My Guyana: 50 years ago
The fiftieth anniversary of Guyana’s independence is fast approaching. Once more I just can’t help looking back, because I was there when Guyana gained its independence from Britain.
Of course, it seemed as if it were yesterday, but every day at the workplace when I talk about certain things or hum a tune I realize how old I am. It is not that I am doddering, because in the gym I am much more active than people half my age. And it is not that I am a fitness freak; it is just that I need the exercise to control my blood pressure and my sugar level.
However, I must go back fifty years. Guyana is a changed country, so changed that the younger people simply cannot imagine it any other way. Last week, my friend and school mate, Neville McAndrew took me to task for failing to recognize that there were other things that are no more. There were trains back then. Guyana had the first railroad in all of South America.
Travelling to Rosignol these days is a blink. Drivers take slightly over an hour. Fifty years ago that trip took as long as six hours. Cars did not drive between Mahaica and Rosignol, because the road would have caused many of them to end up in the junk pile.
As I noted last week, outside the city were unpaved roads. On East Coast Demerara, from Liliendaal to Ogle were two concrete strips. On West Demerara, from Crane the roads were unpaved. People living on the leeward side had a daily dose of dust. Trucks drove along wetting the roads to keep the dust down.
They had luggage carriages into which people would drive their cars, put their luggage and their vegetables. These days, trucks travel to the city laden with agricultural produce. Fifty years ago this was done by the trains. The trucks would assemble at the Carmichael Street terminal and collect the vegetables there.
Travelling was fun. There were the first class carriages with padded seats and the third class with the wooden seats. Trains stopped at the stations and the platforms. The express trains only stopped at the stations that were at Kitty, Plaisance, Beterverwagting, Buxton and the other large villages. The station masters lived there with their families. These stations had large water tanks that provided water for the steam engines. The diesel engines did not need these tanks.
Mahaica was a pleasure stop. The trains stopped there and the vendors would come up to the carriages with fish and bread. Smart people waited until the train was about to leave before placing their order. Then the train would pull out and someone would get fleeced.
The trains also ran along West Demerara from Vreed-en-Hoop to Parika. Driving beyond Boeraserie was no fun. So people used the train. I remember going to Bartica the first time. My mother took me to the Transport and Harbours Department wharf in Kingston to catch the boat which departed at 5:00 in the morning.
People walked at least a mile to get to the train stations, but that was not considered a feat. Early to bed, early to rise had to be the motto of the country folk. Mosquitoes were a constant companion on the trains, especially further away from the city.
I did not know then, that I could catch the ferry at Georgetown at 8:00 am and ride to Parika to catch the same boat. It took close to three hours to travel from Georgetown to Parika. The ferry took twenty minutes to cross the Demerara River. The MV Makouria was introduced in 1960 to handle the growing traffic. There was no Demerara Harbour Bridge.
If you were stranded in the city after six in the evening, you had problems getting home to any location along the coast. There was no bus service. You either walked or hoped there was a bicycle to help you travel the miles you had to go. After seven you had to sleep in Georgetown.
I was one of those schoolboys who had to leave home at four or five in the morning to get to school for 8:10. I could not be a part of the cricket team, because I would have been hard pressed to catch the last boat.
Heading to Linden was a 14-hour trip on RH Carr. The Linden Highway was nonexistent. That did not come into being until 1968, the same year the Cheddi Jagan International Airport was moved from where the South Dakota circuit now is. People sat on that boat with cows and just about everything going to Linden.
Just picture the scene—people travelling to Georgetown to be a part of the Independence flag-raising ceremony. One had to really want to be in Georgetown to suffer that trip. Linden was another country. That was why people planned boat excursions to Linden. Imagine dancing non-stop for fourteen hours. Some got drunk. On one occasion a fellow named Frank from Den Amstel fell off the boat and drowned. He was not the only one and such incidents made news.
Fifty years later, people go to Linden for fun. It takes just over an hour and they don’t need to find hotels.
People should understand why Georgetown was the prize place for a location. It looked so good with its paved roads and storefront lights. When people travelled to the city they always brought fruits and vegetables. To this day people say that when you travel to the city the Georgetowners would ask, “What you bring?” When they visit they asked, “What you got?”
Today we talk about communities holding their own ceremonies. Back then fifty years ago, it was the best thing, because getting to the heart of the celebrations was so difficult. A lot has changed. Some would say for the better, but back then, people in rural Guyana couldn’t be bothered with locking their homes.
There have been a lot of changes in the city too. You could not drive along Sheriff Street to Lodge. To get to the newly constructed Davis Memorial Hospital you had to go to Vlissengen Road, then on to D’Urban Street. Later, some enterprising people placed a coconut tree trunk across that canal aback of the Botanical Gardens for those who walked—and there were many—to get to Lodge. Homestretch Avenue was not there, nor was there a National Cultural Centre. That came six years later.
Norton Street, Lodge was a track inaccessible to motor vehicles. That changed not so long ago.
And in Georgetown there were the yellow buses that were so efficient that everyone used them. Such was the state when independence came in 1966.
