IT’S Good Friday today when the Christian world takes pause before the burst of the Easter celebrations.

In Guyana, Easter is also the season for flying kites, a longstanding tradition mainly for kids, especially boys.

Come Monday, kites of myriad descriptions – bird kites, man and woman kites, monster kites, plastic kites, plain and multi-coloured paper kites, gigantic kites, small kites and in-between kites – will be paraded all around the country.

Some kites will take to the sky along beaches and the coastal seawall, in parks and other open spaces around the country; some kites will never make it up or will end up in trees, power poles or on roofs.

And then there are the picnics, boat cruises and a raft of other outings for the family, the young, the old, and the in-betweens. 

Easter here has also come to be associated with the grand Bartica regatta and the Rupununi rodeo which are attracting bigger and bigger crowds.

I plan to be among the tens of thousands taking pause for reflection and then jumping into the grand Easter celebrations.

But don’t try to find me to join me because I’ll be in disguise.

Remember the problems I sketched last week that have been dogging me because of people mistaking me for the ‘Dodgy Cel’ man in that GT&T TV advertisement?

The problems have not gone and people are still swearing that I am the man in the ad waiting around to talk free on my cell phone.

Like I said last week, I will not mind being mistaken for a much-loved celebrity. But I fear the dangerous consequences of being identified for somebody else, especially since GT&T will not want to pay the hospital bills if I am beaten up in a case of mistaken identity.

Can you imagine what may happen to me if I am spotted in an Easter crowd and mistaken for someone else? With my size, I may be trussed up and dressed in multi-coloured paper, pasted on a wooden frame, tied with a rope and hoisted up in the air like a kite.

I don’t mind kite-flying but I will not relish the idea of being flown like a kite until the fliers have had their fun at such weird torture and cut the cord to let me crash to earth with all that that can entail. (You can bet that there are some around who dearly wish me such a fate!)

So, I’ll be in disguise to watch the kites and the Easter bunnies (rabbits included) and all the other delights of the season.

That will be so much more fun than watching the little kites some big men here want to fly all year round.

I remember the late President Cheddi Jagan remarking about those little kites that politicians, so-called commentators and make-believe newspaper columnists try to fly all the time to draw attention to themselves, like three-year-olds.

Like flying little kites, they try to float issues of little substance but most of these are akin to the ‘kankawa’ kites that just don’t stay up in the wind.

In Guyanese parlance, ‘kankawa’ kites are those that dance around crazily, more of a nuisance to genuine kite fliers — and then crash to earth without making an impact.

These ‘kankawa’ amateurs should know that flying a kite is an art – it’s about getting the right kind of kite for the occasion and getting kites that can `sing’ good, kites that can stay still and then dance gracefully or do acrobats or whatever when the need arises.

Big kites test the strength and endurance of the flier who may also wish to cut others loose with deft swings of a sharp razor blade tied to the tail of the kite.

Flying a kite is an art – from getting it up, taking the wind and keeping it up and doing all the right stuff.

The real kites endure and are a joy to watch – unlike the ‘kankawas’ and their fliers whose yearlong stunts are mere sideshows that most times do not even deserve attention.

Here’s wishing all a Happy Easter and good kite-flying.

Don’t let the ‘kankawas’ spoil your fun!