Ms. Afeefa Ally -what a wonderful Guyanese story

Ms. Afeefa Ally –what a wonderful Guyanese story

OPINION BY; GHK LALL–August  2026

Hers is one of those great, big, feel good stories.  The achievement of Ms. Afeefa Ally brings a glow.  Of delight at her overachievement.  Splendidly done, Ms. Ally.  She now stands as a role model for others.  Through can do energy.  Becoming an inspiration for the challenged.  A standard of going forth and never looking back, never giving up.  Amid all the highfliers at this year’s CSEC rite of passage for Guyanese youths, Ms. Ally’s story is the one that will stay with me.  One that I will use as a reference, when I hear excuses.  When I see shrinking and complaining about all that is wrong with the world and unfair about life.

For me, Ms. Afeefa Ally’s seven subjects represent more than a hard-earned milestone.  It is a monument to determination and dedication.  At the risk of gross exaggeration, it is several times the number of subjects that she earned.  The stars aligned.  The system in the home came together, worked.  The support system in the school overperformed.  From teachers and friends.  From a 59-year-old grandmother to the daily journey to be back in a school again. 

A helping hand.  A comforting presence.  A familiar companion.  Too often, the worse that Guyana has to offer is on display.  Very quietly, this young lady toiled in the CSEC trenches and emerged smelling like a rare rose.  Seven Grade Ones, three grade twos.  Guyanese have every cause to be proud of her work ethic, her outstanding achievement against the odds.  Despite the hand that fate has dealt her. 

I am proud of Afeefa Ally.  Her achievement is Guyana’s achievement.  I feel like it is mine.

I would like to suggest that the Government of Guyana search for ways on how it could render a hand to her in this her now post CSEC years.  I wish there were more stories like hers.  Of the students from various indigenous communities, who rise above their environment of destitution and ever so often official depravity.  Of the children from broken or abusive homes, who tarried on relentlessly, and kept the midnight oil burning.  Of those hopefuls laboring in neighborhoods where the noise of the music peals to the equivalent of an atomic explosion, and where alcohol and other substances of unrestrained merriment are the order of the day and the long hours of the night. 

I can visualize the candle going down to its last flicker, and a head resting exhaustedly and uneasily on a small table so laden with books.  An age so suffused with hope.  Education for poor Guyanese is more than about the future.  It is about the richness of the oxygen that, at times, can be so difficult to encounter, then infinitely more of a struggle to inhale.

I love these kinds of stories.  The challenge for me is that they are so far apart.  A lonely trickle here, a lost episode in some forlorn corner of Guyana.  It is why they are cherished the more, and an Afeefa Ally stands as Guyana’s latest golden child.  Except that she is one that is different.  Numbers that are small in comparison.  An institution that is not usually among those hailed and heralded, that owns and controls the spotlight year after year.  From an area that is some distance from the busy, on the run, up in the clouds, metropolis.  

A separate word is due to her grandmother.  It is some sacrifice, those days.  In itself, one that I cannot remember coming across in my time here, or travels elsewhere.  At least, she could read, so she was in a position to help.  And help she did with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of patience, and something else. 

There has to be some love in there.  A deep, abiding, love.  We shall see this through together.  Ms. Afeefa Ally and her grandma did.  This is as grand as it gets.  There are still these types of Guyanese that inspire hope deep inside.