From I was a youth, as my Jamaican friends would phrase it, I have always been one of those “let me see for myself” guys. Sure, I read the news releases and listen to the social comments, but I’ve learned you can also get a pretty useful grasp of something in your society, almost instantly, from simply observing it in its various aspects, and, most of the time, it’s not a complicated exercise; you can do it casually, just driving the street, or walking the neighbourhood, or flying over the territory. You spot the change; you see what’s added or what’s absent. In the same half-hour drive, for example, you notice the repaired bridge work on the Embankment Road, as well as the neglected City Hall wooden structure in town. Information sinks in. So, as I’ve said before, I’m an observer. (Incidentally, that is also the genesis of many of the songs I write; I’m delving into something I’ve noticed.)
In that light, and following our recent change in government, I am here to report that for the first time in seven years living in Guyana, I can now come south from the Seawall and arrive at the junction of Vlissengen Road and Lamaha Street to find totally clear parapets to my right on both sides of the trench; one can also see the waterway widened and flowing better westward. I have looked at that vista many times in its earlier unattended state with a tinge of despair, so to see it transformed last week was a jolt; I actually had to look twice to be sure this was no mirage.
Similarly, for the first time in seven years, I saw government excavators, several of them, cleaning trenches in eastern Campbellville. I used to drive those side roads and see impenetrable grass taking over the landscape. Now the grass is gone, earth dredged from the
