OPINION: A man goes to Mocha

Last Updated on Thursday, 30 May 2024, 23:22 by Writer

by GHK Lall

One by one, little by little, there is a trickle then a torrent. Truth cannot be suppressed. A stirring, a small seeping, and soon there is a sea of all that is wrong. The plight of people victimized and marginalized. Pain that pierces can only stay inside for so long, despite the high hands with long whips. A community then further degraded and last traumatized into uneasy, restless silence still somehow finds expression by the inspiring grace of divine providence in a listening ear. An ear that gives a genuine hearing, cuts through the manmade storms that intrude, and there is fertile soil to receive the outpouring of what has disturbed because they were intended to set back, set low, and set helpless and dependent. And submissive, with not a sound allowed to escape. What is soundproof is not necessarily foolproof. There are receptive hearts that absorb, at least, one left the United States of America and reached a village nestled in the deep east of Demerara. It is a deep east that is darkened. Receptive ear and patient heart absorb, then prepare to act with expansive energy. More hear again. Many more outside of Guyana will hear of what blights this society. Many here and afar will learn of a place called Mocha. More will get to know and come to grips with the fact that there are people not animals living in a place pushed into dispiritedness. More become aware of how they are forced to live. When all the tyrants and their terrorists, when all the deceivers and their daggers are done, there is still a Jonathan Jackson. A politician, but one thrust into the role of inquiring, probing, listening humanitarian. No matter how much they try, despite all the power and the people with their demented, destructive programs, there is a Mocha, and there is a growing number of them in this Guyana of ours so prettily varnished for the eyes of the world. Jonathan Jackson would not be deterred by the determined swaying of the masters; the anguish of the people of Mocha, as poured out, just had to be heard. After all, it was why he came to Guyana, traveled to Mocha.

Today I come not to clash with anyone, but to seek a cure for what ails Guyana from pinnacle to pavement to pasture. What hangs like one large, dark shadow over this gifted sward of god’s green earth. Hear me for something. Hear me, if not for my cause and its call to pay attention to the madness in Mocha, then hear the searing rustling of one’s own conscience. There must be one dozen, and one score, plus one hundred, then one thousand, next one legion, last one large or small multitude of Guyana’s sons and daughters who forget the past and focus then refocus on the present. Too many carry their burdensome memories that will not give them peace. Too many are endeavoring futilely to wish away, push away, drive away truth. Truth is like pain undeniable, and when it expands, it can be unimaginable. Its reach. Its power to project and leave an inerasable imprint. Something is not right in Mocha. Something, too many things, are terribly wrong, which reduces residents to a wretched existence.

There are patterns in Mocha that are as old as time. First, target and putdown. Then invade, disrupt, and undermine. Last, there are attempts to smooth over, justify in some way or the other, and when those find few paying customers, then the spears come out. Those with the power of leadership in their hands send their lancers. It is like the Charge of the Light Brigade: for king and country, but such a tragic waste. The woeful who marched and rolled and into Mocha like a conquering army tried their best, did their damnedest. Their prime objectives were to turn back the clock, to deny inflicted reality, and to replace both of those with window dressing, and when that failed, more attempts at coercion and suppression. Thirty seconds to speak? In this now world-renowned democracy? Wherever there is a world of Orval Faubus and George Wallace, there is a King. Whether a Montgomery in America, or a Mocha in Guyana, there is a Jackson, a Jonathan Jackson that cometh. Truth cannot be suppressed. The arc of history, of the moral universe, is long, but it bends towards justice. It is the defectors in brutal dictatorships that have defeated their oppressors. There are no better eyewitnesses than victims, no fairer rendition of inhuman conditions. The injustice of the many Mochas of Guyana. Whither fairness has fled? In this time of plenty, what has become of our decency, our humanity, so that each can live with dignity? If we cannot summon fearless and frankness with one another, then what is there to expect for fairness from others? Whether massed at our border, or well-settled in our rich seas?

No one in Mocha is pleading for the pity of a handout. All that those who are an inherent part of the sacred, national birthright are calling, reasoning, struggling for is equity. There is a duty to equity, and it starts with inclusivity. Not the blandness of empty rhetoric, but the fullness of outstretched reaching for neighbor and fellow citizen that seeks and eventually finds. It is those efforts that first touch, then identify, and last lift to that place which is right. More than a few went to Mocha. One will be remembered in that he cared. Jonathan Jackson, US Congressman. It is why I have often found great and good things about America. Even at its worst, there are still those qualities and those human beings that make the spirit soar.

It would be a blessing if we could find a few, then a few more, right here in beloved Guyana—at our ordinary level in street and sidewalk, and then at the highest elevations of this land that can be so low so many times. There have been pseudo-truths, crypto-truths, quasi-truths, and they all have perished. The buses rolled by the dozen and score into Mocha. The real truths about Mocha still surfaced and will now flourish. Before the highest height. Beyond Guyana. Tell them in the USA about Guyana, the real one. Tell them in America, Jonathan Jackson, about Mocha.