Well, look story hey!! For generations, Guyana had a simple theory about Amerindians in the hinterland – being poor was natural; backward was cultural – and development meant becoming more like Georgetown!! Now oil money’s beginning to challenge those assumptions!! Addressing Amerindian residents of Bumbury deep in the North West PM Mark Phillips – decked out in a colour feather headdress – warned them that becoming wealthy shouldn’t make them to lose their cultural heritage!! Your Eyewitness thinks it’s good advice – but there’s a deliciously Guyanese irony in having to give it!!
Hitherto, the hinterland was always treated as the place where people needed to be “developed” – no roads, no electricity and those grass skirts!! Town folks looked at themr with that peculiar mixture of pity and superiority reserved for people who hadn’t yet discovered the joys of traffic jams, high rents and supermarket prices!! “Backward” wasn’t said aloud, of course – we’re too polite for that. We simply called it “bush”.
And “development” meant bringing the bush into the “modern” world – usually by giving them the things town people already had and then congratulating ourselves!! But now we got oil and LCDS Funds and voila!! the people in the bush may have money – creating a serious philosophical problem for town folks!! What do they call Amerindians having nice houses, pickups, internet, businesses, university-educated children – and money in the bank??
And – as PM Phillips advised – if they still speak their language, hunt, fish, practise their traditions and maintain their communal ties, GT’ gonna have an even greater conundrum!! That Amerindians can be modern without becoming GTers!! That’s gonna be their real challenge – they cannot spend sixty years telling folks they’re backward cause they ain’t got money and then, when they finally get some are discomfited, they gan have their cake and eat it too!! Maybe THEY will have to follow Schuman and let it all hang out??!!
Truth is, the oil era gives us an opportunity to do something radically different – let prosperity allow Amerindian communities to choose what THEY want to retain and what THEY want to change – not force them to choose between development and identity! Let the young Amerindians have the smartphones, SUVs, university degrees and businesses – but let them ALSO know the stories, rivers, forests, languages and traditions that existed – long before Georgetown was carved out of the mudflats on the Demerara River mouth!!
For generations, we’ve expected Amerindians to become more like us – but your Eyewitness appreciates the advise that the oil age should allow them to become wealthier versions of themselves!! After all, GT’s had hundreds years to teach the rest of us how to be “modern.”
Look how well that turned out!!
…to progress
Your Eyewitness came across a report that some folks are put off that the Ministry of Housing has moved out of its cramped 19th century HQ on Brickdam – to their new skyscraper building on Heroes Highway!! Never mind that they wouldn’t have to to be milling around no mo’ like cattle in a corral at the Brickdam location cause they just couldn’t get into the building!! They’ve kvetching about the need to now take a #42 bus to get to Heroes!!
While your Eyewitness knows that the Yellow Breasted newsrag’s gonna ferret out every complaint against the government to highlight – he also knows that we Guyanese are seemingly programmed to bitch and moan about everything!! So, he wonders whether that’s why that double-tower building that’s supposed to house ALL government offices out of GT just doesn’t seem to be making progress!!
Anyhow, we’ve just gotta get used to the idea that as Guyana progresses, we’re gonna have to adapt to the CHANGES that progress implies!!
…for BRICS+
With BRICS+ meeting in New Delhi, your Eyewitness doesn’t expect much more than platitudes to be issued – rather than them presenting an alternative to the status quo. The big guns – China and India – simply have too many conflicting ambitions!!
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