Celebrating…our culture

Well, it’s been a long time comin’ – 12 long years – but it’s worth it!! Good things come to those who wait, no??!! Your Eyewitness is talking about the “Guyana Festival” – under the theme “Sound, Soul, and Taste” – that kicked off on Friday and will drop its curtains tonight!! After the scintillating stage performances – the Sound!! – your Eyewitness wandered around and tasted the fare copiously!! Like he said when he broached the topic at the beginning of the month – he’s an “eat man”!! And food, he firmly believes, is the essence of “Soul”!!
And that’s why he supports the present concept of the Guyana Festival to focus on our everyday cultural forms like food – and not some hoity-toity notion that our erstwhile masters tried to drill into us!! Literally!! While we’ve got a full range of dishes that are bequeathed from every group (curry, pepper pot, garlic pork, fried rice, etc.) and that we all enjoy, central to our food – in your Eyewitness estimation – is that mouth-watering concoction called “cook-up”!! Is there anything more Guyanese than our cook-up?! And is there any dish that every one of our so-called “six people” universally love?? Now some of the Islanders also claim to have a “cook-up” dish – but your Eyewitness has sampled some of them, and they just don’t measure up!!
But Pressie – who’s demonstrated he’s no mean cook and who clearly enjoys his food!! – took time to remind us that his vision of One Guyana goes beyond a three-day carousing! Now don’t get your Eyewitness wrong – carousing is good!! The nation that carouses together stays together!! But ultimately there’s no need for any one group to discard any part of what they consider to be their culture!! Hey!! To be “multicultural” – as is the Government’s policy – means we can retain our individual cultural expressions in the “cook up” of Guyanese culture!!
But the glue that will bind us in that cook-up – the coconut milk, to extend the analogy!! – will be for every Guyanese to EXPERIENCE being treated equally in the Government’s development programme. And that’s where Pressie can trot out facts and figures to show this ain’t just an aspiration – but a fast-emerging reality!! Not an established reality yet – because of inherited barriers, stereotypes and attitudes. But if we’re honest, we gotta agree we’re getting there!!
As such, Pressie’s exhortation to youths to throw off the yoke of racial divisions – which they didn’t create – resounded!! Because its fuel has always been politicians pointing to alleged discrimination and preferential treatment of whichever group they were trying to mobilise to get them into power!!
Equality of treatment must now be the core of our Guyanese culture in our One Guyana!!

…a US-China truce??
Well, US President Trump went, saw, but realistically didn’t try to conquer China!! So what was achieved for those of us in Guyana who’re trying to manoeuvre in the new dangerous terrain of the global struggle between the two countries to be number one!! It’s said that when elephants fight or make love, the grass still gets crushed!! What your Eyewitness saw was Xi making it clear waaay up front that THEIR number one priority is Taiwan!! “No independence” is their mantra and their hard boundary!! Trump didn’t protest this “red line”!!
The second takeaway was Xi’s plea that China and the US avoid the “Thucydides Trap”, where the rising power makes war against the hegemon inevitable!! The subtext is that in the reference to the ancient Grecian Peloponnesian War analysed by Thucydides, the rising power (Athens) prevails!! Trump didn’t protest the implication that China might!! The third takeaway was the open invitation to all the American big business reps that showed up!!
So, forget about them producing in America??

…common accents
A video of an Irish politician making an impassioned speech in Parliament has gone viral because the fellow’s County Cork accent sounded so… well … JAMAICAN!! Actually, a lot of our Caribbean pronunciation comes from early teachers who were Irish!
Like “t’ing” rather than “thing”!!