Henry in Guyana

Today I went with a friend of mine to a Catholic church on the outskirts of Georgetown to collect some food to take to feed the homeless. I am not a religious person myself but I thought I'd go along and help out.

Anyway, today we packaged the food (rice, pasta and fish mainly) into polystyrene boxes and put them all in the back of a taxi to take into Georgetown. There are a reasonable number of homeless in Georgetown. Not everywhere, but around the place. Some are just plain homeless, but there are plenty with serious health problems, disabilities and so on who have nowhere to go. Guyana does not appear to have much of a welfare system - having said that I have yet to notice any children on the streets which I believe is common in other developing countries. Various churches and organisations seem to make an effort to at least provide a meal when they can.

Anyway, we drove around and made a few stops dropping off food. Usually once we started serving more would appear; it was strictly one per person but plenty tried the "I'm taking one for my friend" approach which I suppose is understandable. They were all shabbily dressed as you can imagine and many were missing teeth - the chap in the photo below only had one leg and hopped around. Apparently crutches were provided but he sold them - here you can see him offering some of his food to a dog. There are a lot of stray dogs in Georgetown who are all very skinny and spend their time scavenging.

In a way what we did was a drop in the ocean, but the hope is to build momentum and demonstrate that there can be a charitable society in a country with a great disparity in wealth. It was an enlightening experience, and on reflection, one that I didn't need to be in Guyana to take part in.

 A couple of odd things I've been holding on to: In Guyana I've noticed that whenever anyone answers the phone they say "Hello good morning" or "Hello good afternoon" which is perfectly polite. In the evening however they say "Hello goodnight" which makes me expect them to just hang up the phone and go to bed (as I know goodnight as a parting comment). This always makes me chuckle a little, but actually they're just beginning a phone conversation so I have to jump back into reality.

On another unrelated note: I've been having Lucky Charms for the past few mornings, remember those? I used to have them but they disappeared from the UK, I think because it's basically having sweets for breakfast.

Until next time...