Henry in Guyana

Well, it's been a while since my last post, mainly due to a large number of things going on at once. The last week has been very busy as my Mum came out to Guyana to visit me. Her last visit to the country was in 1985 so things will have changed a bit. Apparently the main differences are more cars, traffic lights and imported goods, but otherwise the feel is the same. I think she had a good time and got to meet up with some people she hadn't seen for a very long time. I took her to have a look around Saints and Mercy Wings, and also took her along to Woodside choir to see what that was like! During her visit I got plenty of free meals which is always a bonus.

For the weekend we went to a resort called Arrowpoint for an overnight trip. It was nice there - although a little odd as we were the only two people so we rattled around a bit. Nevertheless we did a few walks in the forest, kayaked and went on a few boat trips where we saw some small Cayman. Most people have recommended it to me but I think it would be best with a decent sized group - I think our trip only ran because two guys came out with us to fix the wireless internet.. I have now packed her off on a plane to Carnival in Trinidad where I imagine she will have a great time.

It's coming up to Mashramani - Guyana's own carnival and there are a number of events going on in the lead up to it. One was a Steel pan competition held at the National sports hall in Georgetown which I went to last night. It was a really great evening with a good atmosphere. There were soloists and duets which got a bit drowned out by the ambient noise (people selling stuff and shouting "Pringles", "Nuts" from time to time, as well as general chatter and shuffling) but the best shows were from the bands. The police band ended up winning but there were a number of very good acts. Everyone played the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah (which comes off surprisingly well on the steel pan) and a piece of their own choice, which in all cases involved a lot of jumping around, swapping of pans and so on. By the end everyone was bouncing around and for the police band encore the centre of the hall was filled with bopping persons.


An entertaining aspect which to me didn't actually detract from the event was that it started (naturally) very late. With a start time of 5pm I dutifully took my seat at 4:58pm at which point a couple of the bands were still arranging their instruments and unpacking. Music finally started at 6:30pm "a few minutes late" which apparently was to "allow for efficiency later on". I didn't see much of the efficiency and it didn't finish till 10pm but nevertheless it was good fun. Other funny things included a chap selling nuts wearing a blue Cellink (mobile phone operator) cape and chef's hat, and the fact that there was one slow person serving at the food table with no change and 100 hungry customers not exactly queuing during the interval.

As for everything else, well with just over 2 months left it's time to get on with things. This week I'm going to be spending some time at Mercy Wings so I imagine there will be more on that shortly.

Until next time...