WHETHER we were brought here wrongfully or by choice, Guyana is now home. In order to make home function most effectively, we have to ensure it is preserved and protected so that our values and legacies can be passed on.  In this case it is not a matter of race or its past experiences, it is about making the best of what we have in ensuring our preservation, longevity and development.
One of the biggest issues regarding the future is that we are not good at preserving history. Without knowing our past, we have no control shaping our future, since it will be shaped by disasters rather than by ambition and planning.
We are living based on what can go wrong, not what we want our future to be. We are in the self-preservation mode, i.e., we are concerned only about the here and now, which blurs our interpretation and understanding of the most important things such as family, community, culture, and country.
Unless we learn how to value what we have, we can never have more. We have lost track of our identity and adopted other identities without understanding the fundamental core principles of the civilisations we want to emulate. We have to learn not only to adopt the looks of other societies, but also the fundamentals underpinning how and why they function.
Western civilisation, especially the USA and Britain, are built in such a way that hundreds of years hence the foundations and principles will pass on from generation to generation. Conversely, as a culture we look at things that if they are no longer in use they no longer have value, unlike Western civilization where even if something is not in use, it is preserved as a representation of the past and the ability to overcome.
For instance, the Vreed-en-Hoop stelling represents a key means of commerce and transportation in earlier times. With the advent of the Demerara Harbour Bridge, speed boats, and other modes of transportation, we no longer see the value and have appreciation for what was. This is a sign of failing to preserve our legacy, which in turn will make us lose our identity. A legacy defines a people, without that we have no history, which means we never existed.
We have to begin thinking beyond ourselves and survival instinct and put ourselves in the future generation, who might want to know who we were and what we represented.
Guyana being the only English-speaking country in South America or governed by Great Britain has a larger responsibility to carry on Guyana’s legacy. We have an important role to play in preserving the diversity in cultures from those who dared to venture, by choice or not, Guyana’s way.  Ours is an eclectic identity that needs to be preserved for future generations. There are few countries in the world that share so diverse or deep roots from different periods and parts of the world. Different world powers saw the value in Guyana and tried countering it in different ways. The Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, French, British, all of these nations have left footprints that should be everlasting, but are being lost in the misunderstanding of their values.
The Dutch showed us how to protect a society below sea level by designing the irrigation and waterway systems. The British lead us into the industrialisation age from the technology of mining bauxite, gold, etc., to building places such as Bartica, barges to move products from the canefields, and bridging the three counties, making it one united nation.
Things were built purposefully and mindful of the atmospheric and physical environments. Homes were built where heat, rain and moisture were properly vented, on stilts and with steps in the event of flood or natural disasters, casualties would be minimised, and life could go on. Today, things are being built with no recognition for the environment or future planning.
We need to pay that kind of attention to our past, so we understand better in which direction to go in the future. Guyana now has a blank canvas in the Information Age to shape its own future. No longer does it take a world power to do it for us, and it needs to be said that the next generation is not looking for information, they are looking for examples of what Guyana can become. (Reprinted)