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Don’t show the English cricketers Georgetown!

Mar 20, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

They say better half a loaf than none. The non-resident Japanese Ambassador has donated a small sum to the City Council for solid waste disposal. It is a drop in the ocean compared to the numbers that are needed to clean Georgetown.
The stink and nasty appearance of Georgetown has done enormous damage to this country that cannot be measured. The entire territory of Guyana is contemptuously dismissed by a majority of visitors (including Guyanese from the Diaspora) as a hell hole.
I have not seen a relative or close friend of mine who came back after years, not commenting on how terrible Georgetown has become in terms of the rubbish and dirtiness that have enveloped it.
If you take a person that knows absolutely nothing about the countries of the world and carry him/her around Georgetown, one of two conclusions would emerge from their observations. Guyana is either a failed country that has no money, going nowhere and will just whither away or a land that has just been ravished by civil war.
The sight of Georgetown is an embarrassment to every one of us who dwell in this land. How can any normal country have a capital city that is so smelly and stink? Any high level person in the sports community, the City Council or the Government of Guyana that agrees to let the English cricketers tour Georgetown should be charged with a crime against humanity.
It is not just in selected places you see these mini-islands of garbage. It is the entire landscape of Georgetown. The nastiness can be seen inside the heart of the city centre. As you leave downtown Georgetown, the mess stares you in the face in all other urban districts. One can speak of the ubiquity of filth in Georgetown.
Masking this ocean of miasma are fancy nightclubs, restaurants and shopping malls that the mediocre rulers love to extol to visitors. So the authorities will take the English crickets to see the jewel stores in the City Mall.
They will try their hand at a game of pool at Buddy’s on Sheriff Street. They will have some El Dorado at Buddy’s International Hotel. Some of the English cricketers have a Third World background and may want to try some ethnic dishes at the Roti Hut.
One would not like to be in the shoes of the tourist guide. If the cricketers are staying at the Pegasus, how can they get to the City Mall without noticing the little islands? It is an impossibility. There may be one way to get around it. Put curtains on the windows of the bus and draw them so tightly that the cricketers cannot stare out of them.
What I find amazing is the self-flagellation of the Government. Why bring politicians, sports personalities and artists to Georgetown knowing that they will return to their homes and describe what they see as a horribly stink country.
They will not paint Georgetown only as a smelly city; their brushes will daub the entire country.
Guyana has no jurisdiction over the ICC itinerary. Test nations will have to play cricket here. But why host Carifesta and the ICC’s 20/20 tournament when thousands and thousands of people are going to go back home and dismiss Guyana as the garbage capital of the world?
Most visitors that come to this land badmouth it as a country that is stink and dirty, so why invite others so they can scandalize your country? Remember these are not slum poor dwellers from Bangladesh, Guatemala, India, Zimbabwe and other lands where they are accustomed to seeing garbage in the streets. Guyana does not get those types of visitors. The people that come here are citizens from countries where the streets are clean. If a South Korean ever comes to Guyana and walks the streets of Georgetown, he will not live to return home.
The streets of Seoul are so impeccably clean that the mere sight of the rubbish in the centre of Georgetown will induce a deadly heart attack.
We have two more years to go before there are national elections. Nothing will happen before then but after the poll, the next government has to end the permanent impasse between the Georgetown municipal politicians and the leaders of central government to clean up the capital.
No modern city in the Caribbean should be so filthy. This sight is so unbearable that a devious, racist mind from some aristocratic nation can easily conclude that Guyana is populated by a primitive tribe that is yet to see civilization.
I hope the English cricketers don’t get that impression. Don’t put it past the journalists of the London tabloids to think like that.

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