The grass not so green after all
For young Guyanese housewife living in Brazil
by Ruel Johnson
Guyana Chronicle
March 21, 2004
WHILE focus on Guyana’s diaspora, affectionately referred to as Region 11, has been skewered towards the metropolitan havens of North America and Europe, Guyanese communities, many of them thriving, also exist in various countries around the world.
Guyanese have for years sought greener pastures in countries like fellow CARICOM (Caribbean Community) member states, Trinidad & Tobago, and Barbados and our continental neighbours Suriname, Venezuela and, of course, Brazil.
One such Guyanese to have found the giant Latin American nation at our back door, fondly referred to in some quarters as the ‘colossus of the south’, to her liking and made it her home is 27-year-old Lorissa Atkins.
Born in the North-West District to a Brazilian father and a Guyanese mother, Lorissa grew up speaking both Portuguese and English, despite her parents being separated since she was two years old.
She attended school in Guyana up to the age of 16. After finishing Fourth Form, the highest level of secondary education available in the area at the time, she left Guyana in search of her dad who had returned to his country of origin after the split with her mother.
Upon their reunion in Bomfin, she studied for a while before leaving for Boa Vista in search of employment. She found, instead, a husband; a Brazilian national; the father of her two daughters, Loriza, aged four and two-year-old Leiza. Neither of the two children knows much English.
Lorissa now lives at her sister’s home. Her sister is a secretary, working with a Brazilian company. Her sister’s husband, a Guyanese, works with the local aviation firm, TransGuyana Airways, in Lethem.
Lorissa says that it is now hard for her to find work in Brazil, due to the fact that she doesn’t have the required level of qualifications that most places are now demanding. The Brazilian government, under the administration of its populist President, Mr Luis Inacio Da Silva, affectionately referred to as ‘President Lula’, has been engaged in a national campaign of revamping and upgrading employment policies and conditions in Brazil, a move that is becoming increasingly unpopular with a large section of that country’s workforce, especially within the public service.
Although she travels regularly to Lethem, she has never ventured any further into Guyana in the all of the 11 years that she’s been living in Brazil.