The ghost ship passengers will waltz to “Senza Fine” tonight

Dec 31, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The advertisement of the Marriott Hotel on the back cover of the 2014 telephone directory paints a most tragic canvas of a country with deeply disturbing rulers.
This columnist will not avoid commentary on the need for Guyana to have new rulers and for the PPP personnel that have administered Guyana for twenty-two years to be investigated for the horrible abuse of power.
Here is a part of that advertisement; “Book one of our 197 guest rooms or suites with views of the ocean or Georgetown’s city lights.” The last few words, “Georgetown’s city lights” tell a story of the complete lack of decency and integrity of those who govern this helpless and hapless country.
Georgetown is a city without street lamps. It is one of the most poorly-lit capitals in the entire world and the worst lit in the CARICOM region. For the government to announce to visitors that they can stay at the Marriott and have a view of the lights of Georgetown is telling a most sickening, sordid, profane lie.
I was born in Georgetown. I have lived my entire life in Georgetown. I know all the streets in Georgetown with very few exceptions. There are a few roadways that carry lamps, but in each of those streets, more than ninety percent of the beams have never worked since the 1980s.
Boxing Night, I had to drop off my kid’s friends to different locations, so I monitored the lights. What a monumental lie that advertisement carries. There should be a law to jail government officials for lying to the nation.
In front of the Office of the President on Vlissengen Road; head office of the army; police headquarters at Eve Leary; Brickdam police station; fire service at Stabroek Market Square, the large Guyana Revenue Authority building on Camp Street; in front of the Georgetown Hospital on New Market, Thomas, Lamaha and East Streets, there isn’t even a solitary bulb hanging from a lantern. I have just listed a few here. It is the same on all the streets where the Ministries are.
But hear this one! From the Marriott going east, passing the Pegasus through to the bandstand on the seawall, right to the junction of Camp Road outside the head office of the CID, that street (does it have a name?) never had poles (maybe except telephone poles).
I have bad memories of that particular street. We parked to go jogging, my wife and I, and when we returned, they had broken into my car taking my wife’s handbag. Any car-thief could have worked his way through all the cars there because the place is a dark avenue.
If any visitor right at this minute goes to the top of the Marriott Hotel in Kingston and looks down on Georgetown, there are no street lights to be seen. Interestingly, a few Fridays ago, Carl Greenidge walked with me, Dr. David Hinds and Chris Ram from the National Library after the conclusion of a WPA-sponsored symposium to the Banks DIH outlet at Main and Quamina Streets. He was in search of a taxi and we pointed him to New Thriving Restaurant. We asked him if we should accompany him since Main Street was dark and we were afraid of robbery. Where are the street lights on Main Street?
Old Year’s Night in Guyana in 2014 will be one of the most interesting nights in the history of the world. Why? Because dialectics would have come to an end and a country that does not exist, will be existing, but in supernatural forms. Tonight, thousands of rich folks in designer clothes, with expensive cars, the type rock stars are chauffeured in, will be dancing until the morning breaks.
But these people are not real. The country they live in does not exist. Remember Stephen King’s famous novel made into a movie, “The Shining,” where in a large hotel people were drinking and dancing and Jack Nicholson joined them but they weren’t real? It will be like this tonight.
The movie “Ghost Ship” best describes what will happen tonight. A ravishingly beautiful Italian woman will take the mike and sing the most beautiful Italian love song, “Senza Fine.” And the waltz will be a phenomenon to behold. But the dancers and the ship are just ghosts. Guyana is the ghost ship.
The last song before morning comes should be from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s famous Broadway musical, “Cats.” Titled “Memory,” there is a line that says; “The streetlamp dies, another night is over, another day is dawning” The street lamp in Guyana was never alive. Another day may never dawn.

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