Marriott symbol of enigma of our arrival

WE open a new chapter in our nation’s inspiring human story today with the grand, luscious opening of the Marriot hotel on the edge of that intimidating Atlantic Ocean.Our society’s crème-de-la-crème came together last night to rub shoulders at this lavish event. Opening the Marriott marks a stunning turning point in the history of our socio-economic development.

The Marriot puts Georgetown on the world map as a serious destination, as a place where the world could come to play and enjoy world class hospitality.
One stands astonished that some folks demean this brilliant moment, denouncing the Marriott’s opening because they want to see Guyana remain small and undeveloped.
The Marriott sits on a piece of real estate property that transforms not only Georgetown’s Atlantic skyline, but that also shows what’s possible: we took this piece of virtual waste land and turned it into a world class wonder. The beach area is a revelation to the nation, of what we could do with our extensive foreshore, how we could make the edge of the Atlantic and our vast rivers places of play, amusement and recreation.
The Marriot’s opening is an unfolding of our potential, a true, real coming into being of the immense Guyanese dream. Who would have thought Guyana would ever house a Marriott hotel? For those who travel abroad to luxury destinations, a Marriott in Georgetown always looked a distant impossibility.
Now it’s here, real.
The detractors who shout all manner of objections to its development kick against history. It’s astonishing so many vocal folks kick against development in Guyana, slamming from the Marriot to the Amaila Falls hydro project to the expansion of the Cheddi Jagan International Airport.
They knock down every single development project in this country, and today they steam and scream and throw a massive tantrum because of the success of the Marriott.
Whatever teething problems we face in our efforts at pulling Guyana out of its socio-economic devastation of the 1980’s, and in building modern 21st century projects that benefit our nation, we tackle the journey with determination, courage and deep resolve.
Despite the rabble rousing to stop the Marriott’s progress, here we are today, Guyana owning a Marriott, operating a top class hospitality centre.
This act would become the catalyst for us really believing in ourselves, that when we set our minds to achieve our dreams, we could be confident we would do it.
The Marriott becomes a symbol to us, for who we are as a nation, that we could dream big and achieve great things. It’s a brilliant symbol, a shining star on our landscape. It lifts our vision and our consciousness. We no longer walk with our heads bowed under the weight of our mediocrity. We lift our heads high, confident, assured, progressive: we could do the big things we dream of, now, not tomorrow, but today.
With the Berbice Bridge, the Providence development, the Marriott, the Hope Canal, the Olympic swimming pool on the East Coast of Demerara, the international athletic track on the West Coast of Demerara, the four-lane East Bank Demerara road expansion, with these and other projects, including several housing communities, Guyana leaps ahead. Our decade of continuous socio-economic growth is producing stunning results across the nation.
Of course, we’ve still got crucial repairs to carry out, for the decades of devastation under the dictatorship left a society falling apart in its wake, and we’re still re-aligning broken structural systems and repairing crucial foundation cornerstones.
But we’ve come a far way, so much so that today our nation celebrates the Marriott’s opening.
We ought to congratulate those who stared down the dreaded Opposition that we saw to this project, those who, with determination and persistence, saw through the whole thing. It must have been trying and a constant stress to shake off the narrow-minded folks who wanted it torn down before a stone was laid. Those who yet made sure the walls rise in defiance and in glory to the magnificently enterprising spirit inherent in the Guyanese soul, these we applaud today: they make us believe in ourselves.
Today, we launch the tallest building in the land. We declare to the world, with that landscape skyline symbol visible across the vast sweep of the Atlantic Ocean, whereby ships traversing the horizon could look at us seeing not just the seawalls and mangroves, but this tall straight sturdy structure pointing to the heavens, we declare our rise as a global people.
The Marriott causes a quiet leap of joy in our breasts, stirring our hearts with the euphoria of our arrival. We dreamed the impossible, and we made it happen, seeing our possibility coming alive before our eyes. To use a V S Naipaul thought, the enigma of our arrival, the exotic mystery of how we did this, of how we transformed Providence and remade D’Edward Village with the Berbice Bridge and redesigned our Atlantic Ocean skyline with the Marriott, leaves us feeling a sense of awe at our accomplishments.
Yet, humbly, with the confidence and resolve and deep determination of knowing that we could dream big and make it happen for our land, we plough on, cultivating this new spirit in our nation’s psyche, lifting our people’s vision to look beyond what we see, to what’s possible, to what we could dream of and aspire to and create in our imagination.
This Marriott, this real, living, breathing, tall, elegant, modern world class building that redesigns our Altantic Ocean coastline, once laid a mere virtual dream as a drawing on a piece of paper, the dream a faint thing in its creator’s imagination.
It took immense creative skill and that exotic human power of the mind and the will to bring it to reality, to convert that piece of waste land into the country’s most prime real estate asset. It took self-belief and serious work. It took imagining what Guyana could be, dreaming of what’s possible, and translating this into physical reality.
The Marriott showcases the immense imaginative will and creative power of the Guyanese nation, and it shall become the catalyst for us to aim high and dream big and set ourselves deep aspirations, fully confident that we would achieve what we set out to build.

 

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