[www.inewsguyana.com] – A contract to execute the rebuilding of the iconic Umana Yana on High Street, Kingston will be signed very soon, with the intention of having reconstruction begin in the second half of the year.
Cabinet Secretary Dr. Roger Luncheon spoke of this development in response to a query during his post-Cabinet media briefing on Wednesday about the reconstruction of the structure which was destroyed by fire in September 2014.
The Umana Yana was a conical palm thatched hut (benab) erected for the Non-Aligned Foreign Ministers Conference in Georgetown, Guyana in August 1972.It had become the venue for many local events including those of Amerindian origin.
The structure was 55 feet (16.78 meters) high and made from thatched allibanna and manicole palm leaves, and wallaba posts lashed together with mukru, turu and nibbi vines. No nails were used. It was erected by a team of about 60 Wai-Wai Amerindians, one of the nine indigenous tribes of Guyana.
Fashioned like the Wai-Wai benabs or shelters which are found deep in Guyana’s interior, it occupied an area of 460 square meters, making it the largest structure of its kind in Guyana.
On August 26, 1974, then President Forbes Burnham unveiled the African Liberation Monument outside the benab “in memory of all of those who have struggled and continue to struggle for freedom from Human Bondage”.
Umana Yana is a Wai-Wai word meaning “Meeting place of the people”. Renovated in 2010, on September 9, 2014 the structure was destroyed by a fire suspected to be electrical in origin. [Extracted from GINA]
