On the northern edge of South America lies a tropical paradise named Guyana.

Guyana is blessed with an abundance of a tasty and strikingly attractive fruit named awara.

This lovely fruit grows on the awara palm tree:

With hundreds of thousands of Guyanese living overseas, there is a niche market for awaras in North America, Britain and other places.

And, indeed, enterprising people within Guyana have been exporting awaras by the basketful:

Unfortunately, as often happens in other countries, there are crooks in Guyana too.

These crooks are endowed with fertile imagination and high scientific knowledge, but they are not experimenting on genetically modified awaras.

No, sirs.

They are creating artificial awaras without the tasty orange pulp and big black-encased nuts at the core.

Inside these bogus awaras are plastic sachets containing a white powdery substance named cocaine.

So, these clever crooks are cooking up cocaine-flavored awaras and cashing in conscientiously on Guyana's export markets.

To deceive customs and airport authorities in Guyana, the same crooks are intermingling bogus awaras with real awaras.

But, as the timeless Guyanese saying goes: every day bucket go a well, one day bucket battam go drap aff.

Or, as some folks prefer: moon ah run till day ketch am rass.

And that is exactly what happened at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport yesterday.

The alert CANU officials are not kania. Their eyes are sharp, and they quickly detected bogus awaras among genuine awaras destined for the foreign markets.

The CANU crew cut open one awara and this is what they found:

Oh me papa, dese crooks ent gat shame? Why they embarrassing de country, de guvment and de general population?

Gilbakka wants foreign readers of this forum to know that Guyanese are hardworking folks who plant crops for the local and export markets to earn a decent living and contribute to the awara slice of the GDP pie.

Please feel free to visit our beautiful country and eat as much awaras as you wish. But, be cautioned: don't climb the awara palm tree; dem sharp pimpla go bore allyou batty.

WELCOME TO GUYANA