The Guyanese rich do not use the products of Banks DIH, DDL and other Guyanese companies

Nov 16, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

On Monday night, I offered to drop my friend, KN journalist Rawle Welch, home since I was going in the same direction. We stopped to get a drink at a parlour that for half of a century now is known as the hospital parlour. When I was 18 years old, I saw right in front of my eyes, at that spot, a man pick up a stool and strike a drunken fellow in his head and kill him instantly. It is at the junction of New Market and Thomas Streets, right across the road from the famous or infamous (depending on your perspective) Georgetown Hospital (Oh Lord, please don’t let me die in there!).
Rawle took a Banks DIH product- Guinness. I don’t use any kind of alcohol so I ordered a bottle of imported banana milk.
Rawle was ahead of me, so he went to a table next to which were four young men drinking. I took no notice of them until one walked up to our table and greeted me. Then I looked across to his company. There were about forty (it may be just less or more) empty Stag beer bottles. So I said; “Why you guys do not drink Banks DIH beer”? They were all friendly and from among them came a voice that said; “But you have foreign milk in your hand.” My reply was that they do not box local milk here.
That was a lot of money Banks DIH lost when you look at that table. I have no idea about what happens to Banks Beer in the CARICOM islands, but my guess is that the young men in Jamaica and Trinidad wouldn’t leave their beer for our beer. I may be wrong, but I know the way CARICOM folks think of our products. In another column, I will argue a case for Guyana downsizing its participation in CARICOM and moving closer to South America.
I think the raison d’être for Guyana’s functionalism in CARICOM no longer exists. CARICOM is not like the EU. In CARICOM, Guyana faces perpetual and relentless discrimination in its exports. I don’t think CARICOM countries see Guyana in positive ways. Since I was a child, I heard of the mistreatment of Guyanese by the Trinidad airline. I became an adult and saw it myself. That airline’s contempt for Guyanese will never stop until a brave, self-assured Guyanese President tells that airline to put the nuts where the monkey put them.
The use of foreign products in this country has a naked class bias that can be seen anywhere. It is only the poor, the working class and the lower middle class that patronize local products. I go to the supermarket almost daily to the point where my daughter calls me a shopaholic. You should see what is in the trolley of the rich folks in this country. You will not find DDL juice, Banks DIH biscuits, local jams and jellies and locally manufactured sodas among hundreds of other local products. You just feel sorry for this lost, jinxed country.
I laugh each time I see these people’s trolleys. How can humans be so stupid and ignorant? The sales attendant, including the owner himself, of Mattai on Water Street, will tell you I eat Banks DIH crackers. One time Mr. Mattai was kind enough to locate the whole wheat version for me.
The girls at Budget Supermarket on Sherriff Stet will tell you I buy only local percolator coffee. It comes from Pomeroon and is as good as Maxwell House or Folgers. Do you know each time you purchase a bottle of instant Café Pele coffee, Brazil’s genius, Pele gets a percentage? We only use that kind of instant coffee because I want Pele to get the money.
A long time ago in one of my columns, I described my experience at selling in my mother-in-law’s supermarket. There was a Baptist Church at the next corner. All the American missionaries at the church that bought at our supermarket only drank Pepsi, Coke, Sprite and 7-Up. Those people would dare not drink a DDL or Banks DIH soda.
I was surprised that Banks DIH did not intercede on behalf of the vendors who were evicted from the Stabroek Market Square. If Banks DIH only knew how much money it lost because the ordinary folks who hung out there only drank Banks Beer. Go into the home of any rich Guyanese and I doubt you will see DDL and Banks DIH drinks in the fridge. Colonialism killed the minds of Guyanese a long time ago.

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8 thoughts on “The Guyanese rich do not use the products of Banks DIH, DDL and other Guyanese companies”

Surujpaul Rampersaud November 16, 2016 at 7:59 am

Come on Freddie. You live in a world of your own and sometimes just behave like a fascist. I do not doubt your patriotism and desire to promote local. However, you are encroaching on people’s freedom to choose. We must never expect everyone to behave as we do.
This behavior of choosing foreign product can be found among the affluent in most most developed and developing countries. The young Chinese and Indians are craving for American model cars. Even affluent Americans are craving foreign wines over those produced in the US for example. This behavior is demonstrated by citizens in several parts of the world and not isolated to Guyana.
I am sure that you do not want us to go back the Burnham days when imported items were taken off the shelves.
1. F_Skinner November 16, 2016 at 9:51 am
  
  Sorry to tell you Suruj, Freddie is right. To develop a country the locals must first have a mindset. The Indians and Chinese you mentioned are isolated cases in countries that are already rich. in Guyana it is the other way around. Like Burnham you mentioned the countries ensured buy local built their economy before the freedoms of trying other peoples stuff were given. If Guyanese do not understand what is necessary to build a country then the ‘bans’ and regulation may need to return.
2. Henry Horton November 16, 2016 at 11:09 am
  
  Guyana is a long way economically, politically and culturally, from the USA, India or China. The latter are not weak, underdeveloped, obsequious nations.
3. Gtloyal November 16, 2016 at 7:12 pm
  
  Suruj, go tell Trump to promote buying foreign stuff.
  Freddie is darn right … and Banks is better that most foreign beers sold in Guyana.
  1. Surujpaul Rampersaud November 18, 2016 at 5:57 pm
    
    My friend, this is a question of preference
Gtloyal November 16, 2016 at 9:05 am

Guyana must look South. We are South Americans, not West Indians.
Its time we stop looking at ourselves as that little country that needs help and assume our responsibilities as a nation state and do what’s necessary to develop ourselves.
RLSG November 16, 2016 at 9:52 am

Freddie I wholeheartedly agree. Guyanese have been brainwashed by television and it is indeed sad. When Burnham banned wheat flour and rice flour was substituted everybody was up in arms. Little did they know that rice flour provided more nutriments than imported white flour. Same with fruits when currants and raisins were banned. They complained that they could not make black cake without those ingredients. But when the local fruits were used the black came out just as good or even better than the imported currants and raisins. The brainwash continues long after Burnham is dead and gone. It is the same type of irrational thinking that led the PPP administration to name BWIA Guyana’s flag carrier. Would Trinidad ever name a foreign airline its national flag carrier .. hell no !! They would rather fly on Caribbean Airlines and be subjected to bad treatment by the Trinidadians than support Fly Jamaica which is co-owned by a Guyanese … they are like sheep crossing a busy road !!
And it is the height of stupidity to not support your local beer and I was blown away by the proliferation of Stag been over Banks beer. How will the local economy thrive if Guyanese themselves do not support it ? Cry my beloved country !!
Arthur Young November 16, 2016 at 7:47 pm

Buying local provides jobs for other Guyanese Those who like foreign stuff will one day remember these words when they become unemployed..