lead star, but the diabolical Yankees?  Out with Granger, in with Jagdeo.  It is Guatemala, Nicaragua, Persia all over.  The trouble is that the Guyanese horror movie has only just begun.  Mistake! That’s not the Carpenters, but hewers of stone and fetchers of water in Guyana’s fields of drudgery.  I warned everybody; but, as usual, nobody listened to a dummy like me.  No to taxes; yes, to a tax receipt, though.  This qualifies to be a comedy movie, an Exxon-PPP drama.  Indeed, this is the kind of country that Guyana is, and the kind of creatures that crawl about here.  How else to interpret, with what is now the norm with oil?

Don’t look at me.  Blame the Americans.  Look what they have done to my country, mama.  Guyanese have so far gotten nothing but nightmares from their oil, and that is the standard, with sequels for decades more.  I’ve said enough.  It’s time for me to ride into the sunset.  I say this, though.  Exxon’s Great Guyana Oil Steal is an unforgettable cinematic experience.  Unfortunately, it is real-life Guyana, where Guyanese live with an unending horror genre: hideous contract monstrosity.  Thanks for the memories, Exxon, Massa Alistair.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of this newspaper.)

(Guyanese at the movies)

 

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• American folksong, Bee Gees, Guyanese, hard truths, Texas Chainsaw Massacre., Where have all the flowers gone…

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