On this day 20 years ago, I saw death

OCTOBER 18, 2015 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER FEATURES / COLUMNISTS, FREDDIE KISSOON

I really wanted to be like a father to Nicholas Hoyte but I was simply too busy with UG work, my political activism, my journalism and related activities to take on that role. But the fundamental deterrent in going in that direction was money. I had saved his life in 1995 when I had a six-year-old child to bring up.

Freddie Kissoon and Nicholas junior against a portrait of Nicholas Hoyte.

Money was just not there to be a father to Nicholas given my ugly UG pay. That was my only source of income but Khurshid Sattaur of the Guyana Revenue Authority went after me for the extra I earned as a KN columnist. Sattaur knew fully well, it wasn’t a glorified stipend but he was more a politician than a professional. I asked my daughter several times for us to visit Nicholas, take a photograph or two so she can keep it to remember who I was, what I believed in and how I saw life. We never got around to it. We will never do it because Nicholas died in tragic circumstances. I met Nicholas Griffith who also carried the last name, Hoyte 20 years ago this month when in trying to save him from drowning in the Atlantic, I came close to drowning myself (see the Stabroek News of April 17, 1995; “Fourteen year old drowned off Kingston Seawall” by Alim Hassan). I was on the Kingston seawall directly behind what is now the Marriot Hotel. It was such an eventful day for me I will never forget the clothes and runners I wore, the music I was listening to on my discman. I can distinctly remember it was “The Best of Bread.” I grew up with the soft rock music of Bread whose songs were huge international hits. The first time I went into the house of my future wife in 1978, the Bread album was on the table. My wife loved the voice of Bread’s frontman, David Gates. I was sitting on the large sewage pipe outside the Coast Guard office of the GDF that takes the Georgetown waste into the Atlantic when I heard the sounds of many voices yelling out, “maan drowndin, maan drowndin.” I ran towards the end of the Kingston jetty and saw the waves taking a young teen to his path of death. I saw another teen really fighting to survive. But no one will jump into the Atlantic. All you heard were loud shouts. I know that I couldn’t just stand there. I wasn’t a fantastic swimmer but I could swim. With philosophical emotions (if there is such a thing) and uncontrollable adrenalin I jumped into the Atlantic. I brought him to the shore line and then I began to go down with him. We were so close but yet not quite there. He was going down and I had no more energy left. A man jumped into the water and dragged us to the point where out feet could touch the sand. I never knew who that gentleman was; never heard of him after. The thought of the nearness to death I did not handle well. I drove home in my wet clothes and collapsed into the arms of my wife. There are two lessons I learnt from the drama on the Kingston seawall. Saving a drowning person has a special method to it. You just don’t grab the person and drag them through the water. Afterwards I learnt the technique of how to rescue a person going down. The second lesson was that I now understood how humans react in situations of war and desperation. I could well imagine how countless soldiers lost their lives in wars. They disregarded the danger right in front of them only to save their colleagues. You simply have no realistic connection with the world around you when the emotions take hold of you. You simply get into the zone that you have to be in to save the person I never got close to the 15-year-old boy I saved though I wanted to. But Nicholas Hoyte never internalized the meaning of life. He didn’t build on the opportunity he got when he was saved in 1995. Fifteen years (in 2010) after my rescue of him, he died in a hail of bullets one night at the junction of Sixth and Light Streets, Georgetown one block from where he grew up and lived. There is a term Guyanese are accustomed to use when a young man goes astray; “He followed bad company.” Did Nicholas Hotye travel on the wrong pathway of life? My research on him told me that. But I never got to hear his side of the story. I never will.