BB-8-o-1
May 2, 1978
Deborah Touchette
Roy Van Dyke
Pegasus pool side w/Tim Carter, Deborah Touchette
– I met Roy the night our group was performing, he said he dropped in because he wanted to here [hear] us.
– He came with a man from the Cuban press in Guyana, both he and the man appeared to be very drunk.
– He said they were close friends, they had gone to school together in East Germany
– It was his birthday, (Roys) and he wnated to know if I would take a drink with him?
– I-said I didn t drink, so I’d have a pepsi. He got obnicious with persistence, said this is what we do in Guyana, and he was going to buy a drink for me and I was going to have a beer, (he got loud enough so that all standing around the bar could here , and the tone he used was accuation that I was too good). I told him I hated beer and if he wanted me to have a drink it would be a soft drink, or I wasn’t going to drink with him at all.
– He finaly got a drink but declared before the evening was over I was going to have one.
– He said he was going to East Germany, the govt, was asking him to go there and work in the Embassy. He felt some reservations about it because he had alot of conflicts
– said he was being put into the posit on directly under the ambassador (charge d’ affaires)
– I told him it was good and he should accept the job.
– He said he knew he could do it, but he had conflict about it. He said he didn’t even like the job he had right now because of what it in tailed.
He said theres a part of him that likes us (Peoples Temple), but at the same time he has to always keep in mind his countries goals first and what they are trying to do.
– Whenever he talks to us, or any group of non-Guyanese, he has to let them know that no one will rule us, or tell us how to run: our country (In so many words he said this is a black country and they had to mantain their nationalism).
– I told him I did’t see how he could view our group in the same way as he did others in that we were malti-raclal, not only in marriages, but our children were of different nationalities with Jim Jones as our eg.
– He maintained that people could still be racist and be married to a person of a different race, he used himself as an eg. said he was once married for nine months to a pure East Indian woman, but he still maintained that they had to protect the nationalism of the country (Blacks In Power).
– He said he knew alot of people who were married to East Indian women that would fight to keep the Indians from gaining power.
– I told him I could not understand how he could view Peoples Temple with racism at all or even a, group that was trying to gain power in Guyana. I mentioned that we came working voluntarily and didn’t take any jobs from Guyanese, and that he should come and see how we live in that we are living co-operatively, the life style that Guyana talks about and is trying to work towards. I said if nothing else he could tell what were by the way we live.
– He said you people keep inviting me up there, but you don’t seem to understand, especially Sharon [Sharon Amos] and you. He said Mike [probably Mike Prokes] understood why he couldn’t come up, but Mike was one of us and he had to maintain’ the position that we took.
– He said the reason he didn’t like his job is because he had to lie to people, people like you (Peoples Temple) and others
– He said after he came and visited with us at our home, the next day he told his collegue the young man that works With him in his office, not to talk to us unless he got – instructions from him first, but to listen and learn.
– Roy said he like talking to us because he learned alot, especially Sharon, Tim & Mike.
His friend from Cuba kept coming up to us and trying to get Roy to leave.
– Roy said he had originally come with his friend to go to the Cuban Embassy, said that
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BB-8-o-2
– May first meant alot of celebrations In Cuba because labor day, meaning that the power was in the hands of the people, ment alot In Cuba. He has! asked him to stop off at the Pegu-Bas so he could here a little of our performance.
– I kept telling Roy I thought he should go with his friend in lieu of the pegusas for some time. -He said he didn’t want to go and he would just tell his friend to go get a beer everytime he bothered him about going.
– Roy said he didn’t want me to feel Hke he was pumping me for information (which is exactly how I felt)
– He wanted to know where Sharon was, I told him she was in the Hosp. He said he would go visit her.
– The whole time he was talking to me he kept tapping my shoulder, fiddling with my collor and holding on to the neclace around my neck, I kept moving away from him and finally told him I had to go before the next performance because X was helping to quardinate it. (before this I had taken him around to try to introduce him to some of our other people so he couldn’t corner me but they were all involved in other conversations, so when I broke away from him, I asked Debbie what did she think would be the best thing to do, finally I got Tim to go with me and talk to him. Earlier I had tried to get him to go with me to see tim, he said he didn’t want to talk to Tim so he was slightly hostile when Tim came over, but just as persistant that he drink a beer and got almost nasty with Tim about this too.
– Tim had Shirley to announce a special happy birthday to him from Peoples Temple over the microphone, he became a little pleasenter to deal with.
– Earlier in the conversation I reminded him he had not given us guidelines, or a code of ethics to go by.
– He said he though the whole suggestion was ridiculous.
– He made a comment about us going from person to person asking about guidelines
– I said if we had been given some peramatures in the beginning, then maybe some of our difficulties could have been avoided, such things as customs where the things we bring in are to assits Guyana, but in all the bureaucracy, those that hinder us from bringing in things with expeediency are only hindering Guyana.
– He said something and I started to answer it, he told me to shut-up.
– I told him he had just better cool it.
– Some other people came up that I knew and I excused myself to say hello.
– a few munites later, Roy introduced me to a friend of his who was working in the National Service Press.
– His name was Fabien Comer, he said he wanted to come over to our home and talk to us about our project, said he had heard about us and was interested.
– I told him we would enjoy talking to him some time.
– He said good, then he would come over Tuesday.
– I told him Tuesday was a bad day, just after the holidays. He asked what day would be better, I told him Wed., said he would be coming at 4:30 on Wed.
– After the Show was over Roy asked Debbi Blakey to locate me, he wanted to talk to me before he left, so I kept out of sight until time to go., He caught us going out the back.
– He said another one of his friends had been left laying on the ground by members of the band and was drunk so he and the guy from the Cuban press and another Cuban fellow were trying to help him home. He asked me to step aside with him, before I herd something I wouldn”t understand. (His friend was homosexual and dressed in a somewhat transvestite fashion) He -said his father was a minister in parliment when the British were in power
– said I love my father, but he’s an ass
– said people say when he goes somewhere, Oh, your so and so’s son, but he (Ron)
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BB-8-o-3
– wanted to do something for Guyana, He wanted to do something to make people in Guyana be proud of themselves, mentiond that the people were lazy, wanted them to work to change the soclty. -He said his father lived in a fine home, but he didn’t want that type of life
– said he was given everything he wanted when he was young, and that was bad.
– He asked me to call him on Monday, I told him I could not because I would be in the parade. I told him we would come in some time this week.