I HAVE been to three universities; and for the education of one of my bitter critics, engineer, Charles Ceres, who wrote that I only have a first degree – one to do first degree, one to do a Master degree and the other to do a doctorate. Coming from dirt poverty in Wortmanville in South Georgetown, I journeyed to a different world that was almost paradise when I entered the hallways of university.

One of the things humans miss if they never went to university is the uniqueness of campus life. If anything is special in the psychological evolution of a human is the experience of campus life. Whether it is four years for a first degree or one year for a post-graduate qualification, what happens to you studying on a university campus will change your life forever.

In my last Sunday column, I looked at the things I would like to see in my country in 2024. The total reopening of UG to campus classes this year must take place this month. I haven’t done the research but UG must have been the only university in the world that has not gone back to campus life after COVID-19. I don’t know the answer but whatever it is, it cannot hold up after 2022.

Universities around the world in 2022 went back to campus classes.

The second thing I would like to see is the psychic transformation of Guyanese in relation to buying Guyana-produced goods. I grew up hearing about Trinidad importing everything including beef. But I have lived to see Guyana outdo Trinidad. I shop at all the major supermarkets in Georgetown. I live two minutes away from Massy Supermarket and it is a psychological disaster to see the choices Guyanese make.

When I go to these supermarkets I always wonder how Banks DIH, Beharry Group of companies, DDL, and other Guyanese companies survive. Because Guyanese buy foreign products rather than those these companies produce.

There isn’t an American or European that I have seen that choose local. But that is understandable; they prefer what they know. Guyanese operate with opposite psychology; they buy what they do not know.

Do you know Beharry Group of Companies manufactures pasta that is as good as any imported ones? Do you know that same company imports a CARICOM produced chocolate named “Richmond” that is as good as Cadbury and cost $200 less? Do you know Banks DIH makes top class ice-creams? Do you know the same chocolate coated ice-cream stick that Banks DIH makes sells at $180 per packet, the imported one from Nestle is $600? Yes believe it or leave it- $600.

Do you know that ground coffee from Guyana is one of the best in the world? I repeat – one of the best in the world. But colonial brain-washing makes us question our own judgement.

Guyanese would not believe it has one of the world’s best ground coffees. Do you know, the Dominican Republic ground coffee is far better than any imported brand from the US or Europe.

Why not support the Dominican Republic. It is a Caribbean country that has CARICOM associated status.

I went to Montrose to visit my wife’s visiting relatives. All the streets in the community were recently redone and given names. Not one street carried the name of a Guyanese icon. All the names came from flowers. So there is Exoria Street, Bourganville Street, etc…. That Montrose scheme was the invention of one of the leading insurance companies in the 1970s.

Why not name a street in the compound after the CEO who came up with the idea? Why not name a street after Ramnarace Sarwan, the boy from humble origins in Wakenaam? Why the authorities responsible for the street naming could not have identified Ron Robinson? Why a street in that very compound couldn’t carry the name of Nelson Mandela?

When people enter Montrose and if there was an EMG Wilson Street, they may ask who EMG Wilson was. They will be told that he was the innovative Minister of Public Works in the 1960s that broke with tradition and celebrated a new ferry not with the traditional champagne but by coconut water from a nut that he broke right at the ceremony.

The need to preserve the past is something that was so graphic when I first went to a foreign university. All the libraries carried the names of famous people from the university in the past. The graduate library at the University of Toronto is named the Jason Robarts Library. So many times modern civilization is reminded that if it does not recognise the past it would not understand the present and have no idea of the future.