So you want more public holidays?

Talking Heads
Stabroek News
May 24, 2000


With the call for new national holidays, we should really observe the ones we already have which are presently overlooked.

Not many have heard of National Overseas Relatives Day. This holiday started about 25 years ago when the first Guyanese who left these shores returned as tourists. The day usually occurs in August at the height of the tourist season. The way to celebrate this festival is to have a relative preferably from North America come to your house. Should a family have no returning relative they should have a family member dress up in khaki shorts and brand new, name brand sneakers. He must wear a large video camera around his neck and a money belt.

Traditionally he will enter the house and be kissed profusely by the family members who should then say "Mamou. you get fat!" He will then reply " Yeh man, it's the good life up north!" Then he will remark on how hot it is and how small is the humble house, in which he spent so many happy years. While he rambles on about his childhood of cricket and the time he ate 50 mangoes at one shot, family members should bring him the traditionally sacrificed duck curry and then gather round to hear grossly exaggerated stories about how he owns six supermarkets in Queens or knows the Mayor of Atlanta. Before he leaves , family members will whisper in his ear all the bad things the other relatives have done .

Another public holiday is Barrel Arrival Day which celebrates the arrival in Guyana of the first ever barrel. This happened back in 1973 and it was addressed to a Ms Marcia Rosebottom of East La Penitence. A statue of her holding a can of sardines is soon to be erected. On that special day, the barrel came off the ship to the roar of 5000 citizens and was carried head high through the streets of Georgetown. Unfortunately severe shaking caused the flour to burst and mix with the salt and red nail polish making a rather nasty mess.

Anyway the festival held two weeks before Christmas involves revellers running through the streets with brightly coloured barrels shouting " It's here! Where are my Nikes! " Pretend fights break out with women playing tug of wars with brassieres and men running around with jeans four sizes too small.

The next holiday which people have little knowledge of is National Garbage Day. In fact preparations for this start a week before when citizens of Georgetown start picking up all the garbage the city council has failed to pick up during the year. The citizens store it in their homes. Then on the last Saturday in November all this garbage is carried to the Avenue of the Republic in a long festive and smelly procession and dumped in the grounds of City Hall. The pile usually reaches 20 feet high around the building. They then call very amicably for the Mayor and the city councillors who are traditionally at the top of city hall on a balcony. The tradition then dictates that the city council jump from the great height into the pile of garbage, the mayor going first. It is of course all great fun, although one year a mayor had made the fatal mistake of being very efficient at garbage collection leaving little to go around the building. He died of his injuries landing on an old Kentucky fried chicken box and being speared in the eye by a drumstick. Sad.

The final holiday is "National Do Everything Backwards Day." This requires people to think only of the past and to walk, drive and ride backwards. Horses push their carts up and down Lombard street; minibus drivers scream in reverse along the country's highways looking in their rear view mirrors; people walk along the streets backwards talking about "28 years and queues for flour.." Of course this all causes a lot of confusion with people falling into trenches, more minibuses than usual crashing etc. But it is all to prove the day's motto which is "Those who remember the past are too busy to think about the future."