President David Granger: Thank you for coming out this afternoon. As the administrator has said, this is what the Christians called the season of Lent. Just as the Muslims have Ramadan when you go through certain sacrifices, the Christians have Lent; when they try to remember the suffering and the agony of Jesus Christ, but just as the Muslims celebrate Ramadan and Ramadan culminates in a great celebration, the Christian Lent culminates in a great celebration called Easter. Easter for the Christians is an event to commemorate the resurrection of Jesus.
Now even if you’re not a Christian, everybody knows in Guyana this is a time for holidays and everybody wants to fly a kite because the kite symbolises the celebration of Easter, particularly by young people in Guyana.
The truth is the kites don’t have anything to do with Christ, kites were invented by the Chinese over 1,500 years ago and the Chinese brought kites to Guyana; kite flying – that’s one of the benefits of living in a multi-ethnic community because every race brings different practices. So today we are here to help to distribute kites because no matter where you go in the West Indies people always know Guyanese because every Easter Monday Guyanese go out to fly kites. The Bajans don’t do it, the Antiguans don’t do it, the Belizeans don’t do it, but this is a typical Guyanese practice once a year so we are here to help you to celebrate this practice once a year.
As I’m here and have your attention I just want to mention one more thing; as your teachers know, I’ve been coming to the Lusignan and Good Hope Learning Centre for several years and I come here because I believe that every single child must go to school and over the years this learning centre has been providing education, particularly through Mr. and Mrs. Shivdath, for young people in this community.
So I am here and even as I speak, some of you are getting some exercise books and some pens. Those exercise books and pens will help you to do your lessons. So this is all I want to say, that I’m happy to be here again; I’m happy to be able to distribute kites.
I’d like to thank my Minister of Social Protection, Ms. Amna Ally for helping to arrange this function and I’d like to thank the Lusignan-Good Hope Learning Centre for having us back once again.
So thank you very much. I hope that you all have a blessed and a happy Easter and I pray that God may bless you all.
Thank you very much.
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