Guyana, the Great Flood, and History
Nigel Westmaas (reprinted with his permission. First published in Caribbean Daylight, caribbean daylight, Editor: Rohit Kanhai)

They call here,
– Magnificent Province!

Province of mud!
Province of flood!
Plantation – feudal coast!

Who are the magnificent here?
Not I with this torn shirt
But they, in their white mansions
By the trench of blood!

I tell you
This is no magnificent province
No El Dorado for me
No streets paved with gold
But a bruising and battering for self preservation
In the white dust and the grey mud

I tell you and I tell no secret –
Now is long past time for worship
Long past time for kneeling
With clasped hands at altars of poverty…

Martin Carter (1951)

The recent floods are the biggest disaster in all Guyanese history. Nothing parallels it in terms of national catastrophe and misery. The amazing photo carried in the Stabroek News, and re-printed in Caribbean Daylight, of people fleeing over water like in the reputed parting of the Red Sea in the Exodus tells it more profoundly than words. The Gods do not appear to favor Guyana. Only a few weeks ago the historic Roman Catholic Cathedral in Main Street was burnt to the ground along with the Sacred Heart school. Now its the turn of the massive flood. But all this is not new. Colonial and independent Guyana has had a never-ending battle with the sea and with floods. Guyana, as Walter Rodney and other historians have long maintained is a country built from a struggle with the sea. From ancient times, through the Dutch and Dutch colonisers to post independence, Guyana and flood were synonymous. As the historian James Rodway put it in 1891; “every acre at present in cultivation has been the scene of a struggle with the sea in front and the flood behind.” A hundred plus years later the flood is no longer “behind”; it is allied with the sea, generating wretchedness for Guyanese again.

And at no time in its history was it so bad as this January 2005.

Each generation has its own horrors and when people were living them one can’t fault them for displaying ‘relativity’ of situation; for harking back to the “good old days.” But one may well ask: Were there any good old days? As the Carter poem says…Guyana was never a “magnificent province” for the vast majority of its people. Mud and flood are essential components of the historical record of Guyanese life.

CHRONICLING DESPAIR

Any historical document or historical report cannot fail to mention the countless efforts of the city of Georgetown and towns and villages throughout the coast to stem the assault of the sea and floods; and the superhuman efforts it took to overcome the twin terrors. It is a story of technological innovation; of production versus nature; of despair; of seeking to eke life out a decent existence amidst a hostile environment. It is the story of individuals lacking concern and those with the vision and innovation (including Governors) to do the right thing to avert disasters. Historians James Rodway, ARF Webber, Alan Adamson, Allan Young, Winston McGowan, Walter Rodney, through to Juanita De Barros have all chronicled in one way or other the incredible struggle of this people and all the obstacles they faced, whether natural or man made. But few have written as movingly and comprehensively as Rodney. Here is what he says of the situation in early times in History of the Guyanese Working People. It reads quite eerily of the present
“…with monotonous regularity, the annual reports of the inspector of villages related instances of poor drainage leading to the flooding of provision rounds, severe economic reverses, and non-payment of village rates. These seemingly had little impact on official consciousness, and even direct petitions by destitute villagers received little sympathy…it was common practice for planters and their official allies to scoff at the villagers and to interpret their troubles as deriving from their own inherent inadequacies.”

Drainage and irrigation were indeed two of the major problems plaguing the early efforts of villagers. Take Victoria for instance. Political malice was prevalent against this village. Planters from neighbouring plantations, jealous of the independence of these villagers, would flood their own plantations (which were higher than Victoria’s) and, by breaking the dams, caused water to pour into the village of Victoria, destroying the crops and livestock. The Emancipation annual of 1996-97 said that villagers in response “erected a bell to summon all residents whenever the village was flooded. .. when other plantation owners realized that flooding was not deterring the brave villagers who filled up the breaches, they ‘began to spread ghost stories.’”

17,000 YEARS AGO
The problem of Guiana’s coast began even before modern recorded history. The late Guyanese anthropologist Denis Williams stated that around 17,000 years ago the sea on Guyana’s shores stood 100-150 meters below its present level and implied that the sea and land had risen to their present levels after that period. According to Williams, the Guyana shoreline once lay much further seawards than at present, but as “glacial retreat began to signal the end of the last Ice Age, glacial meltwater caused a gradual rise in the level of the world’s oceans…and ocean levels rose worldwide.”

With the arrival of Europeans and the displacement of the Amerindians of Guyana from off the coastline, Dutch, French and British colonial capitalism had to contend with the sea in their quest for sugar profits. Slaves were conscripted into this grand task and according to Rodney’s memorable calculation, they dug and moved at least “100 million tons of heavy, water logged clay with shovel in hand, while enduring conditions of perpetual mud and water.” While the Dutch proved more adept than most at sea defence, they, like every other colonial and independent government since, were also at wits end when faced with heavy rainfall or high tide.

Colonial officials and local knowledge always regarded the present site where Georgetown now stands as perilous; yet the Dutch moved the original capital from Borsselen island (20 miles up the Demerara River) to its current location at the mouth of the Demerara river. The capital was then entitled ‘Stabroek’ until 1812, when it reverted to the current name. Was that a great mistake by the Dutch colonisers that has come back to haunt us? Hindsight is always a safe vantage point; there may have been more potential for a coastal town.

1855 FLOOD
ARF Webber, another Guyanese historian writes that the flood of 1855 caused a lot of hardships for the residents. According to Webber, the erosion of the sea, “which had commenced prior to 1855, had washed away Camp House and eventually inundated Kingston…the stretch of sea beach from Kitty to Camp House, which was at once the scene of duels and horse races prior to the grant of the D’Urban Race Course, had now disappeared. … James Rodway, the colonial Guyanese historian also devoted some attention to Georgetown’s efforts with the same flood. In 1855 he reports (interestingly on Republic Day Feb 23rd) there was what was then termed the “Kingston great flood.”

Rodway explained the sea rose so high during spring tide, that it “with a violence unknown for nearly fifty years, and in the course of a few hours swept away nearly the upper part of the embankment, and inundated the military land and the adjoining suburb of Kingston.” The newspapers of the day reported that Camp house was abandoned, water rose five feet high, Kingston was a swamp, the famed Lighthouse was in danger of being undermined and the coast, from Pln. Thomas lands to Ogle were covered with water. The efforts of recovery from this 1855 disaster led to a seawall being built up to Kitty. And in “1874 Baron Siccama, then in the colony studying a problem that refused to be solved, advised a continuous wall, from Kitty to camp street, a commencement of which had been made two years before, but had now slid into the sea; and the angry waves seemed to be calling for more. This second wall was completed in 1882…”

VILLAGES AND THE FLOOD
The seawall grew in length over time, eventually all stretching all the way down the coast. The coastline, like Georgetown, was not immune from flood and the sea. All of the historical notes on villages keep referring to drainage, irrigation, and flooding problems. We can chronicle a few here. Citizens of Batchelor’s Adventure, for example, had to use boats ‘to carry people about and flooding became so bad that many took up residence in other villages.”

In 1849, after the front dam broke and put Plaisance under water for a few days, the villagers petitioned Governor Henry Barkly for some form of municipal organization for the village. Governor Hincks eventually expended the sum of $29, 784, mainly for the purchase of a powerful drainage pump and the empoldering of the back lands.” (Emancipation, 1999-2000)

Rodney reports that in a heavy rainy season between late 1886 and 1887 residents claimed that the floods were “the worst the territory had experienced in forty years”, referring to the 1855 flood.

Friendship village on the East Coast was another bad case of neglect and struggle, especially in the area of drainage. Apart by having to contend with “flooding of their provision grounds from the European planters of neighbouring plantations who wanted to force villagers to continue working with them, the settlers of Friendship found it extremely difficult to maintain their roads and drains.”… Relief from the floods was brought to the village finally in 1869, when the canals were cleared and steam powered pumps were installed in both Buxton and Friendship.”(Emancipation 1999-2000)

MODERN FLOODS AND THE FUTURE
Problems with the tides and floods continued into the 20th century. In 1921, a heavy rainstorm, lasting over twenty-four hours, flooded some city streets and swept away bridges. Every decade since the 1920s has had flooding and sea breaches on a smaller scale. But the sluices and drains worked reasonable well and water was sent away expeditiously with few exceptions. In 1934, there was a major flooding disaster that affected Georgetown and the entire East Coast. There were multiple floods in each decade since the 1930s.

But what is different in this calamity? Build the flood on all the woes Guyanese have been faced since modern political times from the 1950s – then you have a situation of unending hardship. What is usually portrayed as real natural disasters also have a ’political’ cause, or in other words – the human and social failure of prevention. I use ‘political’ here in the broadest sense, not necessarily referring to petty party politics – although the cumulative effect of division since the 1950s of that generation long trauma has to be written into the equation.

All of the contemporary technicians and experts in the field of drainage and irrigation submit again and again the same problems: lack of will on the part of the authorities; unresponsiveness of governments to warnings and peoples plight; political interference and corruption at state and local governance. The list of woes is long and follows Guyanese history intimately. The problem then with the current flood, and disasters in general, is that they also tend to have ‘political’ causes: including the lackadaisical approach to drainage, irrigation and city and village upkeep, and democracy, or lack of it in the local government sector. What is new in the modern Guyana context, and separates it from other historical disasters – is the ongoing political and social collapse of infrastructure, the fleeing of skills, the hapless City Council, and the slide in civic-mindedness that allowed businesses and householders to drop garbage on the drains and trenches thus perpetuating blockage.

And what of the future? When the water recedes and the horrendous clean up is undertaken, can this badly bruised and battered people rise up technologically and politically and keep out future floods; not to speak of cruel division that assists denigration and despair? Martin Carter’s poem and experience itself suggests not. Alas, based on the historical pattern, we have to be surprised before the next flood. Local Guyanese wisdom in the form of a proverb is an ideal warning:

“If me bin know always deh behind the door”