Wednesday Ramblings
Stabroek News
August 8, 2001

Black Clothes Police Tour

The first package is not for the weak at heart. The police raid tour requires all participants to be in the lobby of their hotels and dressed in bullet proof vests by 0500 hours. A police vehicle will swing by and pick you up and you will be witness to a real life police raid. (No cameras allowed.)

You will see the nation's finest at their best, chasing taxis, running up stairs in full battle dress, kicking down doors... and perhaps even more.

Muggers Delight

The flip side of that package is the "Popular Mugging Places Walkabout "Tourists are handed huge fake gold chains and chaperoned around various areas where muggers are guaranteed to be lurking. These include the seawall any time after dark and the corners of Church and Waterloo Streets. The chains have a quick release mechanism so you are not strangled when the mugger makes his grab. Fighting back is not encouraged and tourists do this at their own risk although chases are permitted.

If by chance no robbers are around, the tour guides arrange for young men carrying long knives to take their place. No tourist is allowed to go away without having experienced the unique thrill of a Georgetown mugging.

Protest till you drop!

Finally join a real live march in the Protest Tour. Here you get to walk with truly aggrieved citizens expressing their constitutional right to protest. Guyanese democracy at its best and most often.

With the economy package you get a placard reading "We want jobs" or "GPL must go" or "What a great vacation." You walk with protestors along a designated route starting at the Square of the Revolution and end up outside a ministry where you can shake the gates a little bit and say rude things about the occupant.

With the Deluxe package you will get the opportunity to loot a store on Regent street and at some point you will be tear gassed and if lucky beaten by real policemen.

With the super deluxe package you are arrested and get to spend a few hours in the picaresque Brickdam lockups before your ambassador rushes in and saves you from the embrace of some rather large man.

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Press release from the Honourable Minister of Health, Dr Leslie Ramsammy.

Congratulations to all those persons who thought of committing suicide last month but who held back because of my anti- suicide campaign. It is now well into August and there is no real reason why you cannot now go about ending your lives. Yes there were some persons who did commit suicide last month and we are dealing with them severely. If as a people we cannot obey the strict orders of a government minister then life is simply not worth living.

We are going to have a "Don't Break A Bone" month in September and I promise that if any of you even get a scratch on your little toe I will personally take a baseball bat to your knee caps. In the meantime be happy! (That's an order)