Oddities

Growing up in Guyana, one of the many aspects of life here I found intriguing was the presence of a number of several larger-than-life characters found all over Georgetown. Most of them appeared to be individuals with mental problems, or sometimes a physical impairment, who seemed generally homeless as they wandered the streets in the daytime, not generally troubling anyone, but managing somehow to survive with no income and no real place of abode. Adults would tell youngsters like me these were people who had “gone mad”, but I don’t recall any instances of them becoming a danger to anyone, apart from the occasional cuss word or gesture when persons tried to interact with them.

Crossing from Vreed-en-Hoop daily, for schooling at Sacred Heart High School in Main Street, and later St. Stanislaus College on Brickdam, I would see these individuals, sometimes on the ferryboat or on the city streets. It was a kind of passing phenomenon. I don’t recall any incidents of violence involving these persons, but there were certainly exchanges between them and citizens going to and from work, or school. Near Stabroek Market and around Water Street, there was a man, who, according to what we were told, had been working in the Telegraph Office, sending Morse Code messages around the country, but, as Guyanese termed it, “he had run mad” and he would walk the streets with two small pieces of wood, held to this ears, on which he was supposedly tapping out Morse messages to an imaginary someone.

There was also the “keys man”, reportedly a European who ended up here destitute, frequently seen on Water Street, with a small push cart, containing hundreds of keys, of all descriptions, for this lock and that. Business was obviously sparse – the man’s clothing was ragged and unkempt – and he seemed to spend the nights sleeping on the city’s sidewalks – but he was clearly able to find a way to live in those circumstances and one never saw him in any altercations. Young boys would often interfere with these wanderers in the city, and would sometimes get a cussword or something thrown at them in return, but generally one navigated around them. They were almost all adult males and most folks simply accepted their presence as status quo, but there were some stand-outs, like the “telegraph man” mentioned above and the “keys man”.

On my short walk from the ferryboat stelling to Saint Stanislaus College, time and again I would encounter an individual I knew only as Saul – a tall middle-aged man, who was reportedly a high-school teacher who became mentally ill, lost his job, and was now wandering the streets, destitute, sleeping wherever night found him, and often giving long, impassioned speeches, on a range of topics, sometimes to a group of persons but sometimes to no one in particular – just venting to the air. Already given to my own interest in language, I would sometimes pause briefly and listen to Saul, but most of the time his output was totally gibberish, just a wildly wandering mind, and one never saw him with an audience of more than two or three persons, some of whom would mock him. There was hardly any cohesion in Saul’s speeches, it was truly a ramble, but I recall him one day, repeating one sentence over and over, and caught by the very convoluted language, I listened to him and hurriedly wrote down a particular sentence which went like this: “Promulgating your esoteric cogitations and articulating your superficial sentimentalities, beware of platitudinous ponderosity”. I subsequently showed Saul’s comment to a teacher at Saints. He read the sentence, laughed and told me, “Essentially, this is good advice: the man is saying, when speaking or writing, don’t use big words.”

I mention all this here as an oddity, yes, but more to make a wider point: what has happened to our Guyanese society, particularly in recent years, where individuals like Saul, and the ubiquitous “keys man”, and the one sending imaginary Morse code messages, have virtually disappeared from our environment. One would think that the stresses and strains of our faster-paced highpressure modern life would be generating more oddities, or inscrutables, in today’s environment; in fact, it seems there are definitely less. Is it a sign that we should pay more attention to those who are warning us of the dangers of the computer/internet age? After all, the “telegraph man” and the “keys man” and the “words man” would all be in their 80s or even older now, and, if still alive, more than likely simply staying out of sight trying to survive, but why is there no one replacing them in today’s youth? The social scientists need to weigh in here. The points being made by those early pontificators remain valid today; why are they not being expressed now? Or is that they are in fact being expressed but in a manner that escapes our attention? It is very much an oddity.