Forging ahead…or forging?

Your Eyewitness had cause yesterday to take a trip up to CJIA to pick up a visiting relative from foreign. He’s not usually given to acting as chauffeur, but the fella had been a friend as well as a relative – and your Eyewitness wanted to check out the new connectivity he’d been reading so much about recently. Right off the bat he was quite chuffed that he could use the Heroes Highway to join the East Bank Road all the way to Diamond near the DDL plant!! He didn’t have to fight his way through the parking lot that the stretch between Banks and DDL invariably became – evidently for the sole purpose of driving him to drink!! And no…it had nothing to do with moving between the two largest producers of spirituous drinks!!
The refurbishing and widening of the East Bank Road had been going on since the beginning of the millennium, innit? It used to have so many potholes that gynaecologists were known to have women facing difficult deliveries be driven over for just a mile – any mile – and a bouncing baby was guaranteed!! Your Eyewitness remembers some Trini company – Seeram Bros? – executing the millennial contract! They’d guaranteed eliminating our perilous airport trips – what with new drains off the parapet and all! Advanced engineering!! Sadly, all of that was soon gone for channa, as increasing numbers of sand trucks combined with encroaching buildings in some sections and water percolating under the road’s foundation from the adjoining Demerara River in others to make all the best-laid plans of men and engineers all go awry!!
But here it was; he’d zipped from town to Diamond in less than half an hour!!  He felt like he was Verstappen on a straight stretch in an F1 outing in Monaco!! Sadly, it wasn’t long before his high spirits were dashed… and Pressie pointing out that the absentee rate of our workers on these projects came to mind!  What else could explain the tedious construction obstacles just a few miles from Diamond extending all the way to CJIA? OK… Some bridges were being built… or maybe a roundabout at the Soesdyke junction with the Linden Highway, etc. Your Eyewitness had even recently read of some new approach to resolving the percolating Demerara River water undermining the foundations – but still!!  From the confusion your Eyewitness saw – even with Police stationed to prevent 3rd line undertakings and the usual other Guyanese drivers’ outrageous behaviour – he could see us entering 2027 and still not having a completed East Bank Road to the airport!
Now Pressie had also mentioned that Heroes Highway was gonna connect up to the Buzz Bee Highway, which would take us up to Craig… and then some new ones all the way to CJIA!! It’s quite possible that these may be completed before the EBR – not just because of tardy workers but because unless we have a revetment for the water of the Demerara River… we might just repeat the Trini Company’s tilting at Watermills!!
But all was not bleak. The fella was going to the West Side, and your Eyewitness had the (extreme) pleasure of crossing the spectacular BJ Demerara River Bridge!! It reminded your Eyewitness that we’d tinkered with the old floating bridge for over 40 years, but it was still a challenge to maintain. A completed new approach worked!!
The new inland highways might just solve the EBD challenge!!

…on MAGA
One thing about Donald Trump is that he don’t beat AROUND the bush!! If he sees a bush – or Bush! – he doesn’t like, he’ll beat the heck out of the bush!! At this time one of the bushes in his sight is to “Make America Great Again” (MAGA), and what’s interesting is Trump’s vision of a “great” America! Not the America of that “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” inscribed on the Statue of Liberty but one that is purged of all those who want to keep on huddling in a welfare state!!
He also believes that anybody who doesn’t admire the “American Way” – rough and ready as it is – can lump it and leave!! Towards this end he’s given a whole new take on the American classic “The Iceman Cometh”!  In this modern iteration, members of ICE – the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit – have been charged with the mission of cleaning up America!!
By whatever means necessary!

…on peace
Venezuelan charismatic opposition firebrand Maria Machado passed on her Nobel Peace Prize to President Trump when they met. She knows that real peace can only come with respect… which Trump has earned.