A mother’s legacy of love
By
Parvati Persaud-Edwards
THE Jagdeo Initiative on agriculture did not emerge out of a vacuum but
evolved from a childhood where he witnessed his industrious mother help feed
the family and augment the family income with produce from her kitchen
garden.
It is very likely he also helped her and knows first-hand that food you grow yourself is fresher, tastier, and if grown organically, healthier.
Gang of women robs
woman of $124,000
Our
ancestors came to these shores because of agriculture. The indigenous people
lived off the land. When our fore-parents left the sugar estates, they
subsisted on produce from their farms, and they thrived.
The
bounties of the earth produced the income to educate the first batch of
doctors, lawyers, and other professionals. Certainly Dr Jagan’s parents
had their own kitchen garden.
Schools
need to introduce into their curriculum a dynamic agricultural programme.
This can achieve several things as follows: Provide income for the
respective schools; encourage and inculcate in children an appreciation and
a love for farming as part of a skills development programme; and introduce
a dynamic that would see a greater number of our young people opting to till
the land instead of leaving for seemingly greener pastures.
Many
children buy junk for lunch, but the government could probably subsidise a
programme where one balanced meal a day is provided for children, along with
a cod-liver oil capsule, a glass of milk, and a glass of juice. The
vegetables, milk, eggs, chicken and fruit for the juice could probably come
from the school farm initiative – something along the lines of a 4H
programme.
This
will certainly produce a healthier population, which could enhance learning
ability and reduce instances of illness in children and produce healthier
and more pro-active adults.
An
agriculture school programme could also provide productive physical
recreation so that children do not remain desk-bound all day, and put many
scientific subjects taught in school on a practical footing. Children could
also be given ‘homework’ where they could be encouraged to grow plants
in unused vessels, such as old buckets, pots, etc, with a prize or a grade
awarded during term tests or annual exams.
The
scourge of drugs is prevalent and parents whose children fall prey become
helpless victims as a result, but there are no sustainable programmes that
could help these children find salvation and save these families from
devastation.
The
Guyana National Service (GNS) had many positive aspects, and if it had been
run by an incorrupt administration, without fear of molestation and outright
rape by senior administrators, it may have been a success story.
Many
young persons lead aimless lives and get into mischief as a result, so a
programme along the lines of the GNS, where discipline goes hand-in-hand
with education and production, could very well provide the answer to the
dilemma of parents with recalcitrant and uncontrollable children.
Many
homeowners cover their yards completely with concrete because they cannot
recognise the beauty and the bounties that the Lord provided in the earth he
gifted to us.
Hindus
call the earth Dharti Maa, in recognition that the earth is like a mother
who provides sustenance to her offspring, so rather than desecrating her by
dumping garbage all over her, we should appreciate her nurturing bounties
instead.
Many
persons who cry marginalisation and poverty have large tracts of land at
their disposal, which they have abandoned to weeds. They prefer to beg and
bully, and instill in their children these same traits, rather than
cultivate produce and rear livestock that can provide an income and food for
their tables.
The
President is a prime example that one need not become criminal and rob other
people of their possessions with the excuse of minimal income, because his
mother taught him a primary lesson – that if you till the land to feed
yourself, then you can aspire, not merely to dream, but to climb the
mountains and achieve the heights.
Many
who leave this country, thinking that the grass is greener on the other side
of the fence, find concrete jungles instead, and that those who inhabit
those concrete jungles pine for a land of immense agricultural opportunity
such as Guyana is.
The Jagdeo Initiative is not merely the product of a president’s brilliant and innovative mind, but is also a mother’s legacy of love. Indeed, it is the legacy that all our fore-parents bequeathed this nation.
Sunday,
August 24 2008