Mashramani outrage

The usual crowds, one imagines, will be lining the parade route today to watch the floats.  A large number of them – if past Mashramanis are anything to go by – will be out there until it is almost time for the sun to go down. For those who do not have the time or inclination to bring their own refreshments there will be vendors along the route to supply the requisite victuals, and while their numbers may be somewhat thinner than last year given the Town Clerk’s increased rentals, one assumes there will be sufficient of them to supply the onlookers’ needs.

One hopes that as on previous occasions a good time will be had by all. But there is likely to be a problem. What has happened in the past is that as the day progresses the refuse on every square inch of unoccupied space starts to build up, until by the end of the afternoon those who are still out on the road are standing in what can only be described as a sea of garbage. The bins  provided simply cannot cope with the volume of food boxes, styrofoam cups, plastic bottles and discarded items of every description. So will the Mash garbage pile-up happen this year? One would have to be an unabashed fantasist to believe that it won’t.

The rental for the vending spots is normally intended to cover the costs of the city council clean-up the following day – and it has always been a massive operation. It will presumably be more expensive this year because tomorrow too is a public holiday, and if the law is observed, the workers will have to be paid more than on a normal working day.

The sight which in past years has greeted anyone venturing out on the morning following Mashramani is probably one of the more disgusting ones they are likely to encounter in life. For anyone living outside Guyana’s borders it is impossible to conceive how much garbage can be generated and discarded around the National Park and parts of central Georgetown after only one day of public revelry. Any visitor might be forgiven for believing that they had landed up, not at the Mash parade, but at the Haags Bosch dumpsite. As indicated already above, this rubbish is not created over a short space of time; it accumulates throughout the day, so that in the later period spectators are completely surrounded by it. How on earth, one wonders, can anyone enjoy themselves amid this amount of refuse.

In better ordered parts of the world, on occasions like this (the Notting Hill Carnival, for example), people put their rubbish in public receptacles provided, or failing this, place it in a plastic bag and carry it home to be disposed of. This is not to suggest that no one litters; it is merely to say that those who do are a minority. As for Guyana, carrying garbage home is a completely alien concept.

It is a source of wonderment to strangers that while many Guyanese will keep the personal space in which they live – home, yard – absolutely spotless, they have no commitment to public hygiene and will litter with abandon.  And this does not just apply to poorer families who live difficult lives in slum-quality housing and who perhaps can be forgiven for lacking respect for public spaces in better heeled parts of the city, but to some quite wealthy citizens, especially certain businesspeople.

There is a disused garage between Church Street and North Road which is used as a dumping ground by some of the businesses in the area because they do not want to pay any garbage disposal companies to remove their rubbish on a daily basis. Instead they pay vagrants a ‘small piece’ to dump, which they do in full view of citizens going about their daily business. The city council workers dutifully clean up the mess on a fairly regular basis (they did a very thorough job just before Mashramani), and the next day the dumping starts again. No one has ever been charged. Surely all it takes is one city constable in plain clothes to follow the man doing the dumping back to the business place to identify the culprit.  How can the city council which is desperately short of resources, be called upon to clean up after private businesspeople?

When that is the attitude of even the affluent in normal circumstances, it might be asked what hope there is for a clean Mashramani. In fact, while the larger question of garbage collection and disposal in the city is more complicated (although it really shouldn’t be), there are strategies which could be implemented without too much imagination or effort for a single day event to mitigate the abomination which we face every year.

Town Clerk Carol Sooba, whose focus was on making money at Mashramani this year, and who in any case could never be accused of having an all-encompassing mind, perhaps for once could be persuaded to extend her range to include what can be done to reduce littering at these bacchanals. There are other picnic occasions coming up, such as Easter Monday, although admittedly that affects the city council less than it does the National Park authorities and the Ministry of Works, which has responsibility for the sea wall.

Of course, in the end, the people who have to be held responsible for the Mashramani garbage outrage are many of the spectators themselves. They lack respect for the environment; they lack respect for others; and most of all they lack respect for themselves.