Carrying on… with noise

We all make noise when we’re happy, don’t we?? Babies gurgle and donkeys bray!! Celebrations have always been accompanied by noise – be it music or of raised voices. Can you imagine celebrating, say, hitting the lottery and not whooping it up?? Now this ain’t no recent innovation but goes back to furthest antiquity! Remember the Greeks and Romans with their Dionysian and Bacchanalian revelries?? They were gods of “sporting” and making noise!! And in every tribal culture we made merry – noisily!! – around our campfires!! Heck!! Your Eyewitness bet that when those Cave Men brought back that deer from the hunt, they carried on like banshees!!
But here we are in 2025 Guyana and folks are complaining about noises that are driving them to distraction – and having them climbing up their walls!! What gives?? Imagine our minibus operators take the trouble to provide entertainment to their passengers – free!! – and some spoilsports call it “noise pollution”!! Can you believe it?? Now, dear reader, you may say the bus drivers could keep the music low – but then you’d miss the entire point of being West Indian, innit?!! How in god’s name can you listen to Dancehall, or Soca or Chutney “low”??
Then there’s the complaints about the music played all night – and all weekend – at wedding houses. Especially those Indian Guyanese 7-day-long weddings. Now this ain’t anything new – is it?. In the old days the musicians woulda been playing live – and the entire village would be getting down like there was no tomorrow!! In fact, did you know that the entire bawdy Caribbean Chutney genre – with its “rum till I die” ethos originated from these wedding-house goings on? And with the ladies, even!! Maybe the problem is that nowadays everyone ain’t invited??!!
But the loudest (yes…”loudest”!!) complaints to the sounds of merriment and celebration is about our “rum shops”. Now let’s be real. Even the Indigenous Peoples – who weren’t shanghaied to labour in our plantations back in the day – celebrated after hard work. Mashramani, we’re told they called it!! Now did you think they only worked one day a year?? If you said “yes” that just shows how you’ve bought into the racist European stereotypes!! Now don’t you think the slaves and indentured also wanted to celebrate after their gruelling labours in the fields. So they turned to the rum shops – which were conveniently facilitated by the ever-solicitous planter after emancipation!!
So dear readers, the noise around us are part and parcel of our culture in our neck of the woods!! Aren’t we a “happy go lucky” set of people?? And it’s part of the charm to those uptight folks from up north, who we can fleece as tourists!!
To get noisy is to be Guyanese!!

…with poverty?
Your Eyewitness notes the Opposition’s screams that folks are “struggling” in our dear land of Guyana. It’s based on the rising ‘cost of living”. Now while there’s no question the reports are describing a reality – your Eyewitness is thinking about how we’ve come to this when we have some 83,000 square miles of that land – with only three-quarters of a million people!? The focus of the articles seems to be that the government ought to wave a wand and stop the “struggling” with million-dollar handouts.
But hey…what about us?? How about the kitchen garden that used to be standard back in the day?? Each of the hard luck stories your Eyewitness read about concerned folks who were living in homes with backyards!! Is it that they don’t want to get their hands dirty to plant some Poi Bhagee and Bigan?? And how about minding some fowls??
Now don’t get your Eyewitness wrong…there ought to be a governmental safety net…but let’s help ourselves, shall we??!!

…with gridlock
While the Opposition’s wringing their hands – while weeping and wailing about the tempest in the (Judicial) tea cup – they ignore it’s an example of why their calls for power-sharing invariably brings gridlock!! Govt and Opposition won’t agree!!