Georgetown was city noted for its beauty and hospitality. Today it is famous for the debris that spills out into the streets and clogs the canals. The only hospitality that seems available is at the Georgetown Public Hospital where wounded victims shot by bandits receive treatment.
I used to saunter through the city at leisure both day and night. At present, one has to pick one’s steps while negotiating the numerous potholes and the crazy menace of vehicular traffic, many driven by just boys.
Respect there is none; ask the people who travel in minibuses. Love there may be but it may be of a kind more aptly termed ‘self-love’.
Everything today seems to carry a prefix of self. People are taking out their own pictures and call them selfies. It is a situation that is startlingly inhuman and without relevance.
The problem is DRUGS. No one expected it. Even the middle tier pushers and hustlers have become victims of their own cupidity.
Only the big-fish swims on serenely. He is not in awe of the law. He has become the law and the accompanying dis-order.
Where is the big-fish? Right here he is in plain view of all. Who knows the big-fish? Everyone who reads newspapers and watches T.V. news. Who knows the big-fish for what he is? Those who swim in the same pond.
The problem is not in being able to identify the culprits but in being able to prosecute them. Drugs and Corruption have taken over the city and has had a strange impact on the minds of those who chose to acquire money and wealth rather than good living.
I watched it begin and I knew how it would end. All the signs were there but those whose watch it was fell asleep at post.
Those who did not sleep were wide awake dreaming dreams that no sane person ought to dream. Dreams of Power over others and fabulous wealth will cause a disease known as megalomania. It affects the mind and the only cure is death. It is said whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad.
The introduction of drugs was beginning of our pain. I am not including marijuana in this reference to drugs since it is not a drug and unlike foolish notions is not dangerous nor habit forming. In fact, is has a calming effect that which is unlike the confrontational effects of substances like cocaine or alcohol. I watch with horror how some parents especially at Christmas time will introduce their young children to a drink of rum without contemplating the consequences. If they had taken time to study history they would have known that it is through the use of rum that slave owners controlled their slaves and even won the support of the Amerindians.
Today there is confusion. The city’s streets are literally packed with cars. There was a time when the importation of personal vehicles were regulated in order to protect the wear and tear to the streets and the loss of life to persons.
But the greed for power and authority has relegated that exercise to uselessness.
Today the streets are packed with vehicles and cursing, screaming drivers and no one has the power to control it for it began with a process and can only be curtailed by process.
The culture has changed. People have accepted that the only way to correct a wrong doing is to pay a bribe. As a matter of fact all sins can be forgiven for a monetary penance paid to the priests of the public disorder.
There was a time in the past when writing these columns brought me much grief. My MURDER was ordered by a particular BIG FISH. It was planned in the highest law enforcement office by the highest law enforcement officer in the land. I was given two testimonies by persons who had knowledge of this plot but the time to reveal it will come. What is of much more importance are those who have not been able to acquire the kind of socialisation that young people need in order to develop into productive human beings. Instead they have been misled for decades. They have been coerced at every International show of foreign artistes to Guyana to drink excessively without restriction. Four bottles of beer for a thousand dollars claimed the advertising but the commercial interests who advertise these events never give support to events at the Cultural Center nor the Theatre Guild.
Culture is not their way of life. Our youths have been terribly abused and pushed in negative directions. Parents have lost control. Young girls of thirteen and fourteen leave home for places unknown. There are teenaged murders and rapes, car jackings and gun crimes all for a BOX OF MONEY. Most of them die. All of them will die and THE BOX will remain an illusion to be dreamed of but never attained.

By Ras Michael