It is quite common during holiday seasons – including the upcoming Republic Day Mashramani celebrations – most householders will be expecting visitors and will plunge into a frenzy of cleaning and “fixing up” so as to make a good impression. They do this because even though they might have strayed from their ideal in their quotidian practice, they do in fact have that ideal buried somewhere inside of their minds or psyches. And as for individuals so for the country – which, after all, is the collectively of all of us.
Over the past decade, nearing celebrations all stops are pulled out to spruce up our capital and other locales across the country. Who would deny that the improved surroundings, even in a small way, imparted a spring to our steps and a straightening of our shoulders in the rest of the country. We are all Guyanese and barring some partisan posturings, this was a “Guyanese thing”.
The question has to be asked, as it also can be posed at the individual level, why can’t we keep Guyana beautiful all the time? It is the conviction of this newspaper that it can be done but it will take a reappraisal of how we view ourselves. Take Georgetown, for instance. It was not always the dump it very frankly it has reverted back into. Not too long ago, at the time of our independence it was known as the “Garden City” and was widely admired in the Caribbean as one of the prettier capitals.
We’re the same people – well maybe the descendants of some of those people – and if the city and country could have been beautiful then it certainly can be beautiful now. What has changed is that we are now willing to accept not only mediocrity in those running our city but in them forcing us to live like animals in a sewer and garbage dump. This state of affairs has also spread into the countryside. No idyllic pastoral landscape any longer: garbage by the roadsides and bushes in the clogged drains are now the norm. The rot began during the collapse of the economy during the Burnham dictatorship and gradually, a beaten and broken people perhaps began accepting that they were not deserving of beauty and cleanliness.
As we pointed out the conditions were reversed when the central government intervened. But the responsibility for keeping our surroundings pristine and immaculate is the responsibility of the local and municipal bodies and ultimately, we the people. And we know we can do better. Who has not visited some foreign country and taken inordinate trouble to dump our candy wrappers into garbage cans yet upon returning home, thrown such garbage onto the streets with impunity? And we rail about how “third world” we are and pummel the government.
What we are proposing in that we as a people must start transforming Guyana at the level we are personally responsible for: our homes and our yards. We can then venture outside of our yards and perchance improve our drains and parapets? The next step is to insist that our local authorities take care of their responsibilities – but not before we take care of ours. We have imbibed an awful, anti democratic habit that we look to government – at whatever levels – to solve problems that we can handle on our own. Again this was the consequence of the Burnhamite dispensation that proposed that the state was to be the alpha and omega of Guyanese life.
We have to recover the conviction that all of us are deserving of living in dignity amidst beautiful surroundings. We have to recover the conviction also that we have a large role in achieving such a lifestyle. Why can’t we insist that the best village and best neighbourhood competitions be resuscitated? Let us start at the local level and work upwards. Let us begin to spruce up our once “Oh beautiful Guyana”.
