O beautiful Guyana

It is de rigueur during the Christmas season that even if householders are not expecting visitors, they will plunge into a frenzy of cleaning and “fixing up” and beautification.  And the same is true for most holidays. We do this because even though we might have strayed from our ideal in our quotidian practice, we do in fact have that ideal buried somewhere inside of our minds or psyches. And as for individuals, so for the country – which, after all, is the collectivity of all of us.
Over the past decades, the central Government – exhorted and assisted by members of civil society and the armed forces – has pulled out all the stops to spruce up our capital – especially this year – and other locales across the country. Who would deny that the improved surroundings, even in a small way, impart 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 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 they 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 also 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 their candy wrappers into garbage cans?  Yet upon returning home, promptly throw such garbage onto the streets with impunity? And we rail about how “third world” we are and pummelled the Government.
What we are proposing is 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 level – 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”.