How to make money in Guyana.

11.6.23.

Oh me mamma-ohhh.

M’dear!

Have you noticed how food prices are shooting up higher than Jack’s beanstalk?

In my lovely native land, even the beer-guzzlers who spend loads of cash in the rum shops from Friday afternoon ‘til Sunday night (taking a break on Sunday morning to pray, returning to the rum shops when at twilight donkeys bray), even they are complaining. Those ladies with sugar-daddies to fatten their pockets, they’re bawling. They can only afford hair and nails.

I, being one who loves solutions, have been rustling around the Guyana-web to find ideas that would be acceptable to my compatriots. (I’m generous like that. Besides, I need to protect my plantain chips quota…read on, read on…)

Going through YouTube, I bounced up on Stanislaus. The six or seven videos remind me of those Sunday evenings when I used to tune into local tv to watch Expressions of Richard Naraine, a simple, one room production written by Somnauth Narine.

Stanislaus is on the phone, sprawling like a proper Guyanese man in his Berbice chair, his shiny, straight-hair wig like a black plastic bowl on his head. I keep waiting for him to take it off and hold it out like a beggar.

“But Uncle George,” Stanislaus is wheedling in a monologue caught between persuasion and constipation. “Think of the moneeeeeey, Uncle Georrrrge, we gon make plennnnty moneeeey.”

Old Uncle George in New York tells Stanislaus to hold on, he has to answer a call of nature; Stanislaus grumbles about his phone bill running up whilst his uncle has him on hold to take another call.

Looking at the videos again makes me realise…I’m ashamed to tell you…so please keep it between you and me! Stanislaus kind of, sort of, reminds me of me. He reminds me of many citizens in my lovely native land, and I’m not saying this because I want company. Stanislaus is forever cooking up schemes to get rich. One night, it was something to do with plantain. White people would love plantain, he tells Uncle George.

Eh-eh! No!

This is one idea I am 100 percent against.

I am not sure if you know this about me. I am a plantain chips addict. M’dear, you can stare at me, willing me with every fiber of your cravitious being, to share my plantain chips, you gon drop down salivating, eyes up to the sky, arms pointing East and West. I’d rather give you money to buy your own. See here now, if the world learns to love plantain, there will be a shortage, the price will go up. Instant plantain chips shortage.

Besides, think of how eco-Unfriendly it would be. Tons of packaging for chips, never to be recycled.

To save the world then, I am sharing with you a brilliant idea. If it doesn’t work, you can curry it and sell it.  You can sell the eggs, feather for beds and pillows. Quill pens.

Can you guess what I’m talking about? Here’s a hint:

Bandits on the loose, busting into homes at 2 am, scaring citizens.

The security business has never been more profitable than it is today in my lovely native land. Cameras, wires, alarms. Big Boy, the grill-work man, must have a hefty bank account by now, making functional, decorative bars to put on windows and doors.

What’s that got to do with curry, feathers and poo?

Here it is, from my soon-to-be world-famous manual. Perhaps you’ve read it and have forgotten.

Yes, man!! Guard-goose! Think of it…you, the Goose-Magnate of South America.

And with all this talk these days about avoiding chemicals, you can shovel the poo and sell it as fertiliser.

Picture this, you, the Poo-Magnate of South America.

You’d be legal and legit. Schwarzenegger won’t have to come after you, Fubar-style.

Jokes aside, the problem with crime, safety at home, isn’t going to sneak away readily. The government and the people need to have a long-term discussion about finding solutions. In the meantime, how do citizens, working hard to earn a few dollars, stay safe at night? I’ve heard that one enterprising person, on a news site online, has suggested that we bring Schwarzenegger to catch the bandits. (Eh!! Why do we always have to ask the Mercans to save us?)

Laugh or you gon cry.

Anyway friend, time for me to go make breakfast. Have a lovely two weeks until the next time. Take care of you, eat well, curry or not. Plenty luuuve, neena.

P.S. Here are some other places you can find me: neenamaiya.carrd.co.