THE WEST IS NO LONGER ON TRIAL

Nov 30, 2014 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

I was actually invited last Thursday to a Thanksgiving Dinner in Guyana. It was hosted by nationals who never had a Green Card and who never had the privilege of setting foot on the soil of the United States of America. In declining the invitation, I enquired about the menu and was told that baked turkey would be served.
I know also of a few individuals who actually held private Thanksgiving Dinners. And they were not foreigners. They were Guyanese.
Guyanese love to imitate. Some of them actually take these things seriously and believe that it is their duty to celebrate Thanksgiving. Such has been the influence of the West on Guyana. The West is no longer on trial; it is on show.
The ritual of celebrating Thanksgiving in Guyana has its social benefits. In some cases, not all, it is a way for some persons to delude themselves into believing that they belong to a special class of persons, one that is divorced from the commoners. As a badge of this distinction they need to have their own rituals such as private Thanksgiving dinners.
Last Friday, a number of businesses in Guyana advertised ‘Black Friday’ sales. They were mimicking what takes place in the United States. In that country – and I notice that the fever is catching on in Britain – Black Friday is referred to the day on which the stores offer super discounts, almost at give-away prices so that they can restock for the Christmas Season. It is a day of bargains. Inventories of the stores are cleared by droves of shoppers looking to cash-in on the cheap cost for items being sold.
The term Black Friday in Guyana has a different historical connotation. There were two Black Fridays in Guyana. The first was in the 1960s when rioters of the United Force and the Peoples National Congress looted and burnt down businesses in Georgetown in order to remove the Cheddi Jagan government. Those who did these devious acts were not after bargains; they were out to damage, destroy and loot.
After the 1997 elections, there was another Black Friday. Again looters ran amok within the city’s commercial district, setting businesses alight and looting stores. The phrase Black Friday therefore has a different connotation to that of the United States. It will take some doing for this idea of day of super discounts on goods to take root in Guyana. Guyanese businesses are not into big discounts. Most of the sales we have in Guyana are on dead stock. The stores in Guyana are not into emptying their inventories so as to restock. They are into trying to boost their sales by offering discounts, but nothing compared to what takes place in the United States.
I often wondered if Burnham were alive today if any business would have dared to advertise a Black Friday sale. But then again by the time he demitted this life, there was not much left of the business class in Guyana, and of those that existed, there was not that much to sell. The supermarkets were barren. There was a lot of rice flour. But sale or no sale, not many people were interested in eating that. I notice today that we are attempting to produce rice cereals. It will never take off in Guyana. Not after Burnham’s rice flour experiment.
Things are changing. Guyana is becoming more westernized. We have the Economic Recovery Programme (ERP) to thank for that. And while it has taken some time in coming, it was inevitable that Guyana would have eventually tried to imitate the Black Friday sales.
A few weeks earlier, I saw advertised a Halloween party in Guyana. The party was well attended and the attendees actually wore impressive costumes that matched anything that exists in the United States.
We are becoming westernized. What next?

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