Why should brown sugar produced elsewhere be labelled Demerara?

Jan 03, 2018 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
I read the recent ‘morning’ letter headed “A Day of Infamy”, involving roughly 4,000 workers in the sugar industry facing job loss, and could not help thinking “poor Guyana”, whose problems are ongoing, with no one able to provide solutions. In fact, there seems to be a problem for every possible solution!
Then, in a moment of inspiration, I remembered Shakespeare’s “Sweet are the uses of adversity……” lines, and thought I would pass on bits from that quote, which may give good exercise to some of Guyana’s fine legal minds, not solely ‘financially-driven’. Travelling abroad in past years, I have noticed in hotel room accommodation and dining room tables, on ALL the cruise ships I have used, that every dining table carried small teaspoon-sized packages of brown sugar labelled “Demerara” sugar, and always awarded myself a pat on the back, as I think “I’m from there”.
Cannot we ‘mudheads’ patent the name “Demerara”, or otherwise do something to earn our deserving country some money, when others try to cash in on the name?
As far as I am aware, we are the only genuine Demerara nation worldwide. Why should brown sugar, maybe produced somewhere in the Far East, be allowed to use our lovely green country’s name to push brown sugar from somewhere else?
Think about it. “Sweet are the uses of adversity – try to find “books in running brooks,… sermons in stones…and good in everything…”
Incidentally in the mid-1960s, when a colleague – an Oxford graduate, a First Class PPE graduate stumbled during the quote, and I was able to help, he was so stunned, it was funny. I had to thank our high school teacher of English Literature for insisting that we ‘learn by heart’ Shakespearean quotes he considered important.
British civil service bosses could not believe that many of their Caribbean secretaries had a grammar-school-type education. In the UK, such schools were free, gender-based top-of-the-range schools, admission earned through passing a special exam, their lecturers stalking the corridors, dressed in flowing black robes, wearing flat square caps (mortar boards); off-putting and intimidating to some children. They have been replaced now.
Who knows? Do not allow others to capitalise on our country’s “posh-sounding” name. Try the ‘brown sugar route’ suggested, and the best to all for the year 2018.
Geralda D.

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