By Francis Quamina Farrier
FOR FOLKS OF MY AGE group, many are wondering where have all those 47 years of Guyana as a Republic gone! We cried with joy when British Guiana got independence fifty years ago and our beautiful country became independent Guyana. We recalled the humour over the debates for the new spelling of the name “Guiana” which became “Guyana.” Four years later, Guyana was changed officially to “The Co-Operative Republic of Guyana”. The Co-operative movement was to be the major sector for the development of our country.

Then the authorities told us that we would part company with our former colonial masters, the British. We no longer have a “Queen of Guyana”. Guyana will remain a member of the British Commonwealth group of Nations, with Queen Elizabeth as head. Guyana appointed a Governor General in the person of Sir David Rose, who replaced Queen Elizabeth as the head of Guyana. And as we celebrate Guyana’s forty seventh Republic Anniversary in this year 2017, there is another “David” at the helm, in the person of President David Granger.

Guyanese of my generation dreamed many dreams. Dreams of what direction we envisioned our country would take. The roads we would traverse and the bridges we would build with other countries in the world especially countries of the Non-Aligned Group of Nations. Guyana is the largest country in the English-speaking Caribbean and many of us dreamed dreams of absorbing some of those sisters and brothers from the small islands of the Caribbean. We even thought of welcoming some of our sisters and brothers from French-Speaking Haiti. We did not sleep to dream, but dreamed to change our country and our region; hopefully for the better.

There is the history of the many citizens who migrated to British Guiana during the long-gone colonial days and the early independent years. My own father migrated from Grenada in the 1930s. One of my boyhood neighbours at McDoom village, Archibald Stewart, had migrated from Barbados. Hundreds also migrated from other islands including St. Lucia and settled at Mahdia. British Guiana was the new world for hundreds and hundreds of citizens of the small English-speaking Caribbean islands. No one at that time imagined that there would have been a total reversal of that migration. We never imagined that Guyanese would migrate in their hundreds and their thousands from their much larger country, to the small English-speaking islands of the Caribbean; especially to tiny Barbados, which we so often boast could fit easily into the mouth of the Essequibo river.

Older Guyanese can recall the big road project of the early 1970s; a road from Mahdia to the Rupununi. The plan by President Forbes Burnham, was to have such a massive project undertaken with a high percentage of volunteer contributions by Guyanese both at home and from abroad, as well as non-Guyanese from the Caribbean – mainly college and university students. There were many volunteers, myself included. We rolled up our sleeves and worked on Burnham’s dream project.

I can recall boarding one of the Dakota airplanes of the Guyana Airways Corporation and flying with other volunteers from Timehri to Mahdia. It was very hard physical work, but all the volunteers enjoyed their stint. Sadly, that ambitious Burnham road project ended as a failure. That was similar to the failed Jagan road project; known as the Del Conte road.
That project would have linked Parika to Makouria by road. That would have given access to the many farmers who produce quite a lot of agriculture produce on the lower East Bank of the Essequibo. Why the PPP had never resuscitated that road project during their two recent decades in government is anybody’s guess. No one seemed to have dreamed a dream of a “Cheddi Jagan Highway”.

A very successful road project undertaken by President Forbes Burnham was the Soesdyke to Linden highway. That is one of his great physical legacies. However, the on-going trail from Linden to Lethem has still not been up-graded to a well-paved highway, as was hoped for since independence, fifty years ago. Also longing to be done, is the paving of the road from Linden on the Upper Demerara river to Kwakwani on the Upper Berbice river. My dream, too, is to see a road linking Orealla, located on the Upper Corentyne river with Kwakwani which is located on the Upper Berbice river, via Kimbia.

As for bridges, there have been some very impressive projects. The Canje Bridge. Bravo to President Forbes Burnham. The Berbice River Bridge. Bravo to President Bharrat Jagdeo. The Demerara Harbour Bridge. Bravo to President Forbes Burnham. And the Takatu Border Bridge connecting Guyana with Brazil. Bravo to the Brazilian government.

I am still hoping that very soon, there would be a bridge spanning the Essequibo river at Yupukari on the Upper Essequibo river, just south of the Iwokarama Rain Forest Project, and along the road to Lethem. Also a bridge across the Upper Berbice river at Kwakwani. We can also dream of a bridge from the East Bank of the Essequibo River linking Rivers View with Agatash, which is on the western side of the Essequibo River, just south of Bartica.

At times, like at a Republic anniversary, we the older citizens who were there at the very beginning do not sleep to dream, but dream to change our Beautiful Guyana, even if there are those who speculate that our dreams are impossible dreams. However, if you don’t have a dream, how are you going to have a dream come true?