Georgetown in Guyana may be the most stink capital in the world

May 01, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I remember Colin Croft, former West Indies pace man, turned commentator once remarked that he visits a lot of countries in the world as a commentator but he hardly sees anything. He says that he just hops into the country, goes to the hotel, then to work.
After work, he hops out of the country. That of course is the logical itinerary of any sports or hard news analyst. You touch down, do your work, and you are gone afterwards.
Which sponsor is going to pay a commentator to lie on the beach for days and visit the bars and restaurants long after the show is over?
I remember I spent a year teaching at the Berbice campus of the University of Guyana but in that year, I never toured Berbice. I went up early in the morning and left early in the afternoon. So I can say I worked for a year in Berbice yet I didn’t see it.
Against this background one must understand why the Guyana Government continues to host international conferences and sponsor international sporting events even though the entire Anglo-phone Caribbean knows that Georgetown in Guyana is a putrid city characterized by rotting rubbish, decomposing animals and overflowing miasma that daily threaten the health of all those who have to interface with the capital of this country. All, (I dare say, all) visitors and foreign workers who spent more than a month here and have taken in the city itself, gone to the malls, restaurants and stores and visit Guyanese citizens in the capital know that Georgetown is a horribly stink city and perhaps the most unhygienic capital in the world.
Commonsense will tell you that the ICC officials and the famous cricketers will not visit Kitty, Campbellville, Charlestown, Bourda Market etc. They go from practice to their hotels and from official play to their hotels.
If there is a day to spare, it will be spent in the interior through the arrangement of the Ministry of Tourism. The alarm bells that have been set off by the citizens of Guyana when they heard about T/20 cricket did not alarm the Government.
The President, his Ministers and the ruling party know that the rotten garbage along the length and breath of hundreds of streets and roads in the inner city and the greater environs of Georgetown will not be noticed by the people who are here for T/20 World Cup Cricket.
We can expect more sponsorship of all kinds of international activities under Mr. Jagdeo’s presidency while Georgetown rots away. The point is there will be no embarrassment for Mr. Jagdeo and his Ministers because the life-threatening nastiness that has overrun the Georgetown environment will not be noticed by the cricketers and the visitors.
But it does tell you something about the state of the people who run this country. There must come a time when the leaders with power in Guyana have to say to themselves; “We cannot let the capital sink into this gargantuan ocean of miasma, feces and carcasses. But these leaders are nearing two decades in power. When is that time going to come?
I don’t believe it will.
My theorizing on the nature of the ruling class in Guyana is that evil has overtaken them. They have become completely insensitive to the rut that has stepped in. What the Guyanese people have to understand is that in fascism there is the inevitability of sadistic rule. Fascist leaders cannot escape the cult of sadism. They love to hurt the citizenry people it is their way of getting at the population that doesn’t like them.
In Georgetown, one does not need a Gallup poll to tell you that the opposition will win a landslide if municipal elections are to be held tomorrow, next week, next month or next year.
The elected dictators in Guyana derive some kind of satisfaction in seeing constituencies that do not support them live in squalor. Citizens of Georgetown must accept the brutal, harsh, devastating reality that the rulers of this land have no interest in Georgetown, care what happens to Georgetown and are psychologically oblivious to the mountains of garbage that dot the landscape.
The problem with the average Georgetowner is that he/she is appalled at what he/she sees on most streets of Georgetown. But that shock cannot penetrate the psyche of rulers who are overtaken by hate.
For us in Georgetown, the sight is ghastly. For the fascist leaders of Guyana, the sight has no existence. In their minds, it truly does not exist.

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Georgetown in Guyana may be the most stink capital in the world

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