You just can’t please some persons

Jun 06, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – I’ve always suspected that pleasing people is a futile enterprise. You could give them eternal youth and they’d complain about the arthritis. But nowhere—nowhere!—is this futility more vividly illustrated than in Guyana. Here, pleasing people is not merely impossible; it’s something that will likely end with you being criticized in a facebook post  and your actions labelled “a waste of taxpayers’ money.”

Let’s start with the roads. Not the metaphorical roads to happiness, no—we’re talking literal roads. Things that should lead from one place to another without first requiring a will, a priest, and four new shock absorbers.

There was a time in this country when calling something a “road” was more of an aspiration than a description. You didn’t drive on these things; you survived them. Most were so cratered, you could have filmed a moon landing in some villages and no one would’ve known the difference. Entire front ends of vehicles would vanish into potholes. Mechanics didn’t need customers—they just waited by the side of the road with brochures and their tool kits.

Then—miracle of miracles—the government stepped in. Not one or two roads, mind you. Thousands. An arterial revolution! Roads emerged where once there was only slush and despair. Dust gave way to dignity. Where there was once mud, now there was asphalt and concrete –plenty concrete! It was enough to bring a tear to your shock-mounted eye.

But here’s where the Guyanese Condition kicks in: now people are upset that there are no lights on the roads. Apparently, the roads are too good now. Too smooth. Too tempting. Too fast. People are flying into trenches because it’s easier to drive at high speeds, presumably while  eating breakfast at the wheel. This is a new kind of logic: the roads are so improved, they’ve become dangerous.

And the outcry! “Why didn’t they put in lights too?” they scream. “Who building roads without lights? Who does that?”

Well, technically, the local authorities are supposed to do the lights. Yes, them—the neighborhood democratic councils (NDCs) and the municipalities, some of which meet monthly to decide that nothing can be done until next year.

The central government, in an act of compassion or madness—I’m not sure which—decided to help out and build the roads for them. Roads which the local councils were supposed to do but didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t, or forgot. But now that the government has paved the road, the logic goes: “Might as well do the lights too. Y’all halfway there.”

That’s like getting a free haircut and complaining that the barber didn’t give you a free facial and a foot massage.

I mean, the councils got roads on the house! Roads they didn’t have to plan, fund, contract, or supervise (and let’s be honest—most of them wouldn’t know a compactor from a coconut cart). So, how about showing a little initiative and putting in a couple of street lights? No? Still no?

No, now it’s, “The government shoulda do both one time!” Because in Guyana, a good deed must be followed by a guilt trip and a demand for solar panels.

Yes, now it’s solar lights. “Don’t worry ‘bout GPL. Use solar.” And who’s paying for those? The fairy godmother? Maybe she’ll swoop down with her magic wand and a 40-foot solar lamp post. It’s like we have developed a very specific superpower—the ability to find fault in even the most earnest attempt at improvement. A hospital opens? “But why no free Wi-Fi?” A school gets refurbished? “But they didn’t paint the fence!” They give you milk and honey, and you ask why no Milo.

And let’s be real here—if the government did try to do the lights and the roads at the same time, someone would immediately say, “Why y’all ain’t fix the drains first? The road and the light good, but when rain fall, is Noah Ark time.” And then another: “Wha happen to the sidewalk? My grandmother nearly fall down because she walking on grass.”

You just can’t win.

If the government does too little, they’re neglectful. If they do too much, they’re showboating. If they do just enough, well then you must be hiding something. The paranoia is bipartisan, universal, and renewable. So, what’s the takeaway? Pleasing Guyanese is like trying to wallpaper a hurricane. No matter how much you smooth it out, it’ll come back howling for more—this time with a request for LED lighting and a paved walkway for dogs.

And yet, bless them—we keep trying.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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• neighborhood democratic councils, Peeping Tom, please persons, taxpayer’s money

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