“I’ll always be a born Guyanese. I love my country,” the overseas citizens reiterate, expressing their love for Guyana - from afar. How do they demonstrate that love? Make it manifest? We’ll explore that later. But how was the Guyanese Diaspora created in the first place? Why are those hundreds of thousands - born within the borders - now living where they are, away and afar from their homeland?

Well, perhaps “as usual”, don’t expect from me any deep sociological treatise on the “push-pull” factors of migration or about mankind’s periodic movements around his earth - or the like. Appreciate my limitations even as you remain my fans. I do know that after the 1939-1945 War many Guyanese remained in Europe. By the early fifties the “first generation immigrants from BG and the West Indies were trekking to their British “mother country” to get what they knew or perceived they deserved from that colonial Empire Owner. Come the sixties, “Independence” after bloodshed internally, and the Republicanism and politics; “authoritarianism” and unfulfilled promises and broken dreams of the seventies. Thousands voted with their feet and brains and left dear old, but beloved Guyana. And they are still doing so.

Persecution, discrimination, vindictiveness, racism, lack of jobs, opportunity and justice, educational collapse, the politics of confrontation and continual protests, hopelessness - all these and more, real or perceived, have driven Guyanese from Guyana. Apart from people’s natural desire for change, for a new environment and the occasional desire to be citizens of the world not tied to any one state, security, economics and the vision and reality of growing, being all they can be have caused Guyana to lose its people. But having settled elsewhere, most remember and reach out to their roots, their beginnings, the nostalgia and identity unavailable in their new “homes”.

Home, identity...

One can “pitch tent” anywhere; one can be genuinely accommodated by friendly strangers; one can create, work and earn to qualify calling a new location “home”. Indeed, after a decade or more, the criteria of acceptance, advancement, the ability to earn and contribute to that community, the peace and security of hopefulness and the future, will make one describe the new environment as “home”. Nothing can be wrong with that state of being.

But every now and then, I suppose, the memory of the beginning, the original inherent spiritual connection to the start and the formative years, all flood back over one’s soul and home is once again “where the heart is”. Coupled perhaps with subtle reminders from some, native to the new home, that you are really “guests”, aliens and forever paper citizens. Then, I understand, is when you want to make manifest the identity of the true homeland.

Whether in New York, New Zealand, nearby Venezuela or Antigua, Brixton or the Bronx, Africa or India, Guyanese then wish to identify with good Old Beautiful But Blighted Guyana. As the Chinese, Greeks, Africans, Japanese or Russians do when domiciled elsewhere, our migrated people set out to show others that they too belong - elsewhere. (Incidentally, I always wonder how the host countries regard this phenomenon. I suspect Canada and the USA especially actually accept and encourage their new “citizens” to enjoy the best of both worlds.)

So witness overseas Guyanese, matching other immigrants and naturalised paper-citizens in their adopted “homelands” with displays of patriotism - waving the Arrowhead, cooking the Guyana cuisine, wearing the colours, wanting the music and creole stories and singing the songs; establishing the National/Charitable Organisations and observing the various back-home anniversaries. In that manner, the statement is made - this is; we are Guyana, here amongst you.

Celebration, distance

This particular week finds two sets of Guyanese will celebrate their homeland overseas. Our delegation to the Caribbean Festival of the Arts (Carifesta) will remind the Caribbean and other visitors in neighbouring Suriname of who we are and what we do as Guyanese. Then, over the weekend the Guyana Cultural Association of New York hosts a gala multi-faceted three-day Guyana Folk Festival in Brooklyn, New York City.

As thousands of Guyanese gather from all over North America for next Monday’s Labour Day Carnival in Brooklyn, the Folk Festival seems set to attract its largest audiences and participants ever. Billed as “Preserving, promoting and propagating Guyanese culture”, the festival of the creative and the creole, will honour Guyanese at home and abroad who have, over the years, contributed to the very identity and heritage referred to earlier. It’s to be, I understand a celebration which, like the accompanying Guyanese Music Orchids CD, is quintessentially Guyanese - something that evokes the essence of being Guyanese - The words of Dr Vibert Cambridge, a true son of the soil, loving the homeland from wherever he lives.

For distance has no transcendence over love. The global village is shrinking anyhow - thanks to technology - and the spirit. From Holder and Hemerding to Pilgrim and Phillips; from Mc Andrew, the Male Voice Choir to Desrey Fox, Tassa and Queh-Queh, the Trade Winds and the Chronicle Atlantic will provide background as “American Guyanese” celebrate Guyana.

Won’t you come home?

Whether I’m in Georgetown or New York, I’ll ask my countrymen, my countrywomen, now more overseas than dwelling within the borders, will you ever return to stay?

I’ll endure the verbal and non-verbal responses. I’ll understand, even appreciate the reasons, rationale, “conditions” outlined. I’ll recall my cousins in America explaining how comparatively hard-working they are compared to some lazy American-born citizens whom their (immigrant) taxes upkeep. I’ll experience their apartments, automobiles, continuous water and electric power and state-of-the art technology and appreciate what hard work rewards them with. And I can hear them rationalise that they can love Guyana better from afar when they send the remittances and the barrels, even the investments.

I guess I’ll be stumped. But knowing myself, I’ll still send a message to the Folk Festival Group in New York: Conspire to Send Messages to our Politicians in Georgetown saying - “Please arrange for us to love Guyana from right at home, once more.”

Within, outside the borders

1) Which individual or group did something - or nothing - to make you love Guyana more this week?

2) Did you, could you do anything to make the homeland a better place?

3) Who is - or was - Vivian Lee, The Ramblers, Reggie King, H.N. Critchlow, Dr. Shahabuddeen, Nesbit Channgur, Mighty Joe Louis, Ramit?? `Til next week!