Dear Editor,
Over the years, I have always boasted to my friends about the beautiful stretch of beach which is located in the village of my birth − Suddie, Essequibo Coast.
You can however well imagine my alarm and disgust when on my last visit there this past Saturday, I was confronted with the unsightly presence of a slew of broken bottles, crushed cans, plastic bottles of all sizes and colours and other paraphernalia, the majority of which bore labels which gave a clear indication of the type of liquid which had been consumed. I later understood from one of my friends, that this was the aftermath of the Easter Monday kite-flying activities.
In my day, on Easter Monday, we went to the beach to fly kites and that is exactly what we did. In the process, we revelled in the consumption of some of our (grand)mothers’ homemade drinks and cakes.
Today, what passes for kite-flying in some circles, is the open consumption of alcohol, blaring music from ‘boom’ boxes and from what was quite evident at the Suddie beach, the deliberate breaking of beer bottles, to add to the ‘excitement.’
I have always associated a visit to the beach with walking barefoot in the sand and feeling the waves of the mighty Essequibo River gently rushing against my feet at the shoreline.
Were I to have done that last Saturday, I would surely have been a candidate for medical attention on my feet. My only consolation was, however, that should I have required such attention, I would not have had to traverse very far, since the section of the beach that has caused me so much concern, was directly in front of the Suddie Hospital, which is located just across the road.
When I think of what now obtains for Easter Monday kite-flying and what obtained when I was young(er), the words of the Bob Dylan classic ‘The times they are a-changing’ are quite appropriate.
Yours faithfully,
Maurice Abraham
