Fifteen minutes of fame in Guyana

NOVEMBER 11, 2015 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER FEATURES / COLUMNISTS, FREDDIE KISSOON

Go back to the footage of the opening sequences of any Summer Olympics in the modern era, especially the past forty years, and the unmistakable motif of togetherness in the human race stands out brightly as the sun on a tropical beach. The message of the Olympics is that we, the inhabitants of Planet Earth, share a common destiny, and that love for each other transcends borders, religions, cultures, races. As soon as the last singer belts out his/her notes on stage and the closing curtains block out the pyrotechnics on the stage, the human race returns to Black man; White Man; my country versus your country; my religion is better than yours; your culture is less modern than mine; sorry, you don’t have investments so we can’t grant you a visa, and many more instinctive impressions like these. When we reach the next Olympic Games, the cycle goes on. Guyana is identical, not similar but identical to these games, in that there are fleeting moments where idealism shows it faces then vanishes. Zenita Nicholson, social activist in the realm of gay rights descended into a psychiatric vortex, and sadly and unnecessarily committed suicide. In one of her suicide notes she wrote that it is hard for others to understand what happens when insanity grips you. Immediately after Nicholson’s death, there were analytical outpourings, by both lay people and psychiatric counselors on the need for this country to deal more scientifically with the treatment of insanity and depression. Just two days after this deluge of social and intellectual concern about mental issues, Magistrate Ann McLennan sentenced a certified patient of the National Psychiatric Hospital, Raymond Samaroo, to remand, after he stole a car. He is a repeat car thief, and days before appearing in front of McLennan, he was before the court for stealing another vehicle. I showed my Kaieteur News colleague, Dale Andrews, the news item, and his exclamation was so pointed. He said that this country treats such an issue as a criminal matter and not as a mental issue. My response to Dale was that a citizen, John Hinckley Jr. on March 20, 1981, attempted to assassinate the President of the US, Ronald Reagan. Reagan was not seriously hurt, but his Press Secretary, James Brady was. Brady was confined to a wheelchair until his death last year. Hinckley was ruled insane and is a patient who must spend time in a mental institution up to this day. I could give more examples, but I think the Reagan case makes the point that mental patients should not be treated as common criminals because, for scientific reasons, they are incapable of fully contemplating their action. At the trial of Samaroo, his lawyer pointed out his mental state and asked that he not be prevented from taking his medication. McLennan remanded Samaroo. Could the life of this mental patient be in danger? Is it possible he could irritate the hardened criminals he meets in the jail and they could lose their patience with him and hit him? On a related matter; is it right for the justice system to put first offenders with criminal recidivists? It isn’t, but it happens in Guyana. Should the justice system put an asylum dweller among the jail population? My answer is no, but it happens in Guyana. But why confine yourself to these two examples. All kinds of horribly weird, bizarre things happen in the judicial system in this country. Such macabre tales need talking and writing about, seeing that we are fast approaching the big, big celebration of 50 years of Independence. I always think of mental patients as being like alcoholics. The next day, an alcoholic has no clue about the damage he has done to others and himself the day before. You can lecture assiduously and relentlessly to an alcoholic about self-destruction, but they simply have no self-control. So after the anger about lack of facilities for treating mental lapses on the death announcement of Zenita Nicholson, where is the national outpouring for what happened to Raymond Samaroo? There is none. There will be none. Why will there be silence about the Samaroo case? There are two reasons. Who cares about the death of a mental patient in the Camp Street jail and who was a convicted car thief? The other explanation is the wild pursuit for the fifteen minutes of fame that famous American painter, Andy Warhol says we all want. Nicholson was prominent. She won a US Embassy award. So the “fifteen minutes” pursuers got their fifteen minutes when the opportunity came to talk about Nicholson’s mental problems. Poor Samaroo! No one wants fifteen minutes of fame from him.