Dear Editor,
Is this a taste of Carifesta? What a shambles – one can only hope things improve and fast!
The Marketing Department did a good promotion but sadly the rest did not live up to expectations.
I am referring to the pre-Carifesta event at the NCN compound last Saturday afternoon. We turned up 45 minutes after the advertised starting time of 12 noon and were dismayed to see that the only available seats were seemingly occupied by the ‘entertainers’ having a practice session
On enquiry to a belligerent woman who seemed to be in charge of the food –
we were told she was not going to serve up the snacks and drinks until all the food arrived. Forty-five minutes later, when everything arrived, like every good general, she jumped into the vehicle and abandoned the troops on
the frontline to deal with the foolishly optimistic, now hungry and very thirsty crowd of about 50 who actually believed the thing would have started on time.
The next in charge was overwhelmed and snapped that my friend who was allergic to fish take out the fishball! The servers seemed sympathetic to her plight but some didn’t actually know what they were
serving and my friend wisely took her food home with her Piriton (anti-allergy medication) at hand and sure enough, she started bloating a few minutes after eating!
Another friend observed that she expected better of Carnegie than “Take the fishball out” and someone could actually die! Cringe-worthy was to see the reactions of the obviously newly-arrived naive foreigners (the seasoned ones hiding under a stone, recounting their
hardship allowance and marking their remaining days off the calendar).
We snorted with laughter to learn the enquiry by a white man about chairs and
a table to eat at was met by one young organiser jukking her colleague onthe arm repeating the question’
‘Where de tables and chairs?’ and felt an enormous amount of sympathy for the young white couple with their infant who had to stand in the hot sun while the savvy Guyanese crowd parted like the Red Sea, jamming into the tents with the food and ticket collectors respectively.
Finally, the famed Guyanese hospitality kicked in and a woman nearest to the young white woman urged her to take her food tickets and find a space in the food tent to collect their food.
The advertised buffet turned out to be a disorganised spectacle of the Carnegie staff putting food into boxes – quite a few with bare fingers – Folks pack the food at your school and hand out the boxes- much more efficient and you don’t look so bad!
The sour-sop drink was excellent to a parched throat but there were no refills of the little plastic cup and no provision to purchase any more.
The final sad thing was there were no receptacles for the rubbish – the man
working at the first bar looked offended when we tried to leave the used cups on his bar and a security person took them to throw behind the big tree at the front by the gate – so much for those NCN ads urging us not to
litter!
Yours faithfully,
(name and address
provided)
