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By Michelle Ann Joseph-Walking through central Georgetown in the evening, it’s hard to ignore the sense that the city’s charm has faded. Nostalgia for a once-vibrant capital feels misplaced, as the streets reveal the decay of a place confronting new and difficult realities. What was once a peaceful stroll through familiar avenues now feels unsettling, marked by an unfamiliar and disquieting atmosphere.
The street corners tell a different story than before. A prostitute stands on many corners to an air of desolation and desperation. For many, this sight represents a far cry from the Georgetown they once knew, where life had a different rhythm and the night carried an entirely different ambiance. The rise of sex work at certain times is not new, but its visibility has grown to such an extent that it dominates the city’s nightlife.
Joining them are the Venezuelan junkies, whose presence is painfully evident alongside the local drug-addicted population. Georgetown has always been a city marked by diversity and the mingling of cultures, but now it reflects the harsh realities of a neighbouring country in crisis. The influx of Venezuelans escaping economic hardship is obvious, not just in the occasional stranger you might pass but in the sheer numbers that have settled within the city. Junkies from both Georgetown and Venezuela wander the streets, caught in cycles of addiction and hardship, bringing an added negative to the city’s already fragile social fabric.
As you walk past the old Demico House, one is confronted with another change. Now known informally as “Spanish Alley,” this area has become a meeting point for large groups of Venezuelans, a symbol of how immigration is reshaping the urban landscape. While Georgetown has always been a melting pot, this rapid shift feels more like a rupture than a natural evolution.
Then there’s the rubbish—scattered along the streets, adding to the city’s sense of neglect. Trash heaps in corners and alleyways seem to signify a collective abandonment, a resignation to the deterioration of the city’s public spaces. Georgetown, once hailed for its cleanliness, wonderful architecture, now suffers under the weight of infrastructural decay even while new huge buildings are going up.
For many long-time residents, this is not the Georgetown they grew up in. The city’s past, though flawed by its own challenges, held a sense of community and pride that now feels lost amid economic strain and shifting social dynamics. The nostalgia that once might have accompanied an evening walk through the city has been replaced by an overwhelming sense of loss and unease.
Yet, nostalgia itself is a double-edged issue. It often glosses over the struggles of the past in favor of romanticised memories. Georgetown’s history, deeply tied to colonial exploitation, racism, and class struggles, was never ideal. But for those who remember the city in a different light, the changes today—marked by visible inequality, new deterioration, and the influx of migrants—feel like a rupture with the past, not a continuation of it. There is no sense of “one Guyana” anywhere – more depression and this partly because the slogan itself is part of the political disunity that reflected in the deterioration in Georgetown’s ambience
The streets are filled with new stories, each as complex as Georgetown’s past. They reflect the realities of a country still grappling with the effects of economic inequality, foreign intervention, and the ongoing struggle for development in the shadow of oil wealth. In many ways, Georgetown is a miniature of Guyana itself—a place where past and present collide in unsettling ways, and where the future feels uncertain.
The evening walks are no longer peaceful, and the city’s iconic charm seems buried beneath layers of neglect and change. For some, Georgetown’s current state represents a decline, but for others, it reflects the harsh economic realities faced by the country and its people. What remains clear is that the nostalgia for “the Georgetown we knew” is hard to hold on to, as the city continues to evolve in ways that challenge its very identity. It is depressing.
Some folks might go for a romantic evening on the seawall, enjoying the sea breeze on Sunday evenings, some might choose a karaoke spot, a bar, play dominoes under a shed. Window shopping in the evening is no longer an activity that one can look forward to, simply because most stores have shutters as security added to the premises.
Safety is compromised in the City whether in the day or nighttime. If someone can be kidnapped in broad daylight, with CCTV cameras watching over the streets of Georgetown, robberies, loud music emanating from minibuses and other types of vehicles, City dwellers have to contend with all these illegalities and ills.
We must not forget the prevalence of the homeless men and women, that sleep on the pavements or the beggars that line the streets at different street corners and roadways.
This type of degradation must be addressed by the relevant authorities. We must not allow these social ills to continue in Georgetown and Guyana as collective whole. There must be solutions to these problems. We as a people, must not turn a blind eye to what is happening in and around our City.
Evidently, Georgetown needs a facelift, a clean-up campaign, drug addicts are humans who need rehabilitation, the homeless need homes, the downtrodden should be upheld in some way, shape or form. The black American civil rights titan Martin Luther King Jr. said “Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the noble struggle of equal rights. You will make a better person of yourself, a greater nation of your country, and a finer world to live in.”
WHERE IS THE LOVE MY FELLOW GUYANESE? WHERE IS THE ACTION TOWARD CHANGE?
