Members of the Guyanese community in Barbados gathered on Saturday evening for a candlelight vigil to reflect on the lives of the 20 indigenous children who were burnt to death in the Mahdia female dormitory fire on May 22, 2023, in the South American country.
The memorial event was held at the Rustic Bar in Mason Hall Street, The City and was organised by General Secretary of the Caribbean for Peace and Integration David Denny, along with other Guyanese nationals and the owner of the bar.
Denny said it was necessary for Guyanese living in Barbados to come together in solidarity to reflect on the lives of the young people who died tragically.
“We felt the pain and the suffering that would have affected the people of Guyana when the students died in the fire. And I want to express some kind of feeling and solidarity because, for us in Barbados, they are our family, we are all one Caribbean people whether we are of African descent or Carib or Arawak or Indian, and that is important,” Denny said.
Denny said he was currently exploring his options regarding what type of assistance Guyanese living in Barbados could render to the persons who lost loved ones in the tragedy.
“I know that some of the Caribbean governments have been sending some form of support to Guyana. Cuba has sent a medical team to Guyana to help, but we have to do something very important, very helpful and sincere, so that we can help the families of those students.
“I understand the pain that they are going through. Imagine you are in a building, and it is burning, and you are going to die, and there is no way out,” he said.
Denny recalled: “We had a similar case right here in Barbados on Tudor Street in a store where you had young ladies in a burning building, and they could not get out. All of them died. There were people standing in the streets watching, and not one person could have assisted them.”
Sixteen-year-old Laliwa Hadali Corrie, a Lokono-Arawak from Pakuri Tribal Territory located 60 miles up the Mahaica River in Region 4 Guyana, extended gratitude to the organisers of the event.
Corrie related that she could only imagine the overwhelming terror and excruciating pain those innocent children endured for the last minutes of their lives, and also the sentence of grief and regret that each and every one of their surviving siblings and parents will have to cope with for the remainder of their lives.
Corrie, whose father, Damon Gerard Corrie, is the Faithkeeper of the Eagle Clan of the Lokono-Arawak Tribal Nation of Guyana, said no parent should have to bury their own child in normal life and noted that it should be the other way around.
“We can only hope that some important good may come out of this tragedy, and necessary changes will be made to ensure that this will be the last tragedy of this nature in the hinterland of Guyana.
“The once happy, smiling faces of those children that were so full of hope for a better future for themselves, their families and their tribes, must never be forgotten by our collective minds, nor ever erased from our collective hearts,” Corrie said.
Richard Winter, another indigenous Guyanese, said it was heart-wrenching to receive the news about the deadly fire in Mahdia, which he once called home. Winter, who said he was familiar with most of the village where the children came from, declared that there were not enough words to heal the aching hearts of those relatives grieving the loss of their loved ones.
“But I would like them to know that we may be miles away from each other in the flesh, but spiritually we are together, and we will keep them in mind. There are other plans that I have. Whenever the indigenous village [in St John] is completed, I am surely hoping that I will have the opportunity to meet with the surviving children,” Winter said.
