RISING TO THE OCCASION

Jan 03, 2015 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Housewives were stronger in 1987. They had to be. They needed the extra muscle power.
People back then also generally were early to bed and early to rise. They had to be.
Twenty-eight years ago, it was still traditional for persons in the countryside to rise early. The rhythm of agricultural life predisposed to persons rising early to feed the cattle or go into the fields to work.
Persons not far removed from urban life, such as those on the East Coast of Demerara, also rose early. They rose early out of necessity. This was 1987 when the water system on the East Coast of Demerara all but nearly collapsed. You had to rise early to begin to fill the numerous plastic buckets in your home so as to allow you to have enough water to last you throughout the day. The water in the early hours of the morning came at a trickle. It took close to half an hour to fill a small bucket with water. This trickle was the best that you were going to get for the rest of the day. And therefore you had to rise early to begin the process.
You also had to rise early if you worked in the city and needed to get to work early. Transportation was also a major problem. If you were late, the person who would usually take you to work by hire car was not going to wait on you. People therefore rose early out of necessity. To not do so would have been to lose an entire day’s work, and this included housework because you could not cook without water.
The black tanks that many homes now have were not yet widely available. If they were they would have saved persons a great deal of sleep because housewives would have been able to collect rainwater in large quantities and store this for later use. These large tanks came not long later and were a God-send.
Instead of the government giving each schoolchild ten thousand dollars, they should undertake a physical survey and determine which homes needed plastic water tanks and give to each home so needing a tank a free or a subsidized tank. That would make a bigger contribution to poorer children getting to school on time since many needy families are still storing water in buckets and drums and many of them are still fetching water because of the low pressure that often does not allow water to get higher than the ground floor.
The PPP administration has rightly concentrated on improving access of water to as many communities as possible. There were even back then in 1987 too many villages in which water simply was not available through the taps. Persons had to fetch water on carts for long distances. Many of these communities now have water available but the pressure remains extremely low.
In as much therefore as the government likes to speak about ensuring a better quality of social service, unless they can guarantee that water will be available to households higher than on the ground floor, persons will continue to have the need to store water in large plastic tanks mounted on trestles.
Persons, including students still have to rise out of necessity. Water is not so much a problem as it was in 1987 but for those living in sub urban schemes such as Diamond on the East Bank of Demerara there is the problem of traffic. This means that some families are forced to rise early to prepare their meals and get ready for school and work, because if 7 o’clock catches you deep inside the Diamond Housing Scheme, for example, it’s not likely that you will get to work on time.
Persons are still rising early out of necessity but there is hope in sight as the government works on improving the road infrastructure in the country.
We are told, for example, that new road networks are being planned for this year. That is welcome news that should allow those affected a few extra hours of much-needed sleep.
I start on this theme of rising early because it seems as if Guyanese in the urban areas and those in suburban areas and close to suburban areas are still forced out of necessity rather than choice to rise early.
Punctuality is a major problem in Guyana and this is one of the things that we should strive to improve in Guyana in the New Year. Too many persons are getting to work late; too many businesses are opening their doors behind schedule hours; too many events are starting later than advertized; and too many professionals have the clients waiting on them.
2015 should be the year of punctuality. It is time for Guyanese to rise early not out of necessity but out of choice.
The days of bucket-fetching will eventually come to an end. So too must the days of long traffic jams during peak hours.