Dear Editor,
I’m a regular visitor to my homeland and this is my first since the change of government. Don’t get me wrong; there are many improvements I’ve noticed since my last visit which are too numerous to mention. But I’m focusing on a few fixable things that get on my nerves.
First off, the clean-up campaign does wonders for the city. That was a great start. However, I’ve noticed mini-piles of garbage, mainly styrofoam containers, beginning to accumulate here and there again. Keeping our cities clean is an ongoing project. We need more garbage bins available on our streets. I heard some talk of a styrofoam ban. That might help. The canal by the museum (on the Guyana Stores side) is once again clogged with styrofoam and garbage. Maybe we should have a little ‘garbage watch’ section in the papers listing the locations of garbage pile-ups written in by citizens. It’s just a suggestion.
The second bone to pick is with the TV news anchors and reporters. Why are they spoiling our beautiful Guyanese accent? Almost all of them have this annoying habit of going on a lower tone on the second-to-last word of a sentence then raising the tone of the last word. Guyanese don’t speak like that.
It sounds so canned and artificial, like the mechanical announcements at airports. When you listen to the call-in shows or the hosts on the morning shows on our TV stations, you hear the natural Guyanese accent. I’m not talking about creolese; proper English but with a natural Guyanese accent. As soon as it’s news time anchors come on with this terrible ending to each sentence. Only when I left these shores did I realize how much our accent is loved by other Caribbean nationals (Jamaicans say we talk like we singing). Then I come home to hear all the DJ’s trying to talk Jamaican patois. That’s another annoyance. And we definitely have to do something about the loud music, particularly on public transport. It’s the same slackness over and over. It’s hard to find a quiet ride in the city.
The third sand-in-my-soup is, why after all these years are the names Burnham and Jagan still in the forefront of discussion. Unless we’re talking about Joey Jagan, we shouldn’t have the names of these two dead men dominating our lives. Trinis and Bajans don’t cough up the names of Eric Williams or Errol Barrow in daily conversations, even though both leaders played important roles in their countries’ histories. As long as we keep resurrecting these two names in every conversation we’ll be stuck in the era of race politics. This change of government is supposed to be a milestone where Guyanese are prepared to shake the dust of race politics and move into a new era. While we are supposed to be mindful of the past, the names of these two former leaders are coming up way too often in discussions. It indicates we’re looking back in the past much too often instead of looking to the future. That’s just my three-cents.
Yours faithfully,
Nathaniel Hinckson
