Guyana was in the throes of a crack epidemic. The government’s inability to perform the most basic functions of the state, such as pick up the trash, had forced citizens to fund crack cocaine consumption…
Larry, a very smart man in very shabby clothing, who spoke extremely “well,” as we Guyanese like to say, told me about his stint in the film industry in Canada. Larry and I were both Canadians. I wondered if he was a method actor training for a part. No, he was not. Rather, he was a porn star. Addicted to crack cocaine and deported to Guyana, he had become a fixture of Georgetown’s devoured.
Yet, Larry stood out among Guyana’s inaudible: He loved to debate, mainly having intense dialogue with himself and those that haunted the shards of his imagination. He faced down the invisible characters he materialised across from him, stating his argument and moving from point to counterpoint. One was struck by his ability to formulate an imaginary adversary of such depth and precision.
Larry was a “resident druggie.” He was part of the new and “evolved” workforce of Georgetown. The government’s failure to secure garbage disposal had led to the emergence of a black market that diverted millions towards crack cocaine through the everyday use of “junkies” to take out trash for disposal.
In short, citizens paid one of the resident “druggies” a few bucks to collect their trash and take it to the market for disposal, thus subsidizing their addiction and directly funding the crack epidemic in Guyana.
I had finally, after a few months, figured out that there was no escaping this economy of suffering. But how to “utilise” this workforce’s contribution to our society was at best tragic. You (I) – otherwise decent person – learnt what to do and what not to do in my daily use of the dispossessed.
I was conned a few times before I learnt how to “work” with Larry. I learnt that when money was advanced before the job, a strange illness struck him; he would lose his hearing on his way out the gate.
And I learnt to watch him while he worked because he would show up after the landlady had cleaned the yard space and ask for payment for the task he had just completed. I learnt to only give him a job when I actually needed a job done.
I moved.
My new apartment came with its own “junkie.” Everyone in the building used him. He swept the yard, took out garbage, went to the market, and he was even trusted to go buy electricity credits.
For some reason, he only conned me.
He would buy his Banko beers from my market change and then demand his payment.
The buying started a while before it escalated to Banko; it was Advil for the upstairs maid, bottle of water for himself, a taxi to bring back the five gallons of water from four doors down.
He had detailed pricing for his services: $300 to get the water; $400 for taxi; $600 for trash disposal – $300 to pay the dumpster people and $300 for taking it there; $200 to wash the garbage bin.
Like with Larry, our relationship eroded. We pretended the other didn’t exist. This is what my life had come to, a sense of loss and sadness that I could not sustain a meaningful professional relationship with the local “junkies.”
Guyana was in the throes of a crack epidemic. The government’s inability to perform the most basic functions of the state, such as pick up the trash, had forced citizens to fund crack cocaine consumption in exchange for securing their health and sanitation – not disposing of garbage grew the rat population even more, if that was possible, which further intensified the pending public health catastrophe.
But what seemed even more tragic, was the way that garden of suffering had become so commonplace that it was at best the stuff of humour – everyone had a “junkie” story – and community folklore.
I found myself sharing my own “junkie” encounters as part of polite conversation. I was coming home one day with a brewed coffee mixed with cream liquor, a woman aggressively approached me with the words “give me something.” In fear I shoved my coffee at her, she took it and ran off, stopped a few feet away, drank, and said “thank you mom!”
Every single time after that when she spotted me, she demanded coffee and I ran for home or hopped a cab. There was the man dressed like a Christmas tree, I learned very fast to never stare at him, as he has a “complex.”
Then there is Ian, who said his mother was the queen of England and his father was Selassie I, which makes him officially the “Dark Prince”, he also said he was there, in Guyana, to rule his people.
Then there were those I knew from sight rather than encounter. There was the man dressed in a mini skirt whom I was told to never offer him my cast offs, as he was not gay. And there was the old, very old Muslim man who was actually a young, very young crack-head.
There was the well-spoken Rastafarian, who was not a believer, he just hadn’t found the time to wash his hair in the last 10 years. He was so very proud that his last shampoo was “done in the states”.
The moral tragedy there in Guyana, which produced these individuals by the minute, was that participating in these indigenous economies of exploitation was both unavoidable and encouraged un-reflection. I told myself that the moral was to avoid these people like you would avoid the plague, but like the plague you may be the carrier of what you assume to be the stain of the other.
Yes. Give the cold shoulder. Ignore. Evade. Dodge. Sidestep. Escape. Elude. And finally, RUN! But you are a citizen of the republic of the dispossessed.
Look around you right now, wherever you are, especially here in Vancouver and tell me what you see.