Kool Aid

A friend from Florida brought my wife, much to her delight, a whole bag full of sachets of Kool Aid. It's not something that you get here in Scotland and my wife (She's Canadian) likes to drink it whenever we're back visiting Canada, it's not what you'd call a healthy drink as you pretty much just add water and a whole load of sugar and then mix!

I guess it's not really that different from many other soft drinks, perhaps being able to make it up yourself and actually seeing how much sugar it takes to make it sweet is actually a good thing? I love how it says "Unsweetened soft drink" under the name though, it's like trying to say polos have a low fat centre ;)

Drinking the Kool Aid

The name "Kool Aid" always reminds me of a much more significant event that took place when I was in my childhood. When I had just turned six years old our whole family moved to Guyana in South America as my Dad had a job working for the Guyanese Electricity Corporation for a couple of years. We lived in a pretty nice house in the capital city of Georgetown right next to sugar cane fields and across the road from the famous cricketer Clive Lloyd (The Guyanese love their cricket!). Although English was commonly spoken in Guyana my brother and I went to a North American primary school there as the local schooling was well behind where we were at compared the the UK.

About 150 miles away from Georgetown in a remote part of the jungle a small community had been established in early 1974 by members of a religious organisation called the Peoples Temple. The community's official name was the 'Peoples Temple Agricultural Project', but was informally known as 'Jonestown' after the leader of the group Jim Jones.

Jonestown was formed after Jim Jones and other members of the Peoples Temple effectively fled from America due to increasing investigation into their activities, members of the Peoples Temple had left the organisation and claimed that it was a cult. By the time I moved to Guyana in August 1978 there were over 900 people living at Jonestown.

In November 1978, due to increasing concern by the families of people who had moved to Jonestown the US government sent Congressman Leo Ryan to investigate claims of abuse. A number of people expressed their desire to leave when Leo Ryan visited. The following day Leo Ryan, along with those wishing to leave and accompanying journalists, headed to a small airstrip at Port Kaituma to meet two small aircraft that would fly them home. As they were arriving and about to board the planes some other members of the Peoples Temple opened fire on the group, killing Leo Ryan, three journalists and one of the leaving members.

Back at Jonestown on the evening of November 18th, Jim Jones and over 900 members of the Peoples Temple killed themselves by drinking Kool Aid laced with cyanide, in total 918 people died that evening.

As news of this tragedy spread to Georgetown there was a lot of anti-American feeling in Georgetown (or at least fear that there might be). In response to this I remember that guards were posted outside the American School that I went to. My mother said that a lot of airplanes could be seen flying out of Georgetown as the bodies of those that had died were transported back to America.

I was only 6 years old at the time but I've always had some memories of that event, although I'm not quite sure what my parents told me at the time. It's heart-breaking reading the background to it all, it's strange knowing that this happened only a short distance from where I was at the time.

There is also another possible source to the phrase 'Drinking the Kool Aid', it is sometimes attributed to Ken Kesey's book "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" which recounts the use of LSD-laced Kool Aid in the 1960s psychadelic movement. There is an interesting connection between the two possible meanings of the phrase, Jim Jones took LSD (and other drugs) and this is regarded as being one of many contributing factors to his state of mind and subsequently to the events in Guyana in November 1978.

Sorry, I realise this has turned into an epicly depressing blip! There is information on Wikipedia if you want to find out more.