By Michel Outridge

THIS week, the Pepperpot Magazine visited the West Coast Berbice Village of Bush Lot, a central point for businesses, both large and small.

This part of the countryside is rapidly developing into a township, except for a bank and a police station.

On the public road there are many stores, cellphone, electronics stores, supermarkets, hardware stores, rum shops, bars, boutiques, a booming roadside market and a lot of other micro to small businesses.

This community is a peaceful, quiet place where people seem to get along just well and most of the residents are related and they are very neighbourly people.

It is home to several doctors and other medical professionals, teachers, volunteers, councillors, engineers, office workers and it is an agriculture-based village, the home of rice and cash-crop farming.

In almost every yard or land space, there is a budding garden of fruits, plants, flowers and cash crops.

This is a very green village, that is, the people depend heavily on farming to bring in incomes to the home.

There are some livestock farmers and poultry farmers in this community, as well.

Bush Lot Village is located between the Golden Grove and Hopetown communities.

The people of Bush Lot are friendly but reserved, and do not really wish to talk except if you are persistent.

There are many government services in this village such as the health centre housing both Bush Lot and Experiment health centres, the Bush Lot Nursery, Primary and Secondary Schools located on the same road, that is, Latchmansingh Street.

There are also many shops in this village and a very huge masjid, which is painted in white and green and on the opposite side there are two mandirs with very spacious yards.

In Bush Lot, there are a few churches, the Environmental Health building, and the Neighbourhood Democratic Council (NDC) building which houses the office and a few pharmacies, including that of the well-known “Dr.Love.”

Bush Lot is a very large community which is sectioned off into different parts starting from A to K; and there are two new housing schemes, the cash crops area and the rice fields, which is in another section.

Bush Lot Village has electricity, potable water, landline, cellphone services of both network providers, cable television and internet of private companies, good infrastructure, upgraded roads and streets and adequate public facilities.

The Union/Naarstigheid NDC
The Pepperpot Magazine visited the Union/Naarstigheid NDC where Overseer Myrtle Christian was on hand to highlight the work of the NDC.

She stated that the villages run deep and is quite large and accommodates housing areas from letters A to F and cultivation acreage from G to K.

Christian, a Councillor, is from Chesney, West Coast Berbice, but has been around Bush Lot Village working for many years and she is familiar with the people.

She pointed out that cricketer Ramnaresh Sarwan’s wife is from Bush Lot and she is a pharmacist; other notable people from the village have made names for themselves.

Myrtle reported that the Union/Naarstigheid NDC renders services to the community in terms of maintaining the drainage system, the cleaning of parapets, reserves, repairs to internal streets and roads and the removal of carcasses from the roadways.

She disclosed that they also clean and clear trenches and canals in the village but at present, they do not provide a waste-disposal service since they have no landfill site to dump garbage.

The councillor added that residents utilise the paid services of Cevon’s Waste Disposal Services which collects garbage weekly.

The NDC, she related, has in its employ 18 workers under the Community Infrastructure Improvement Programme (CIIP) and they are contracted to weed and keep the parapets clean as well as clean the drains in the village.

Myrtle stated that the NDC has 14 councillors and they are headed by the Chair, Tiffany Mc Farlane, a Hopetown resident.

The overseer related that they would also settle disputes among villagers and try to resolve any issues at the community level before involving the police; and they have good relations with both the police and the community policing group members.

Myrtle noted that Bush Lot Village has about 2,500 villagers of predominantly Indo-Guyanese descent, who co-exist with their neighbours of other ethnicities.

“Even though a site was identified to house a market in the village, the vendors prefer to sell on the roadside which they have developed into a market,” she said.

The village has a garbage-disposal issue, with refuse being intentionally dumped into the drains, thereby causing a blockage and some villagers have erected concrete bridges to their entrances and have blocked the manholes.

Myrtle reported that recently some of the internal streets have been upgraded and there are upgrading works ongoing within the village.