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.

Having been in Georgetown for nearly two weeks now, I have a few more observations to make. Firstly, transport around the city is quite good. Taxis are cheap at less than £1 for most journeys, and there are buses at around 30p. Tourists are generally advised against buses as they are dangerous - and I agree. I assume that by going faster they pick up more passengers and get more fares, but they are very aggressive, zoom around and are always overtaking. Buses are small minivan things (resembling a VW camper) and have the usual sliding door at the back. Every bus has a conductor, who has the role of hanging out of the window shouting at passers by, shuffling passengers and collecting money. It seems that like any half-decent single sculler, conductors have to have a definite style (dreadlocks, big sunglasses, jewelery etc.) presumably to attract attention.

Junctions in Georgetown are mainly hectic - there appears to be some unwritten rule about when to wait and when to go, but it requires care all round. There are some, apparently recently introduced, quite fancy traffic lights which count down until the next change which are interesting. A lot of private cars have big sound systems, and as such they tend to set of nearby car alarms. It also seems that all car alarms use the same sound chip as those toy laser gun things that change sound every 5 seconds.

There are food sellers everywhere - today I had another shark puri which cost me 90p and was more than enough. Apparently the way to make money here is to work for yourself, and the food carts stop by outside all the schools. It is likely that they make far more than the teachers do.

On a more sombre note, Georgetown has been going through a little trouble recently with a lot in the news - Brickdam police station just one block down from me was fired upon by a number of men with AK-47s as well as another police outpost. Don't worry mum - I'll try not to go for a stroll through any crossfire at 3am. There have also been other incidents including arson at a school, a kidnapping and one other which I won't link to here and involves a torture case. For a closer look at the current news see Kaiteur and Stabroek News.

There seems to be a paradox in Guyana between wages and the cost of living. People are paid very little but the cost of living does not reflect this. A policeman earns around 40,000 GYD, which is around £120. The cost of renting a reasonable flat or apartment starts at 50,000 GYD, around £150.

It is not just the policemen however, I am told that most jobs pay very little. Teachers earn an average annual salary of 500,000 GYD after tax which is £1500. This sounds ridiculous compared to say, a teacher in the UK earning £25,000 which here would be 8.25 million GYD.

So how is the wage rate so low despite the cost of living, and how does everyone get by? I am becoming aware of what I would say is a hidden economy. There are a number of ways that Guyanese people make the difference: illegal drugs (smuggling out to the US and Europe) apparently account for 60% of the economy and corruption is a real problem.

Legitimate earnings also make the difference. Private businesses can do quite well - food sellers on the street for example can turn a profit that will cover their living expenses. Those fortunate enough to be employed by foreign companies of agencies get paid foreign salaries and can live very well indeed. The main thing however, is money coming from abroad. Someone told me that the recordable (through banks, MoneyGram etc) influx of money from abroad is 450 million USD per year. Most Guyanese have families abroad, many of whom send money back. If you consider the population to be 750,000 $450 million is a huge amount of money to come in (and this doesn't cover cash or other methods of remittance).

One of the biggest problems, in my opinion, is the low wage rate. Many jobs provide less income than is required to live unless you own your house or live with your parents. As a result fraud, theft and corruption are almost understandable to make ends meet. At the same time, the hidden economy seems to bridge the difference - if people were really paid too little the wage rate would increase. It seems like a perpetual situation of people "hustling" to get by.

I have been told that most educated people (particularly teachers) will all have applications to leave the country and are waiting for the opportunity, and I don't blame them. You could teach in the UK for a year and return very wealthy, or stay in Guyana and earn less than it costs to live.

Guyana would be a desperately poor country if it wasn't for the international diaspora, reportedly larger than the resident population. Their money props up, but perhaps also confounds, the economy.

This is my opinion at the moment, but I am sure I have more to learn...