Henry in Guyana

In my time here my perception has varied in terms of the famous Caribbean laid-back stereotype. On the one hand, people in the street walk pretty slowly, sometimes to the extent of not really moving, but on the other hand the minibuses tear around town trying to get more fares. The bus park by Stabroek Market is also full of hustle and bustle - I have yet to walk past and not see a loud argument between a number of conductors over who stole who's customer. Unassertive individuals looking for a bus will be herded all over the place by men shouting and pointing at their respective buses.

In general though, things run slowly, and in my opinion a bit too slowly. I received a parcel the other day, and had to go to the post office to pick it up. It turned up pretty quickly, but then it had to be opened, looked at, shuffled around, looked at some more, taped up, put in a pile, then put in another pile before being given to me which took almost an hour. I appreciate that it had to be checked by a customs officer and handled correctly, but it seemed to me that the staff were wondering around aimlessly just picking up whatever parcel looked like it needed doing.

To be fair it was compounded a bit by a couple of Project Trust lads I bumped into in the queue (one of whom I knew already) who had about 10 parcels coming in between them. Their time sounds pretty adventurous - another village only accessible by boat with no power and contactable only by post that can take months to arrive.

Customer service is often a little shabby, with aloof or entirely uninterested shop assistants who volunteer one word answers when you try and buy things. Of course this is an extreme, and I've had my fair share of friendly shop assistants but this kind of thing makes you less likely to buy stuff! As always however, the bad things jump out at you whilst the good things are quietly ignored. There is something quite interesting about a place of small shops and businesses that largely hasn't been touched by the capitalist machine. Perhaps it doesn't dare.

The next adventure is a trip to Lethem and the Rupununi on the Brazilian border. I'm going down on Friday to stay over Christmas, which will include, I gather, a stay on a cattle ranch which will involve riding horses and herding cattle. I have been on two pony rides in my life so that will be interesting. I am also told we might try to kill and eat a deer. I have managed to get on a cheap flight down which will be my first trip on a small plane (I think a six-seater) as well as my first proper trip into the interior. The journey back will be a 15-hour bus trip which will be equally exciting I think. Hopefully lots of pictures etc. on my return...

Things are heating up on the musical front - I'm accompanying the Saints choir of 11-13 year olds who are singing a couple of carols at the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at Brickdam Cathedral tomorrow night. This should be quite jolly but I'm afraid to say that the past few nights have involved many wasted hours sitting in the Cathedral waiting our turn. We have been doing run-throughs with the other acts but we are always told to arrive at 6:30 and then sing for 5 minutes at 8:30 and go home. I'm not sure why everyone doesn't have specific rehearsal times, and the Saints students are incredibly patient given that they are sitting around for so long. I imagine they must have very patient parents too as a number come along as it is late for children to be out alone.

Having said all this, the event should be good and I'm looking forward to it - the piano has been tuned so the most important notes now work (apparently it fell over a couple of times recently) and Saints are sounding good. The Cathedral itself is very grand and well kept, although the acoustic is a bit too open for singing. The pipe organ is sadly out of commission but there is a good electric organ that mostly works except for a few stops and buttons which were apparently taken out by a power surge.

With a population in the region of 700,000 Guyana can be considered a bit of a "small world" which I have been reminded of a few times. Last week I was invited to play the piano at someone's house (who I didn't know) which I accepted. Then I had to turn down an invitation to go to dinner at someone's house as it was at the same time. The fact that both were at the same time aroused my suspicions, which were confirmed when I arrived and learned that it was one and the same house! My presence was also preceded by this blog which the hostess had already read - it seems to be going around the Guyanese diaspora and coming back in to Guyana which I am pleased to hear. This map of recent visits shows a little about its readership, I just need to work on Africa and Russia now.


The following day I went along to Woodside Choir, which from what I gather is the one of the best choirs (at least in the classical tradition) in Guyana and possibly the only one that tackles four-part harmony. It was very jolly and resembled a small choral society you might find in the UK. I was again reminded of the size of the place as someone there who I had never met already knew who I was as she was coming to a lunch with me the next day. She also knew my father, and it's always nice to meet people who remember him. The rehearsals are held at Bishops' High School which like Saints is seen as a top school, and from my brief visit it looked well kept and well equipped. I will be away for the Woodside concert this term but hope to join in after New Year, and there are a number of very musical people in it who I am sure will be useful people to know. Making the effort to meet people and put myself out there is definitely paying off...

I still find it a little odd hearing Christmas music all the time whilst wandering around in the blaring heat outside. Still, I'm getting more of a feel for it as the landlady provided us with some decorations which have certainly enhanced the bachelor pad.



Last night I went to the Scotia Bank Christmas carol trip around Georgetown delivering hampersto six homes for children and the elderly. We were led by a truck with a small band singing soca Christmas carols (occasionally sneaking other words in, like "We wish you a Scotia Christmas" and "Sco-o-o-o-o-otiabank" replacing gloria in Ding Dong Merilly on high). Everyone else followed on a number of donkey (read horse) carts, some were part of a competition and were dressed as various Christmassy things which was an entertaining sight.


 The less adventurous followed in cars, and perhaps this was not a bad idea as I gather someone was hospitalised after catching their foot in a wheel and there have been other accidents in previous years. Anyway it was good fun and as you can see I got into the Christmas spirit...

In a previous post I mentioned a chap I have met who runs a charity called Troopers of Charity and wants to set up a community IT project in the town of Mocha, with a population of 6,000 and about 6 miles from Georgetown. On Wednesday I went with him to have a look to see what it was like and whether such a plan would be feasible.

Mocha wasn't far from what I expected, smaller, more rural and sadly poorer than Georgetown. There is a large canal which was originally dug by slave labour along the road in to Mocha which was interesting to see. I visited the primary school there, which was much like other schools I have seen, although when I was taken into a classroom all of the children stood up and without prompting said in unison "Good afternoon sir, welcome to class 6 plums". Or maybe it was prunes. Anyway apparently each class has a fruit name to make it more interesting - it was a very friendly welcome.


The reason I visited the school was to have a look at the room where they might host computers, which was not bad; a concrete room with power and burglar bars. The Mocha community could certainly do with an IT program as very few are IT literate, and at first I was very enthusiastic. On reflection however it has become clear that I cannot make this happen in the time I have. The chap at the charity is not really equipped to run this project, so I would have to be fundraiser, manager, and tutor. Whilst this would help satisfy my relentless narcissism I only have 5 months which is not enough to train enough people to run the facility effectively. Not to mention the fact that I have no knowledge of how to teach IT skills or run such a community project.

It's a shame to not be able to help here as everyone I met was very enthusiastic, but without a guarantee of people skilled enough to manage and maintain such a project once I leave, I fear (and have been warned that) it would all go to waste.

After the school visit we walked around a bit more, and as with other places there are cows and goats just wandering around. I think they all have owners, but they seem to just cruise around the streets and gardens minding their own business, ignoring people entirely.


The bus back to Georgetown was a typical bus with a rastaman driver (every culture and race has a nickname here, some of which are probably only appropriate at certain times), classic 80's soundtrack and a green graffiti interior with "Soulja Boy" written on the roof. I haven't been on many buses but I find them quite entertaining as people are piled in and constantly shuffled by the conductor as people get in and out. Having said that, I am told long journeys squashed up against large smelly people are not so much fun.

This week has been reasonably peaceful - work at Saints is going ahead very well. I've mentioned before the problem that they only have a 384k internet connection (the residential standard in the UK used to be 512k, now it goes from 2Mb upwards) shared between about 40 computers. When multiple computers connect to the internet through such a connection the results are unpredictable, often with one user hogging all the bandwidth (through no fault of their own) and sometimes leaving a practically unusable service for the rest.

We have now installed a proxy/caching server which allows us to:

• Restrict the bandwidth available to each user, so no individual can take too much
• Monitor the websites users are visiting - and manipulate their bandwidth. During busy times for example, we can block or slow down "non-essential" sites like Facebook and Hi5 as downloading all those pictures doesn't really help with anyone's work. Slowing down the connection to these sites allows more speed for other users.
• Cache web content - in other words save web pages locally (and automatically). This means that every time someone visits a site, if someone else has visited it within a given timeframe they are served a local copy. Instead of 30 fresh connections to yahoo.com, there's just one and the rest use the same copy