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Arrival Day, Guyana
On 5 May Guyana remembers the first Indian indentured workers of 1838, with sarees, music and food.
![Title: [East Indian Women, Men and Children] Creator: Morin, Felix Date: ca. 1890-1896 Part of: Photographs of Jamaica, Trinidad, and Venezuela Place: Trinidad Physical Description: 1 photographic print: gelatin silver,](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/East_Indian_Women%2C_Men_and_Children_%2813227675614%29.jpg)
What is worn for Arrival Day, Guyana
Arrival Day, 5 May, is a public holiday in Guyana. It remembers the arrival in 1838 of the first Indian indentured labourers, who came on the ships Whitby and Hesperus to work on the sugar estates of what was then British Guiana. Indo-Guyanese make up a large part of the population of the country. The day is kept with processions, cultural shows and services, with Indian music and food, and many people wear Indian clothes. Women wear sarees, salwar suits and lehengas, with a long scarf called an odhni, and men wear kurtas. The saree is also worn to Hindu weddings and to the temples of Georgetown.
The sarees
Written by the EveryPallu desk with AI assistance. Background: "Indian Arrival Day" on Wikipedia. Customs differ from place to place and family to family. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Sari: Suyash.dwivedi, CC BY-SA 4.0, source