Well, one thing your Eyewitness knows is that if this is September, then “school open”, and it’s Amerindian Heritage Month!! On the former, parents are now breathing great sighs of relief that the “apples” (mangoes?) of their eyes are now out of their hair – for at least seven hours every weekday!! With our newfound wealth as the fastest-growing economy in the world and everybody owning a car, your Eyewitness had noticed a new tradition developing – drivers bemoaning the reappearance of the ubiquitous school buses on the road clogging up traffic!!
But September ain’t just kids continuing another term – it’s a whole new school year with a new cohort entering different grades and, for the wee ones, entering school itself for the very first time!! And since we know that even as adults new situations create tensions and anxiety, let’s spare a thought for how our kids are dealing with their new pressures!! Your Eyewitness has been reading a lot about how the nature of education itself is changing radically at this time – with AI just ONE of the novelties – creating another source of anxiety!! Especially for teachers who’re gonna have to figure out whether ChatGPT or some other bot is submitting homework – rather than their charges!!
One of the sadder new developments that your Eyewitness noticed in our schools is the “gang” violence that’s erupting across our fair land! Now, whenever you put kids together, you’re gonna have beefs developing between some of them – who didn’t witness or participate in one dustup or another after school?? But today, knives, and even guns have entered the picture, and if this continues, there’s gonna be little difference between schoolyards and prison yards!! In your Eyewitness’ estimate, parents MUST play a much greater role to steer their kids into the productive paths that schools were supposed to provide!
Then we come to the second fork of September – Amerindian Heritage Month!! When your Eyewitness was a wee lad (and you can tell he went to a Church of SCOTLAND School!!) this wasn’t around!! Sadly, the only thing he knew about our native peoples was a poem – “There was an Indian” – which started out by claiming the poor fellow had “known no change”!! That Amerindians were living in a state much as they had done through the millennia – an uncivilised state!!
Well, looking around today, things have certainly changed, haven’t they?? Rather than living in the forests and being seen as “backward”, they’re praised for “sustaining the environment” – and getting big bucks for doing so!! The PPP has given titles to Amerindian lands and schools; hospitals and community centres now anchor their villages!!
Not to mention new employment opportunities!!

…up a new tradition
When the British saw that the West Indian Federation they’d created with their colonies in this neck of the woods – in which we chose to stay out – wasn’t going nowhere, they decided to give them “independence”!! Yes, “give” – so let’s not get too carried away with those claiming one or the other of our leaders FOUGHT for independence!! This can be gleaned from the fact that Trinidad and Jamaica became independent in 1962, while ours didn’t come till 1966!!
The British had to twiddle their thumbs for a bit while the Yanks figured out how to get rid of Jagan, whom they decided was an unacceptable “commie”!! Anyhow, ever since then the Trinis have cultivated a sneer towards us – which their oil helped to grease!! With that as background, you can hopefully appreciate our Warriors absolutely TROUNCING the T&T Knightriders last Monday night – in T&T and ON their Independence Day!!
That the victory came off the back of a scintillating hundred by the now somewhat erratic Hetmeyer made it all that sweeter!!

…PNC alive
Yesterday your Eyewitness wrote about the GY$6.7 BILLION taxes the PNC owed the City on their Sophia HQ!! Well, he just learnt that the PNC-controlled City Council just forgave the PNC’s debt by collecting just GY$30M!!
Political incest!!

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