Celebrating…ourselves

From where your Eyewitness sits, it’s been a long time comin’ – the return of the Guyana Festival, that is – after more than a decade!! Your Eyewitness well remembers the first one – and last one for a while!! – back in 2014!! Pressie was then a youthful Minister of Tourism (and Commerce) and, as usual, was very enthusiastic about the concept of having a showcase for all our various cultural expressions be exhibited on literally the same stage!! While we’ve always boasted about being the “land of six peoples”, for most of the time we “mixed but did not mingle” – that is, we didn’t really get down and show each other who we are in terms of the things that really matter to us!! Decades before your Eyewitness can remember a “Guyanese Folk Festival” – but that was quite monochromatic in so many ways!!
The problem with the 2014 festival was that for a host of reasons it didn’t unfold as well as it was expected. Your Eyewitness remembers the opening event was supposed to knock our socks off!! An aeroplane of GDF parachuters was supposed to drop then into the stadium filled with expectant folks who craned their necks to get a view. The trouble was the plane flew behind the stadium, and the parachutists were hidden from view for most of their fall!! All we could marvel at was how well they landed. Sadly, however, soon we couldn’t see anything because one falling parachutist landed and broke one of the GPL power lines!! Your Eyewitness will remain mute about the remainder of the night!! And about the culminating event of a culinary cook-off competition of traditional Guyanese cuisine, such as duck curry, pepper-pot, cook-up, metemgee, and black cake!! The food stalls had been set up to satiate his hunger pangs!!
But he’s a great believer in learning from your experience…good or bad. So, 12 years later, even though we have another Minister of Tourism – your Eyewitness can bet his bottom dollar that Pressie will be ensuring that this time around, the Guyana Festival will knock our socks off!! And this is so right, for so many reasons – not the least being that we are celebrating sixty years of independence!! Pepper-pot, a Diamond Jubilee – that gotta sparkle like a diamond!!
This time, being a food connoisseur – a not-so-obvious way of saying he loves to eat?!! – your Eyewitness will be there for the “Taste of Guyana” that is supposed to showcase all the food choices he missed in 2012! Slated for May 15–17, it’s gonna deliver heritage site tours, cultural performances, fashion, and nightly entertainment – and various competitions, including our trademark Duck Curry Competition!! As the brochure says, this is “Guyana at its most festive, bringing together food, arts, and entertainment showcasing all six of Guyana’s ethnic groups at the iconic Providence Stadium”!!
Go One Guyana!!

…labour
When most folks think about “labour” – the noun, not the verb!! – the image invoked is of a tide of “the great unwashed”! Not unreasonable – when you remember we were practically all dragged here to labour in the fields of mud from daybreak to sundown, tending to sugar cane, cotton or coffee. If we were lucky, we got a break between the said labour to wolf down some scraps from the masters’ table at Christmastime!!
Well, no more!! We have a President who revels in mixing and mingling with those who labour!! A game of dominoes? He can hit those pieces on the table with the best of them – and wolf down seven-curry with his fingers from leaves!! But this Labour Day, he sponsored a “Labour Day Brunch” at State House where the colonial order was upended – labour occupied the old masters’ high table!!
Labour was celebrated performatively!!

…longevity
Your Eyewitness looks forward to certain constants on Labour Day – looking at the chiefs-for-life of the labour movement emerging to parade in red!! He was chuffed to see one whom he thought was extinct – Yardie of the public service!!