By John Mair in London
It was Guyana’s Indepen-dence Day and a British bank holiday. The weather of one came to inform the other. The rain was simply torrential all day long and that put the dampeners on the London celebration of Independence at Thornton Heath in South London on Monday.
The crowds were not as large as expected; the event started late but was still full of verve.
This year the Inde-pendence celebrations were labelled a Guyana Folk Festival and held indoors after the washout of last year. But there is still no accounting for the British weather; gales and heavy rain on the day.
Once inside the Norbury Business and Enterprise College, a warm and dry welcome awaited patrons. There were four stalls selling a wide variety of Guyanese cuisine ranging from crab curry to cook-up rice to black pudding and bora; the smell of El Dorado filled the dining rooms.
Other booths sold Guyanese mementos and knick-knacks. One, manned by former First Lady Varshnie Jagdeo aimed to raise money for her Kids First Fund to take children to India from Guyana for heart surgery.
She was doing a steady trade from the reduced crowd. Another booth was advertising the new direct air bridge from London to Georgetown.
On stage in the main auditorium, Guyana’s High Com-missioner to London Laleshwar Singh opened the proceedings an hour and a half late reminding the audience to visit the upcoming Carifesta X “back home” in August.
They were then entertained by a variety of multi-cultural acts from the Simba Folk Group to Indian Dancing by Nina/Miss Pooram to three UK/Guyanese performing greats, Keith Waite the flautist; Doris Harper-Wills, the singer and Ram John ‘Pork Pie’ Holder the actor.
In other areas of the venue, there were workshops on street dancing, face painting, traditional Guyanese games, steel pan and more. On the very serious side, Colin Bobb Semple led a seminar on African slavery and reparations.
There was something for all that day.
The organizers needed 700 paying customers to break even, but fell well short of this figure.
John Mair should not have compiled his report without having experienced the full Independence day events.
John left very early in the afternoon so he missed the packed halls, the long queues at all points of sales and especially at the beverage and food stands.
He missed the long queues at the door up to 8 pm when the sale of tickets had to stop in order to comply with health and safety regulations.
He missed the coach loads of people who came from outside of London. He missed finding out that the youngest person there was four weeks old and the oldest eighty five years of age with all age groups in between.
Most of all he missed a thoroughly enjoyable day totally free from any type of trouble.
Congratulations and well done to the artistes who entertained so well and the organisers for all their hard work.
Most of all kudos to the people who came out on a wet and windy day to support the Guyanese folk festival.