Dale Andrews didn’t live to see the rebirth of the lights

Jun 11, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Wesley Kirton, brother of my long-standing friend, Dr. Mark Kirton (a person I am fond of and always will be) wrote in a KN letter that he saw me twice at Nicky’s Fish Shop on Drury Lane (Campbellvile) enjoying the Golden Jubilee celebration. I take it that Wesley was being light-hearted. He did see me twice at Nicky’s during the week-long festivities to mark Guyana’s 50th anniversary but my enjoyment had nothing to do with the Golden Jubilee.
I go to Nicky’s quite often and I am sure when we swing into the Diwali month, I will be there but it won’t have any connection with Diwali. I am sure when we reach the Christmas season; I will be at Nicky’s, but it will be unrelated to the Christmas festivities. Wesley took objection to my attitude that the State should not have gone out of its way to highlight the Golden Jubilee in such a big way as it did including the expensive landscaping of Durban Park.
My simple point is not that we didn’t have the money. We did, but that money is needed elsewhere. I will come to the lights Dale Andrews didn’t live to see to enhance my point about spending priorities of poor countries.
Countless diaspora Guyanese loved the gargantuan revelry. But did you read their complaints? No we didn’t, because they couldn’t be bothered to write about it. But many voiced their displeasure at things they saw. And guess what? Like Wesley, they have returned to live in their post-modern countries. One should not question their commitment to Guyana; I wouldn’t. One should not doubt their love for Guyana. But at the end of the day, they are not victims of misplaced priorities of their governments that make life unbearable and that push people over the edge.
A country is like an income-earner. You have to provide for your family, put a roof over your head, save up for a car, put aside money for medical emergency, take care of the well-being of the kids, ensure they have a proper education etc. The parents cannot go on frequent foreign escapades but cannot buy the relevant school texts for the kids.
A country is like a family head; you have to know your spending priorities. Many analysts warned Greece that its expenditure on the Olympics would ruin it because the economy could not sustain such an expensive venture.
Greece is still to repay its debts from the hosting of the 2004 Summer Olympics. Greece’s dire financial troubles began to get out of control after that time. Economists have warned Brazil that its double whammy – the World Cup and Summer Olympics – are going to bring economic disasters in the coming years. The statistics show that the Brazilian economy cannot sustain these two giant international events in the space of three years.
We come now to Dale Andrews. One of the last jokes that Dale Andrews made with me had to do with the malfunctioning traffic lights at the junction of Sheriff Street and the Railway Embankment. I had done a column on these dying lights all over Georgetown and had urged President Granger to bring in an expert from abroad to solve the problem definitively.
Two days after my column, there was a photo in the newspaper of the technicians repairing the lights. Dale shouted at me with a broad smile, “Freddie, look you get through.” He was showing me the photo of the men at work on the lights. Dale didn’t live to see the return of the lights at Sheriff Street and the Railway Embankment. The fixed lights only lasted for two days; they are out again.
During the Golden Jubilee celebrations, they repaired the street lamps from Clive Lloyd Drive to D’Aguiar’s Turn. They lasted exactly three nights. I know this because that is my route to my home when I leave inner Georgetown. A country spends dozens of millions of dollars (the exact figure is unknown) to build the Durban Park project (the govt. said it was donations but still it was money) but cannot fix traffic signals and street lamps. Do diaspora Guyanese have to put up with that in Canada, Trinidad, the US, Europe, Barbados?
I will close this column with two inflexible attitudes. One is that the fire service at Stabroek Square should have been relocated at Durban Park. The other is that a special multilateral school for high school kids that didn’t do well should have been built there with emphasis on technical training.

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Dale Andrews didn’t live to see the rebirth of the lights

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