Fisherman in eight-year search for parents
Abandoned when he was nine-months-old
By Daniel DaCosta
Stabroek News
November 19, 2003
Seven months after he was born, Nazir Mohamed's father Ayube Mohamed, then a member of the Guyana Police Force abandoned him and his mother Chandrowttie. Two months later his mother walked out of their Lot 93 Sheet Anchor Village, East Canje Berbice home leaving him with an elderly couple who owned the house they lived in. Since then Nazir has not heard from or seen his parents despite an unending search which has taken him across East and West Berbice, the East Coast of Demerara, Georgetown and East Bank Demerara. His date of birth is stated as February 18, 1973 and his place of birth as Herstelling, East Bank Demerara.
The 30-year-old fisherman told Stabroek News recently that he does not know his parents and is "dying to meet them". However, he has been unable to find any trace of them at Herstelling where he was born, and several senior citizens in the village told him that his parents did not have any roots there. "What they told me was that they might have lived in the village for a brief period during which my mother gave birth to me and then may have moved to another area. Apparently, they moved to Sheet Anchor where they rented a house owned by David Seenarine, known as `Bush Bull'.
According to Nazir, he was told by the Seenarines, now deceased, that shortly after his parents rented the house, his father told his mother that he was going to Georgetown to attend a seminar but never returned. "I learnt that two weeks later a friend came to our home and told my mother that my father had left the country.
Some two months after I was told my mother left me alone in the house and never returned. I was told by the Seenarines who took me in and eventually adopted me, that I was about nine months old at the time." David Seenarine died about five years ago while his wife died eight years ago leaving Nazir in their home at Sheet Anchor.
His search for his parents began at the age of 22, just around the time his foster mother died. "It was a very hard blow for me when Mrs Seenarine died. She was a mother to me and when she died I decided that I had to find my real parents. Then when her husband died I was devastated, he was a father to me. It seemed as if the whole world was crumbling around me and the urge to find my parents had become greater."
Nazir is not certain of the origins of his parents and would like anyone who might have known them to contact him as soon as possible. Unfortunately, fate recently dealt Nazir yet another cruel blow when the mother of his 8-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son deserted them leaving him to take care of them. "It is difficult since I am a fisherman and most times I am away struggling to earn money to take care of them. Some kind neighbours and friends, however, take care of them when I am not around." Nazir is hoping and praying that his children would not be dealt the same fate as him. "I would like them to grow up in a home where both parents are present. I would like them to get an education and good jobs so they could be independent and would not have to endure any hardships and deprivations."
"I don't know if my parents are alive or dead. I hope they are alive and one or both of them may read this story and make contact with me. I want to know my parents and to see what they look like. I feel sad and left out when I see other boys and girls, men and women walking with, visiting, shopping, going to school or church with their parents," he told this newspaper. "It is very painful and only someone in my position can know what I feel and experience every day. I feel sometimes as if I am in a dark world all the time. It is a feeling I cannot explain or put into words." Nazir is hoping that someday soon his pain, his sadness and the emptiness inside of him would all disappear when he is again reunited with one or both of his parents. Meanwhile his search continues.