My Column – Bartica’s changing face and pleasant surprises

Jun 15, 2008 My Column

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After about five years I visited the community where I started my life as an adult, Bartica, and the shock of its development hit me, but hitting me most were the changes. The community had changed drastically from the days when it was the gateway to the interior.
Way back in the mid-1960s when I first set foot on this tip of land that has at its northernmost point, a triangle aptly named the Bartica Triangle, the life was simple and exciting at the same time.

Those were the days when first one, then two vehicles were the only forms of transportation to the communities that extended beyond the normal boundaries to the location called the ‘Line’.
Just mention to anybody the word ‘Line’ and people knew that one was talking about the Bartica-Potaro Road for about six miles south of the community.

Today there are more taxis than one can imagine so people who usually walked to any point in the former mining town simply jump into a taxi and pay whatever the charge is.

I don’t know what the fare is because I walked to my destination on Friday, to a grand old hotel that was once named Karia but which is now the Government Guest House or as people say, the Guest House.

It was the walk that first exposed me to the changes that had taken place. Marin Hotel owned by Alan Seon, who raised Lance Gibbs’s wife, has been torn down. No more the posh bar where the hoi polloi sat and sipped whatever beverage they craved.

Next door, John Rafferty’s workshop that fashioned anything and everything and did some repairs to vehicles was a shell.

But it was the nightlife that seemed to have changed the most. First Avenue Bartica was the place where the rum shops abounded. We had even made a song about them way back then.

“They tossed us out of Oscar Smartt’s and out of Raghubir’s…Old Joe don’t want to see us and Hoosein hardly cares…We saw Aunt Lilly Bharrat and she coalesced our fears; we’re getting no more rum or beer.” Those are not even known to the young Barticians.

The numerous night clubs that sprang up in the heady days of the construction on the hydroelectric project have also not survived the passage of time.

Perhaps this is for the good because people suddenly have learnt that their money is to do more than buy alcohol by the gallons at the end of the day.

Perhaps the economic reality has brought home to the people that there are no more free rides; that they cannot sit and drink and at the end of the day beg for a raise to buy something for the pot.

Yet there is a plus to all this. The roads are as I never recalled them. From the sandy strips that were called streets and avenues, there are now paved surfaces that would be the envy of most communities in the city.

Many of the streets are unlighted but who needs such trimmings when Bartica is a community in which there is hardly any theft; where choke and rob is virtually unheard of; where people can identify each other even in the dead of night?

The latter is a feature that I still cannot understand. The place is dark as the derriere of a black cat and one is walking in what one assumes is an appropriate disguise because one is going on the prowl and one does not expect to be detected.

So there is an extra large shirt, a hat and that should suffice as a disguise because one feels that since the hat was never the part of normal attire then one would be almost unrecognisable.

Nah! Pass by any house and one would be surprised to hear, “Adam. Wheh you going dressed like that? Like you up to something?”

The school where I started my working life, St John-the-Baptist Anglican School, now St John-the Baptist Primary School, is not only so much larger but even fancier. It has an extension that is accommodating children whom I never knew existed in Bartica in such numbers.

One woman told me that churches now proliferate; that people in Bartica have turned to the Lord. Perhaps the incident of February this year had something to do with all this. I am not sure. But for sure, the people are not on the roads in the numbers they used to when I lived here.

Some things have not changed. The nurses’ hostel that was almost always full is empty but for one solitary nurse. Most of the nurses now come from Bartica. The dance centre, the Bartica Community Centre, is badly in need of repairs and from what I heard there are no more public dances there.

Gone are the days when one paid five dollars for the trip on speedboats to and from Bartica. Gone too, are the days when the trip was five hundred dollars. It is now $2,000 and is worth every dollar.
No more the lazy seven-hour trip by the steamer. It is a mere hour from Parika.

Punctuality is still an unheard of concept. For example, I went to Bartica for a wedding that was scheduled for six in the morning. At ten to six the bride was heading to the bathroom.

The event did not get underway until seven-thirty. But who cared? Certainly not the bride or the groom, not the pastor and certainly not the guests.

The community has fashionable houses; cable television and a wonderful beach that beckons all year round. It is still lovely and I may return to spend my last days.

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