Is New Orleans A Wake Up Call For Guyana - PART ll

My memory of Georgetown as a kid is that of a beautiful garden city with avenues and walkways in Waterloo and Main Streets among others, where adults could take their kids on Sunday evenings and sit on a bench relaxing while they frolicked in the grass among the Daisys. It was a City consisting of structures that could be described as quaint, whether they were domiciles, educational institutions or commercial premises. Some were huge, like the St George’s Cathedral, considered to be the largest wooden building in the world. Others were dimunitive, like a tiny wooden cottage I passed each day on my way to primary school. Some were made of concrete and mortar, like the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception or “Brickdam” as we were wont to call it. Others were completely wooden, like St George’s of course, and Christ Church and The Public Hospital. License plates all seem to begin with PA or PB in those days, and the Ducati Motor Cycle was the most noisiest of human contraptions possible. I can remember the rainy periods when the drains and trenches alongside the sidewalks and roadways would become torrential waterways channeling the excess waters at a fast and un-impeded clip through the raised koker gates and into the Demerara River. You could swim in the flowing waters back in the day, and building wooden toy boats powered by paper sails and racing them in the waterways was a favorite pastime for us kids during the rainy season. I know this nostalgic wandering down memory lane might elicit raised eyebrows or mental queries as to its purpose. It is quite simple. You cannot grasp the significance of the changes the City and its environs have undergone without first conjuring up an image of what it was like back in the day.

Does anyone remember the Punt Trench Dam, with high bridges across it fashioned thus to allow the passage of horse drawn steel pontoons moving cane from the Durban backlands to Diamond Sugar Estates? That was a favorite Sunday swimming area for much of the City, back in the day before Luckhoo Pool was constructed. But importantly, it was an integral part of the drainage system in the City. And their were other canals, like the one alongside upper Sussex Street we called Barbados, and with similar waterways running alongside Princess Street, North and South Road, and Lamaha Street to name a few. They were all part of the drainage system, capturing and channeling overflows from rain through the open kokers into the Demerara River. Visiting those areas now one experiences cultural shock over the environmental deterioration that has taken place, and a strengthened premonition that the worse is yet still to come.

The Punt Trench Dam was filled up during the reign of the PNC, maybe for the same reason the steam rail system was dismantled and rendered obsolete. The Leaders in Government at that time perhaps envisioned a modern Capital with road connections everywhere. Why the hell should we cling on to stinking 19th century transportation technology, was the response they probably gave to those who far sightedly challenged the transformation. It is a pity that the decision makers did not travel to London or New York and acquaint themselves with the efficiency of the rail systems in those two populous metropolitan areas. Maybe the fact that two developed Nations were still clinging on to their rail transportation system might have served to disengage them from the stupid notions circulating around and in their minds at that time. That they jettisoned the bird they held in their hands before securing the one soaring almost out of reach above their heads, is a conclusion as clear as light today. The other canals were not deliberately filled up although they might well have been, given the state they are in today. Poor maintenance and no maintenance of these canals over ensuing years increasingly resulted in them becoming blocked and clogged with all manner of residue and debris, and the koker gates overwhelmed by slush and silt. When garbage collection became extinct, the canals became the preferred dumping ground for all and sundry, from dead pets and other animals to junk cars. Today human remains have also joined the refuse group found there.

The topographical metamorphosis the City has gone through over the years has positioned us at the point where New Orleans was just before Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. The vulnerable parishes in New Orleans have their equivalent in Wards like Queenstown, and Alberttown and outer areas like Kitty, and Bel Air, and Sophia et al. The bulk of the population in the affected parishes in New Orleans were low income, maxing out at about US$11000 per year. The people living in those areas in Guyana likely to be hardest by Tsunami like waters penetrating the Atlantic sea defense system, and flooding waters from heavy seasonal rainfall overwhelming the drainage system, are mostly very poor, might possess a bicycle at best, and have no proximate built up areas to which they can evacuate. The American Federal Government with all of its vast wealth and technology in areas of transportation, communication and health care, was unable to mount the kind of response necessary for the magnitude of the disaster in New Orleans. Does anyone in this life or in this world, even remotely, believe that the Government Guyana could do better when and if our turn arrives?

Flooding as a result of heavier than usual seasonal rainfall is not new to Georgetown and its environs. This has been going on from time immemorial, and is a natural consequence of the low level situation of the City. But back in the day the water ran off much faster, and there were no impending disaster situations as a result of the flooding. The outlets were freer, more passable, perhaps because garbage disposal was routine; remember the M&TC trucks with attendants with pitch forks and huge baskets emptying and carting away the contents of 45 gallon garbage drums positioned in front and to the side of virtually every yard. But even back then the flooding situation suggested that long term residency under current conditions was not feasible, and that some day Mahomet had to decide to go to the mountain, since no amount of technological tinkering was going to produce the kind of protection required. Today, particularly based on happenings earlier this year in Guyana, and the frightening images of what has happened recently in New Orleans, a pull back to higher ground appears to be the inevitable solution. The fact that the people responsible for coming to this final decision might not have even began to ponder its feasibility yet, is a patent example of Nero fiddling away happily while the fire creeps slowly but inexorably towards the tinder boxed housings and protections of the poor.

Keith R Williams
Atlanta, Georgia
keiwillia2111@bellsouth.net