Traveling in darkness into a dead town

Oct 14, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Life is about ideas which when translated into action should make the world a nicer, better place. If you bought a simple toothbrush six months ago, and you walk into the supermarket right at this moment, you will see newer brushes that are more elegantly shaped and with a more attractive colour scheme. If you bought bathroom tiles two years ago, and right at this minute you enter into a hardware store, you will find more decorative ones. If you brought spindles for the bedroom rails four years ago, they have more fancy ones since then.
The mind is always innovating. A new fast food restaurant will try to beat out the aesthetic ambience of its competitors.
Last Wednesday evening, I traveled to East Berbice at the invitation of two persons, attorney Charrandas Persaud and Dr. Ramaya, hosts of a television programme on DTV in New Amsterdam. Since it was a live call-in show, I had to be there in person. I took the Treasurer of the university union with me, Mr. Khemraj Narine and AFC executive, Michael Carrington. I couldn’t refuse Charrandas; our friendship goes back many, many moons.
But I didn’t want to go. I hate riding on the Berbice Bridge. It invokes unpleasant feelings in me. I don’t like to see the Berbice Bridge. I don’t want to be reminded of the primitive nature of my country. The Berbice Bridge does that to me. The Berbice Bridge is ugly, primitive and appallingly unaesthetic. What hurts deeply, is that it was built in 2008, in the 21st century. What hurts also for me, speaking personally, is that in my mind I believe it is the ugliest waterway structure in the world.
During the call-in segment, I told young Berbicians that if they go to Google and come up with a bridge anywhere in the world that is less attractive than what the PPP Government gave them, then I will resign immediately from UG and Kaieteur News. I gave them my solemn promise I will do so.
I know I cannot lose because Guyana Times is my trump card. When the structure was officially opened, that newspaper ran an eight-page glossy supplement on bridge-building and failed to publish a photograph of a single other bridge elsewhere in the entire world. It couldn’t do so because the juxtaposition would have made the Berbice Bridge look like the one King Kong destroyed in the black and white movie made sixty years ago.
Speaking for myself, the look of the Berbice Bridge is one reason why I could never forgive the PPP Government for its misrule. We in Guyana in the 21st century deserved a more modern looking canopy over the Berbice waterway. The entrance to the gate is dark. But entering Berbice is an even darker spectacle. There are no street lamps. The Government is mischievous or incompetent or evil.
After you pass the bridge the road is extremely dark. The lamps end right at the end of the eastern side of the bridge. How much money would it have taken to set up a few more lamps on the road?
How could this Government be so heartless to its citizens, especially those that have voted for the ruling party in four consecutive elections? The toll to cross the bridge is $2,200 for an ordinary vehicle. God! That is excessive. And Berbicians have accepted this!
On the programme, I reminded Berbicians that in 1974, PPP activists shot dead a policeman (James Henry and wounded his colleagues (Joaquim Francis) who were guarding the toll stations. It was in protest of a fee imposed after the Burnham Government provided Berbicians with the Corentyne highway. Now Berbicians are silent over the unbearable toll they have to pay to a private company to cross the bridge.
More heartlessness was revealed to me when I learnt that the Government refuses to approve speedboat transport from Rosignol to New Amsterdam. We have such a system from Stabroek Market to Vreed-en-Hoop
From my time on the live show and talking to Berbicians, the PPP bandwagon is in trouble. Not one caller supported the Government. But the saddest thing about my trip last Wednesday is the death of New Amsterdam. This is not the New Amsterdam I knew before the ferry stopped its crossing. This is not the New Amsterdam I knew when I taught at the Berbice Campus of UG. It is only my opinion, and my opinion is that New Amsterdam is dead.
I am writing a book on politics I will mention how an ugly bridge killed an entire town.

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Traveling in darkness into a dead town

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