Still considerably deni-ed the vast majority of the amenities that make for what one might call ‘a good living,’ the district of Moruca, a sub-region of Region One (Barima/ Waini) is currently staging its eleventh Moruca Expo.
As of yesterday, it was expected that residents of the community would put on sale the variety of produce, mostly ground vegetables, timber and craft in the hope that the three-day event will attract the attention of nearby communities as well as business owners and revellers from Georgetown.
Since the lunch of the event in July 2005 the focus has been on turning it into a venture that can grow the economy of the largely agricultural community though Event Coordinator Paul Grahame Atkinson told Stabroek Business that it has been “tough going.”
This year, the event is offering stalls to the approximately 20 vendors who are expected to participate. It is one of the ways of raising the profile of the event and the vendors are being asked to pay $8,000 to rent a stall.
The vending is a modest economic venture with many of the investors pinning their hopes on the sale of Moruca’s craft and its famous casareep. Revenue from the Expo accruing to the community as a whole is expected to gross more than $2 million, a modest amount by wider standards but sufficient to assist with what the community sees as an incremental development process. Grahame says that such modest projects as can be financed from the proceeds will be spent primarily in the direction of job-creation.
Over the years some urban businesses have sought to chip-in with sponsorship for the event. Grahame names the Institute of Private Enterprise Development (IPED) and Farfan and Mendes as two such entities. This year, Digicel, the Guyana Tourism Authority and the Ministry of Indigenous Affairs have been in the forefront of sponsorship. The support, Grahame says, however, is not nearly sufficient to meet the needs of the event. All too often residents of Moruca find themselves going into their pockets to support the event. What Grahame would evidently prefer is more reliable and extended private and public sector support for a sustainable event.
To attract the attention of young people at Moruca and other nearby communities the event focuses on sport. Here again, the paucity of sponsorship has meant that in the case of the football competition, for example, participating teams will be required to subsidize the accumulated prize monies that go to the winning teams in the football tournament staged as part of the overall event.
Grahame expects that around 3,000 persons from Moruca, neighbouring communities, Linden and Georgetown will participate in the event though the community continues to live in hope of more generous support from other communities.
For the weekend – and for a change – the handful of guest houses are fully booked at rates of around $6,000 per night. Residents of the community offering Bed and Breakfast services, at around $3,000 per night are also expected to benefit from a windfall.
Still, Grahame says, the Expo is far from adequate to sustain and grow a community. Some of the male residents of Moruca have travelled to other parts of Region One, including Port Kaituma to mine gold. Grahame says that they encounter mixed fortunes and that he seeks to encourage them to consider their home community as a location for investment. He concedes that up until now he has not made a great deal of headway.
After this weekend the people of Moruca will return to their farms and to ferrying their agricultural produce, craft, casareep and cassava bread to coastal markets at Charity and to a lesser extent, Georgetown.
Grahame hopes that by the time the next Expo comes around more of those markets will be coming to Moruca.
