The Carifesta opening will top China’s

Aug 10, 2008 Features / Columnists, My Column

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China pulled out the stops when it opened the Beijing Olympics. It started the programme five years ago with the construction of some of the most imaginative facilities, the most innovative being the stadium called the Bird’s Nest.

The Bird’s Nest is an engineering marvel, with a construction that has pieces of steel pulling and pushing at the same time to make the structure strong. It can seat 90,000 people, but on the opening day it seated 91,000.

The swimming centre is another marvel, with the walls and roof constructed with solar panels that not only allow for natural light, but also afford temperature control.

The performances were amazing. Some 15,000 young people did their thing, some of them so stunning that one wondered what might have happened had Guyana continued with Mass Games, an activity that not only teaches discipline, but also coordination and the ability to work with each other.

It was the torch lighting that stole the cake. There was a former Olympian hoisted above the stadium floor, and as he moved toward the torch that would burn for the duration of the games, he appeared to be running along the walls, making a full circle of the stadium, when in fact he was miming.

There was the Barcelona Games when an archer lit the flames by shooting an arrow at the torch. I said that it would take some beating. The Chinese provided the beating.

All in all, what the Chinese did to make the Olympics a thing of beauty will take some beating. Forget all the talk about air pollution, protests, and human rights violations.

The athletes are there performing to the best of their ability because, after this year, it will be another four years before they get a chance to compete with the best in the world.

What I saw were the newspapers. All of them focused on the Olympics, with front page photographs and the like.

Guyana would have an opening later this month. We will be hosting Carifesta. The Olympics comes around every four years; Carifesta came around after 36 years, and Guyana is not going to allow the opportunity to slip by without doing something to make the world take notice.

The Chinese had five years to prepare; Guyana had less than a year, but the ingenuity of the Guyanese people has allowed them to do more than the Chinese could in five years.

There was no need for any special construction for the event, except for some stages which are being mounted.

Forget about the booths that will showcase foods and art and craft and things Guyanese; forget about the lights which will go off. In fact, that is what this is all about, flashing lights to allow the people of the region and the rest of the world to see that the whole of Guyana is a disco.

But the planners have pulled out all the stops for the grand opening ceremony billed for the National Stadium. The performers have been practicing for years, and they have perfected the skills.

Up until now, the team for the opening ceremony has been a closely guarded secret, but I managed to get a peep at the planned programme and it is so exciting that I could not hesitate to share it with the rest of the nation and those who read me on the Internet.

There will be paratrooping, and Donald Ramotar will be the first to jump from 5,000 feet. He will be followed by Bheri Ramsaran and Ralph Ramkarran.

They will wear red shirts and yellow pants. Donald will do a flip in the air before linking up with Ralph and Bheri for a landing somewhere in New Providence, far from the landing zone in the stadium.

Roger Luncheon, with a blazing dashiki, will lead the chorus line inside the stadium. With him will be Kwame McCoy, who will perform without his pants because of an itch he developed.

Sam Hinds and Janet Jagan will represent new Guyana in what promises to be an unforgettable display. They will crawl or creep around the stadium in pampers to the tune of “De Kabaka Great”.

Leslie Ramsammy will deliver a speech on breast feeding, and he will actually have a rubber woman next to him to enforce the speech.

But it will be Harrinarine Nawbatt, with a water tank strapped to his back, who will have the crowd really going. The crowd will be so excited that they will stone him with anything they can lay their hands on.

Gail Teixeira will perform the smoking trick; Jenny Westford will do a dance with injection needles and Cuban students; Pauline Sukhai and Desrey Fox will climb the walls of the stadium to demonstrate how easy it is to commit suicide.

They will actually jump while Bharrat Jagdeo stands below to catch the ministers to demonstrate how a government saves the economy. Pauline and Desrey will crush him, and the crowd will cheer.

Bharrat will then demonstrate his versatility when he teams up with Henry Greene in an acrobatic display. Bharrat the Great will balance Henry on one hand, a feat that was once considered impossible. Defying gravity always is.

Manzoor and Manniram will sing God Bless America, and Robeson will portray the pork knocker and a bauxite plant all in one. He will dress in a warishi and a batelle—the warishi in front and the batelle at the back, nothing else.

By the time they are done with the opening ceremony, there will be a mad rush for videos, because whoever sells the video will become so rich.

Even the Chinese will be excited, and they will all say, “It is a good thing that we had our opening ceremony before this one.”

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