Henry in Guyana

On Saturday I was taken on a trip to work on some bee hives, something I know very little about but sounded interesting. Anyway, six of us piled into a 4x4 and headed out of town past the airport, then off road through some thick vegetation until we arrived at what seemed like a secluded spot with five bee hives. I was given a head net and wore long clothes, and some had bee suits although one chap who was an old hand at bee-keeping didn't wear any particular protection. I thought this might been the bees knew him and left him alone but actually he just got stung a lot.

Anyway the process consisted of taking wooden frames out of the hives, scraping off the outer layer of honeycomb and then putting them in a hand-crank centrifuge to extract the honey. I helped a little but the main effort was left to the proper beekeeper. Despite mixing the honey at the truck, maybe 100m and through some bush away from the hives, they caught on pretty quickly and weren't too happy with the fact that we'd stolen their hard-earned food. Pretty soon there were hundreds if not thousands of bees all over, and we did our best to use smoke to keep them away but everyone (apart from me!) got stung a few times, even through clothes. I think I escaped because I wasn't really doing anything or getting in their way.


Later that evening I headed out for a meal with some VSOs, followed by a party at a sports club next to a bank. The music was incredibly loud - there was no chance of talking. The night warmed up as we worked through a few bottles of white rum and by the end it was very jolly. Most of the music was what I understand as Caribbean dance-hall which doesn't make much of an appearance back home in my experience. Also the DJ's role is to growl things into the microphone, stop songs 30 seconds in and restart them, then play for about a minute before moving to another song. It wasn't an accident - that's just how they do it. Rather suprisingly there was a Klute -esque (that's a cheesy nightclub in Durham if you didn't know) 10 minutes or so with Billie Jean, Barbie Girl, Summer of 69 and some Britney Spears if I remember correctly, and naturally this sparked a response from the overseas element on the dance floor. Following this we headed to another ba which seemed to continue the energy as I didn't get home until 4:30 (fortunately it was the weekend).

As I was writing this I noticed a mouse had been caught on the roach/rat paper we had down in the kitchen. It must be a horrible way to die so I folded it over and jumped on it outside. I think I felt a bit of mouse skull crunch, but hopefully it has found peace.

Until next time...

After a slow and boring start this week got busy very quickly. On Wednesday I went to volunteer frisbee and later in the evening went to a Chinese restaurant, which was quite tasty, and I got the chance to meet a load more VSOs and the like which was good. I met a couple of girls on Project Trust, post A-level gap year students who are here for a year teaching in a distant town that you can only get to by boat overnight up a river. The whole town has two phones and no mobile reception, apparently the best way to get in touch is by post. Sounds like quite an adventure.

The following day was the beginning of a two-day sports event for Saints, although most were out I actually went into work as it was a chance to have a go at the network with no-one trying to use it. We made some good steps - one of the problems is the limited speed of the internet connection so we are routing everything through one server which can help monitor and ration use as well as speeding things up by storing frequently accessed content. We will need to tweak it and have some redundancy as at the moment if that server goes down (or I break it through tinkering) everything has to be put back the way it was. A task for next week I think...

That evening I went to the Pegasus hotel, a famous hotel by the sea wall in Georgetown for a Scotiabank/UNICEF fundraiser. It was good fun, with a fashion show and some reasonable buffet food which was what you might expect in a British hotel - for the first time in my life perhaps it was nice to have some veg as they're not too big on that here otherwise. There was a good band who did everything from Unchained Melody to calypso, and one of the singers invited me to go with the band around on a trip out of town some time, which could be fun. At home I sometimes have some hermit-like tendencies, but here I'm just following up every lead I can to see where it takes me.

A few entertaining thoughts: I found a chocolate bar the other day called "Oh Henry!"; it's Nestle so I don't know why they don't have them in the UK. It was like a twix-snickers type thing. The other thing I find amusing but which is the norm here is to refer to a shower as a bath, someone will announce they are going for a bath and then go and stand under a standpipe...

On Monday I went to NCERD, a branch of the Ministry of Education responsible for educational resources. Whilst there I bumped into a collection of British 5 VSOs, they were very friendly and have put me in touch with some of the volunteer community in Guyana. The following evening I went to a cafe where Brits tend to hang out and met some more. It was nice after being here for a bit to have a chat to some people from home; most of these are on a 2 year placement which is quite a commitment. I have yet to make Ultimate Frisbee in the park on Wednesday afternoons which sounds great fun.

NCERD has a stock of 600 computers to roll out providing IT labs for 150 computer labs across the country, which I hope to be able to help out with and should give me a great opportunity to travel around. In fact I had my first opportunity on Wednesday with a trip to Region 5 to re-install the software on a load of computers. If you have been to the cinema this summer you would be forgiven for thinking that this is where the Guyanese keep their prawns, but in fact Guyana is divided into a number of regions, this one to the East of Georgetown.

The NCERD technician and I got in a car to Region 5 - this was like a bus but in car form, in that the car drivers are quite aggressive in getting passengers. Anyway, we managed to fill the car and he drove quite safely for about 90 minutes all the way to the Berbice. It was pretty hot, but fortunately I was by the window and got a chance to take a few pictures. In fact the journey was quite spectacular, we passed some very fancy houses, some run down ones and at some points just thick palm trees on both sides. There seem to be animals wandering around a lot of the time - I assume they have owners but even in Georgetown there seems to be the odd horse just wandering; on this road it was cows.

Continuing with the Region 5 theme, the school we visited was in the charismatically named No. 8 village, and as such was No. 8 school. It was a small primary school with a similar design to St. Stanislaus although smaller and quite well kept. The IT room was actually very impressive - all of the computers had backup power supplies so when we had blackouts (and we had a few short ones) they didn't turn off. This is very handy when installing Windows.

Once the job was done we were driven to the bus stop - and were stopped by the police. However after a brief look in the car and the boot we were waved on - I think this was to do with recent events in Guyana. After this we caught a bus, and had another spectacular drive, this time in the sunset, through the palm trees along the road back to Georgetown. I look forward to further adventures out of town...