Our poor City, our poor City Hall
These “brief notes” will be just that – brief and hardly full of analyses. As usual, they are basic simplified, personal.
I’m personally defeatist now in believing that I’ll never produce my booklet – the African human race. To remind Guyanese that all humans evolved from friendly sunny Africa which was then much much nearer to our South America. Until an ocean intervened to slowly separate the continental land masses.
Over thousands of years – whether you accept creation or evolution – black and brown African humans were transformed by faraway locations, geography, climate, genetics then new habits, customs, altitudes, into fairer-skinned individuals – with much-diminished melanin – dwellers of Europe and Asia, later the Americas.
Strangely, those African pioneer-originators who spent hundreds of years in the Caucasus Mountains of Europe/Asia became the forefathers ancestors of people now described as “white”. (Won’t it be scary to behold a real white person!?)
So it is my long, strongly-held belief that racial differences – especially between “white” and “black” – are stupid manufactured divisions conjured up by descendants of one vast family whose physical diversity was corrupted by minds made evil. In all sorts of ways.
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Race, racism, greed, conflicts…
During a teachers training course which this writer did in the mid-sixties, a popular “debate” surrounded a popular theme: Was racism born of slavery? Or slavery born of racism?
The Human Race existed. The Africans who re-located to Asia and Europe over thousands of years and lost origins and melanin, somehow started to feel superior! They enslaved and exploited their own. Then the descendants of their African forefathers. Racism emerged. Slowly, surely. Caucasian versus African and all others.
Along the way colonial Caucasians fostered division amongst even Brown and Black!
In Guyana today even mixed douglahs have to take sides. Too often around our planet “race” trumps oneness, love. Greed then breeds something called superiority. Resentment steps in easily. One nation wants to exercise that superiority. To exercise power. Hence internationals conflicts.
I’ll leave it there for now. What are your thoughts on this perpetual issue?
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Civil society – as monitors, as Government?
A few years ago I got “close” to an American–based Guyanese individual I now dislike very much.
But he accomplished one remarkable thing: the man, over two/three months, led a team in compiling the most comprehensive/complete directory of all non-government/civil society organisations in this Guyana. I often wonder where that document is located now. I know just where the individual is.
The re-awakening, the virtual aggression of this country’s civil society sector right now is remarkable.
Frankly speaking, the ethnic-tinged political environment, spawned since the attempted 2020 electoral thievery, has given birth to numerous new civil society groupings with both civic and political agendas. I invite you to spare some minutes to dissect some of the newer groupings. Find out some basics.
Who established the organisation? Why? How do they follow their own society’s constitution?
What “brand” or category of civil society are they? Long-established charitable or service oriented are they? Objective, a-political monitors? “Watchdogs”? Or assuming roles as akin to an alternative government? Not elected, but some bullyism to outdo the formal political opposition in holding the administration to accountability?
Recently Mr. Jagdeo had cause to analyse what he either perceived or actually discovered to be the role of some (of the newer) “civil society”/NGO groupings. Frankly speaking, he is not all wrong. Whether “you are pro-PPP” or not you can easily detect combined support for the formal political opposition.
Former PNC ideologue as well as a former PPP government minister Henry Jeffrey is fond of reminding all interested that major national issues – from electoral reform to constitutional or judicial integrity – should not be left to any government alone. Agreed! But let’s also monitor the activities of certain civil-society” fronts. Agreed?
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Any tears left for Georgetown?
Cry my beloved city! From garden to garbage. Sorry. I won’t go on again this Friday.
But as one who has “occupied” our Caribbean–like capital for more than three-quarters of a century; one who has witnessed expansion introduce rampant urban deterioration, neglected by anti-Georgetown political forces and inept municipalities, I now regard George-town as the foremost symbol of Guyana’s stagnated under-development.
Frankly speaking, I feel that only the sustained collaboration between government and political opposition; municipal will and competence utilising myriad resources and citizen-participation; then rigid enforcement of regulations to sustain order and aesthetics, can bring back Georgetown.
Days ago Maggie reminded me of the past majesty of the physical City Hall building; a one-time Gothic/ Victorian edifice which enhanced Georgetown’s Caribbean character. Now a mere architectural derelict mismanaged by urban Philistines. Whenever I pass by, I pray that the Trinidadians oversee the restoration of City Hall’s grandeur. Poor us…
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Ponder, reflect…
● 1) Some original civil society organisations (CSO’s) – Lions, Rotary, Jaycees – all had overseas headquarters or connections.
Interesting now to behold “militant” CSO’s approaching outside for support.
● 1b) Could Russian president Putin’s savagery against Ukrainians be somehow worse if they were non-white?
● 2) President Biden seems poised to relax further restrictions on his vast southern border. To the delight of more illegal “immigrants”. Where are my Guyanese?
● 3) Georgetown’s Festival City is getting ready to celebrate its 50th anniversary – along with Carifesta’s 50th too. Positive!
Til next Friday!
