The Unconventional Country Boy

The Unconventional Country Boy Do we ever really leave our past behind? The author explores his sense of belonging and identity when confronting his childhood home and the expectations he’s left behind. BY DARREN A. MC ALMONT

f you ask my people who I am, you will hear many things.

Perhaps you will learn that I am an awardwinning thespian and playwright, or that I have traveled to cities and countries that many will only dream of. Maybe you’ll even hear them say in their most polished English that “he attends York University in Toronto.” Now, all these things are true, but what they will tell you is very different from what I hear. Let me give you a bit of my backstory. I

I grew up in a small countryside village with roughly 300 people. We didn’t have electricity for most of the years I lived there. To get water for even our most basic needs, we would have to line up at the one standpipe that served my street with our buckets in hand to fetch back and forth. I slept on a doublesized mattress with my two younger brothers and older cousin. Before I hit the double digits in age, I had read countless juvenile and adult novels. In fact, reading was my favourite thing to do while all my peers played street cricket and football. So, I always was always a bit different.

Now that you know a little bit about my history from my own mouth, let me tell you the things I hear and get asked about myself from my own people who would proudly list for you my “accolades” and accomplishments. “Why [do] you speak American?” they ask, because to them, my not speaking in the mesolectal creole dialectofmypeoplesomehowmakesmeun-Guyanese and un-like one of them. “You’re a sellout,” they say, but Guyana is where they have buried my navel string –I can’t be anymore Guyanese than that. I still believe that there is no Christmas without pepper-pot and ginger beer. And cook-up rice is still my favourite meal to cook on Sundays. These are things rich in DARREN A. MC ALMONT is a fourth-year English and professional writing major and a member of MacMedia Magazine. Find him on Instagram at @darren_mcalmont Guyanese culture, so why do sometimes feel like an outcast among my own people? I am a young, Black man who has defied the odds of what my life was supposed to be coming out of small countryside village on the West Coast of Demerara.

I made it a point to break the generational curse for the men in my village that we should not amount to any greater than a labourer or construction worker. I don’t drink or do drugs, and I pride myself in having never been arrested. But these are only because I am on a mission to break the negative stereotypes of Black men. My purpose is greater than the mud dams of my village. So, my people, don’t resent me. In my heart, I am still a “country” man, and every bit of the Guyanese culture still rushes through my veins. MM “Every bit of Guyanese culture still rushes through my veins.”