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| WALTER RODNEY 25th ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATION COMMITTEE |
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Floods In Guyana ( A brief history) David Hinds: Race and Political Discourse in Guyana
Women Against Violence Everywhere |
Justice will bring closure - Dr Patricia Rodney
'We need to find out what happened' Closure on the assassination of Dr Walter Rodney could only be had after justice was obtained for the family and for the Guyanese people who want an investigation, his widow Dr Patricia Rodney said in an interview last week. "We need to find out what happened and then move on," she said. It's not just a healing of the family but it's a healing of the nation. People can't heal unless you do something to make that healing possible. In order to help people to finally cross that threshold, something needs to be done. It would be difficult for Guyanese to move on. It is as if we are caught in whatever it is we are caught in." Dr Walter Rodney was killed when a walkie-talkie exploded in his lap on Friday, June 13, 1980 in Georgetown. Speaking candidly about her 25 years in exile in Barbados, Canada and the USA, Dr Rodney, whose petite appearance belies her stature said, "I didn't plan on coming back because my husband didn't die a natural death. He was assassinated." In the interview in the Quamina Suite at the Cara Lodge last Sunday, Dr Rodney also spoke about bringing up her children - Shaka, Kanini and Asha and her own professional and personal development. She reflected on life with her late husband and on healing, not only for herself and family but for the Guyanese nation as a whole. Returning to Guyana was a very difficult decision. She said: "We were all apprehensive. We came back because of friends from all over the world who organised this event... The timing seemed appropriate. Even when I touched down [at the airport] I didn't feel any great emotion like I was coming home. Once my friends met me at the airport I began to feel more comfortable with being here. I think because of my friends and where I am staying [Cara Lodge formerly the home of the Taitts]... It's someplace the children and I visited quite often. It feels quite comfortable being in this space." She left Guyana at age 38. "I couldn't see the point of coming back to Guyana. I was in the Caribbean. I lived in Barbados for nine years... but I didn't feel as if this [Guyana] was my home. Your home is supposed to be a place that protects and looks after you, where people feel comfortable and safe. I never felt that in the six years that we lived here because of the constant pressure my family, both my husband and I, faced. It interfered with our children, as well."
After Walter Rodney's death and burial, the famous Caribbean writer, George Lamming and Margaret Hope, two friends of the Rodneys took them to Barbados. Initially, Dr Rodney said she made no plans about where the family would reside. She was not sure whether Barbados would be their permanent residence. She said, "I hadn't thought those things through. I knew I wanted my children to grow up in the Caribbean [to] at least have their identity very concrete, a Caribbean identity." Once she decided to stay in the Caribbean, she opted for Barbados. "The Barbadian people and government welcomed us." Life without Walter, she said, was, "extremely difficult." Noting that some people for various reasons chose to be single parents, she said the choice was made for her "in a very painful way." She had to adjust her life to nurturing her children single-handedly and to dealing with the conditions that created that situation. Shaka was 13 years nine months; Kanini, 11 and Asha, nine when their father was killed. She hoped this time would make some difference to her family, who has had to return to a place, "where I think the greatest crime of the century took place because we don't expect that to happen in Guyana and the Caribbean; and that our young people would learn more about Walter." She said it was "a disgrace that his books are not in our schools as the things he talked about, young people don't seem to know about. It would be a disservice to them not to [be able] to understand what he was doing and not use the two books he produced that talk about the two main races in Guyana." His children's books, Kofi Badu Out of Africa and Laskmi Out of India, were his attempts to teach children and adults about Guyanese history. She said he intended to write about everyone but he would have written about the indigenous people last. "'This was their land', he would say, so he was writing about the people who came. Kofi Badu was about the experiences of this African boy who came to Guyana and Lakshmi was the same thing so people could begin to understand each other and be respectful of their differences and similarities. We are human beings first before being African or Indians," she said. Since their return the family has visited Rodney's gravesite on more than one occasion including, Monday morning, the 25th anniversary of his assassination. While they lost that physical being, she said, "His spirit has always been with us. His body was left here but I have always felt his presence. I know that every step of the way he's been there." An article in this newspaper by this reporter, which said that she left before her husband's funeral, she said, disturbed her because she was at the funeral as was evident in photographs. When she spoke of leaving his body behind, she said it was in the context that they were leaving the country but his dead body was here. "I had to leave. I couldn't stay," she said. She remembers "everything" about him and always feels the loss but at the cultural event held at the Castellani House on Saturday evening, she said, she felt even more emotional. "He loved art, music and dancing. To me that was a real celebration of his life in a different way, in a way that completes it. He was a human being, somebody full of joy. The synthesis of African and Indian music, which was always something he was reaching for in terms of the Guyanese people, that connection, that respect and understanding of each other's culture and what you bring to this society that is so valuable, gave expression to that part of his life." Walter Rodney, she said, "was one of the few people who made a real sincere attempt to unite not only Indians and Africans but all people in Guyana. This was reflected everywhere he went." She recalled that when they return to Guyana from Tanzania, people never attended public meetings, the races were totally divided and people were too scared to say what they had to say. In the six years, he was in Guyana, there was a change in the society and people were attending meetings. "You saw the vibrancy and creativity of the people that Walter talked about being expressed in many ways," she said.
Dr Rodney never remarried mainly because she wanted to ensure that her children had her undivided attention and to focus on her own self-development. Because her husband had been an international personality, she wanted to make sure that some of the values they had held dear were passed on to their children. This left her little time to think about marriage. She said, too, that it would have been difficult for a partner because she would have been making comparisons between her late husband and that person. "It would have been very difficult for somebody to fill that gap," she said. Dr Rodney said one of the important things she and her husband agreed on was that they wanted their children to have their own identity. So she encouraged them to do whatever they wanted to the best of their ability and never to settle for second best. They all went to school in Barbados. Shaka, who went to Combermere High, found his niche in art and culture, which he always liked and has made it his profession. He continues to live in Barbados, where he is rated as one of the country's leading entrepreneur. Apart from writing poetry and short stories, he loved to make things with his hands including all the family's birthday and Christmas cards from a very young age. Dr Rodney felt it was also part of helping his "own healing and coming to terms with losing his father at a very pivotal age for a male child when he was making that connection with the male in his life... Doing something creative helped him a lot to secure his own path that he wanted to take in his own development." A very good Barbadian friend, who had a programme that dealt with young people, which allowed them to turn their hobbies and creative talent into a profession, helped Shaka along in his profession. Kanini, who went to Queen's College (all girls) had always wanted to be a nurse or doctor. "She always wanted to do medicine. She went off to UWI, Mona, Jamaica at age 16 to pursue a first degree in medicine but when she got there felt she was not ready and instead did a first degree in the natural sciences. She graduated from Mona at age 19, which was even younger than her father. She studied medicine in the USA and is now Dr Kanini Rodney." Asha went to St Margaret's Convent School. She finished her primary and junior secondary education in Barbados. Her senior secondary education was completed in Canada and then she went on to the University of Toronto where she did a first degree before completing law studies in the USA. Asked how her children identify themselves in terms of nationality, she said it was a question they would each have to answer. Shaka was born in England and Kanini and Asha were born in Tanzania, East Africa. She said, "They would say their parents are Guyanese but they see themselves very much as Caribbean people... I don't think they self-identify with a country. I think a lot of young people see the world differently than we do. They lived in many places. A lot of their early socialisation would have been in Tanzania. I remember when they were very young and came to Guyana for the first time they would say their parents were Guyanese but they were Africans, especially Kanini and Asha." When she left Guyana Dr Rodney first worked with the Barbados government. Initially, she worked at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital as a medical social worker for three years, then at the Barbados Transportation Board as an occupational health and safety nurse and lastly with the Women And Development Unit (WAND) of the Extra-Mural Department of UWI, Cave Hill Campus. With WAND, she worked in the region, mainly in Grenada and Dominica training women in non-traditional skills, leadership development and getting women to look at their own experiences and how they could use them to surmount some of the difficulties in their lives.
She enjoyed the Barbados experience, which was good for her and the children but she began to feel that she was not allowed to be a person in my own right. She wanted to continue her education. "I felt I could only do this growth for myself and attain my own self-identity outside the region," she said. During her tenure with WAND she obtained a fellowship from the Inter-American Foundation, which also paid part of her salary, to study public health for an academic year in the USA. Kanini was at UWI and Shaka and Asha were still at school in Barbados. She completed all the coursework in the USA and returned to the region and did her thesis on health issues within Barbados. Before leaving the Caribbean for Canada in 1989 she had also completed her Masters Degree in Public Health. In Canada she worked for the International Council of Adult Education and Literacy for about five years, broadening her experiences. She then worked in Ottawa on a Canadian government programme that was designed specifically to look at health and other issues concerning new immigrants to Canada. "I was expanding my own knowledge and expertise," she said. In Canada, Dr Rodney kept her full-time job, went to university and continued raising her family. When Kanini joined her in Canada, she began working in the field of public health, then decided to do a Master's Degree in Public Health and a Masters Degree in Business Administration. At the same time, Dr Rodney was doing her PhD in Sociology and Adult Education at the University of Toronto. Asha had also joined them and was at the same university. Shaka remained in Barbados and was developing his business, which started off very small but grew over a number of years. He has a custom framing company, which offers one of the best services in the Caribbean and even further afield. Dr Rodney stayed in Canada until 1995. She was then offered a position at the Morehouse School of Medicine in the USA, to assist in developing a graduate programme in public health. The Morehouse School of Medicine is one of several historically Black universities/colleges. "Morehouse was one of the first Black medical schools to start a public health programme, so it was exciting for me to be part of this process," she said. Dr Rodney had completed her diploma in Social Work at the University of Guyana and was one of two persons (the other being Stella Odie-Alli) in the country to obtain a degree in Social Work at UWI, Mona Campus. When she returned to Guyana during that six-year period, she initially worked with the Georgetown City Council running one of the day care programmes in East Ruimveldt. On returning from Jamaica with her first degree in 1978/1979, she was told she was overqualified for the job she previously held. She applied for various positions in the country including at the Caricom Secretariat where she was told she had "the job then I was told I didn't... I applied for a job at Guysuco. I was told I got the job then I was told I didn't... I applied for a position at UG, which is very interesting because I was one of the top candidates for the position. While conducting the interview, I remember the registrar asking me a question, which I thought had nothing to do with the interview because he was asking me about my husband. I refused to answer because I didn't think it was appropriate. I told him it wasn't [relevant] to the job and my husband has nothing to do with it. He said 'Yes. Your husband has everything to do with it.' The other (interviewer) said the same thing and I never got the job."
For quite a while both she and her husband were unemployed. Her husband was offered the Chair in History at UG but was prevented from taking up his post. Three months before his assassination she got a job at UG paid by a special grant. She worked with Dr Maurice Odle as his research fellow. "That was my experience in Guyana. So when you ask me about returning to a place where I was born [but where] I didn't feel I was welcome because of my husband's political right, when we have a right to think the way we want to in a democratic society, you'll understand." Asked about her Tanzanian experience, she said after her husband obtained his PhD, he took up a one-year offer at the University of East Africa, Dar es Salaam in 1966. They returned to Guyana for the 1967 Christmas before going to Jamaica to take up a position there by January 1, 1968. In October the same year her husband was banned from re-entering Jamaica after attending a Black Writers' Conference in Toronto. She did not return to Guyana but went to London then back to Tanzania. She was pregnant with Kanini. As soon as she was old enough to stay with a baby sitter Dr Rodney went to work with the Dar es Salaam City Council, where she had previously worked, as a public health nurse. She loved Dar es Salaam and Tanzania where she felt a part of the society and it was one of the reasons she returned. She said, "That was our first real home as a married couple, as a family. In England we stayed with friends or in an apartment with Walter's roommate. Some of my best friendships were in Tanzania. I was sad to leave when Walter made the decision to return to Guyana. I don't know if I was as excited as he was about it, because I had already made many friends. "One thing was missing from that experience. The other children
had grandparents and our children were always asking about their grandparents.
They wanted to have theirs. The decision to come back was made for lots
of reasons. Politics was one of them but Walter felt strongly about the
family and he felt strongly, too, that the Caribbean people had supported
his education and that he needed to give back to them his service."
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