Henry in Guyana

Rodeo was everything I expected - a fairly relaxed schedule of events followed by a big party. As I was staying at the Bushmasters house, we had a couple of vehicles whose roofs were perfect viewing points for the Rodeo ground which was a few minutes' drive out of Lethem. There were a number of events, including bull riding, saddleback bronco, bareback bronco, horseracing, melon eating, cassava eating, and tug of war. The eating competitions were particularly funny with some entertaining commentary (at one point the commentator decided to name one of the larger female competitors as "big, strong and voluptuous" and referred to her as that for the rest of the event). The tug of war was visitors vs home which was an entertaining way of watching a lot of white people get beaten by the Rupununi contingent. I was sadly on the men's visitors team which lost.


The bull riding got quite exciting, as a couple of times once the rider fell the bull decided to go for the crowd. Given that the fences were less than sturdy a couple got broken but fortunately no bulls actually made it into the packed crowd of sweaty people.


Naturally the evening activities were quite raucous, I think some people didn't even make it to bed for a few days. On the Friday night before Rodeo there was a pageant at the Takatu hotel in Lethem where I competed in the karaoke competition with a rendition of Elvis' Can't Help Falling in Love but sadly was not the victor, or even in the top three. The following two nights were at the Rodeo ground and with such a mix of people from abroad, the coast and the Rupununi was a particularly lively affair.

There was also food everywhere - a whole section of stalls selling meat on a stick - beef, chicken and pork, as well as paçoc which is farine (like cous-cous, made from from cassava) mixed with dried meat and onions - very tasty. Having said that, it's a bit like eating raw cous-cous, so if you eat too much and then drink a lot of water (or worse) you end up feeling extremely full.


Once good times were had by all, it was time to head home. Despite losing my ticket, and not having enough money to buy another one, we managed to get on a bus (as I still had a booking) and head back to Georgetown. The bus left at around 11 but the fun wasn't quite over as the bumps on the road meant a number of things fell on me from the luggage racks above, including a torch and deodorant can to the face and a constant shower of cassava bread crumbs from whichever person decided to stow those things up there. As well as this, we were travelling in convoy with another bus, which had some problem and broke down. Apparently we were legally obliged to stay together, so at one stop had to wait 3 hours for a part to arrive. Nevertheless, some travellers decided to buy some vodka and invite me in so we passed the time with some entertainment.

The road to Lethem isn't a very good one; only very hardy vehicles can make it and at one point apparently it is 8 hours between petrol stations. If you get stuck in the bush, you're really stuck; I don't think the AA will rescue you. Needless to say, we made it back home for 3am the following morning and had had a great final week experiencing Guyana's interior.

Once again it's been a while since my last post, and now with just over 7 weeks left in the country I suppose there won't be that many more. Anyway, the past couple of weeks have seen a lot of activity - a trip to a beautiful house across the Essequibo, Mashramani and plenty of partying inbetween. There's a bar in Georgetown called Jerries which is open pretty much all of the time - visits at 4 or 5 in the morning are always entertaining as it is the "wash-down" place to be, so I've been spending a bit of time there recently.

Last weekend a group of 15 hired a bus and headed West, across the Demerara (my first crossing of the harbour bridge) to Parika which is a major crossing point over the Essequibo. The Essequibo is in parts a massive river, and I am told is 26 miles wide at its mouth. Anyway we boarded a boat and took about an hour-long trip up and across the river to Bartica, a mining town a little inland. The boat then took us 1 minute further up the river to Bidarabu, a big wooden house with five big bedrooms, big verandas, a swimming pool and a private beach. Well I say private, when I went down there in the morning a local woman was having a wash so I had to make myself scarce pretty quickly but essentially it is a secluded spot - perfect for a party!



It felt like something from a Hollywood film; a pool party with seemingly endless food, rum, party games and splashing around in a swimming pool. I know one of the biggest things I will miss about Guyana will be sitting outside in the warm weather. The group was great fun too - a significant number are development workers, who are much more glamorous than volunteers. I get the impression that there's an ex-pat hierarchy, from volunteer types (like me) at the very bottom, living in basic housing and counting cash, right through development workers with housing allowances and all the way up to diplomats with swimming pools and guards. Anyway this crowd is particularly good fun and our weekend was a non-stop party although some people balked when I cracked out the rum again the following morning. Hair of the dog I suppose...

The following Tuesday was Mashramani - Guyana's carnival. I went on the road at about midday and it seemed that every square meter lining the road had someone with a cooler or a stand selling beer and food. There were barbeques everywhere and floats from different groups, organisations and political parties. It was very jolly, although it seemed to take a long time (sometimes an hour and a half) between floats. The first part of the day was quite overcast but when the sun came out in the afternoon it got seriously hot. In the evening a small group of us went to sit by the sea wall and watch the sun set which was nice, and very busy. There were cars and speakers playing loud music everywhere which meant there were people bouncing and dancing everywhere - in Guyana, if there's music everyone bounces.


That evening we went to a Machel Montano concert, who is apparently a leading Soca star from Trinidad. It was great fun - although the support act didn't start until past midnight and he didn't come on until 2am, and he was only on for about 90 minutes. Still, armed with some brown rum we had a good group and it was a great show.

So after all this partying it's time to calm down a little - although it's Paguah on Monday so another day off and a party at someone's house. I'm also organising a final trip down to the Rupununi for Rodeo which is at Easter weekend. Still, I have also spent some time at Mercy Wings school recently and their computers are now in good condition and next I hope to help another VSO set up some literacy software on there. Saints is doing well too - I'm moving towards wrapping things up and leaving it to improve without me.


Until next time...

Well the last six weeks have involved plenty of travel and holidaying but now I'm back in town for the foreseeable future and back to work. I mentioned in a previous post that I was interested to see what would happen at Saints if I disappear for two weeks - and fortunately it went without mishap. I had made an effort to leave some documentation and check that the technician I work with had everything in hand and it all worked out. A dry run, if you like, for when I leave in April; I am trying to avoid coming in to set something up that will only fall apart when I leave.

In fact the work at Saints is going well and we have a good platform for building up the facilities and ultimately their education benefit, so I will soldier on. I also saw another side of Saints on Friday - one of the teachers put on a Spanish afternoon - Cafe Caribe, which involved small tables being set out in the forum and a number of performances on stage. There were several Spanish presentations and poems, and a number of dance acts which were all very impressive. Two couples wowed the crowd with some quite enthusiastic dancing and there was one group act of about 12 people which was quite outstanding. Apparently they had only spent two weeks preparing but it came off very professionally. Some of the people I associate with are a bit skeptical of what goes on at Saints and it is easy for that to rub off - but it is a vibrant and lively place with some very talented and intelligent students - which showed at Cafe Caribe. They also gave me some cake, and free food always improves my opinion. As well as the dancers a group of about 15 boys from the 4th or 5th form (I think) sang a couple of songs - including "La Cucaracha" which was very funny to see. There were some good costumes too - unfortunately I wasn't armed with my camera (myself and the technician were forcibly escorted form the IT lab to our table by two chicas) but I did manage to get hold of some photos.

On Wednesday I took another trip to Mercy Wings school, where they are hoping to install a network and increase the usage of their (fairly decent) IT lab which is only used for a few hours a week currently. I have said I will help with this, and I also hope to do some work to encourage/guide the use of the facilities to help with teaching. A while ago I wrote about a trip to Mocha where I was planning to help with some community IT project; the problem there is that I would not have time to set something up from scratch that could be sustainable, particularly given that I have never done anything like that before. Mercy Wings has good facilities already so all it would really need my enthusiasm which I hope to lend over the coming months.

Last night I was invited to a lime (read drinking session) with my landlady who lives upstairs which was quite fun, and her daughter who had just returned from the UK presented some Wine Gums and Jelly Babies for the snacks bowl - both things you can't get here so I had plenty with the ensuing sugar low.

Not many photos this time unfortunately, I shall have to do some more scenic activities for the next post. Also my mum (who is British) arrives in town on Wednesday for her first trip to Guyana in 25 years so it will be interesting to see what she thinks of it after all this time...

Since I returned from Lethem things have been quite busy on the social front; the three Canadians I went to the ranch with were in Georgetown so we spent most evenings socialising with various bits of the volunteer community and sampling Guyanese nightlife. On New Year's Eve - called Old Year's Night here, we went to a party at a diplomat's house along with 150 other people which was great fun. I ended up wandering into a new group of people and later we went to another party which was still going strong when we arrived at 4am. Finally we headed to someone else's house and watched the sun rise on their balcony before heading home for 8am and a good sleep. Naturally it's warm enough to be outside all night - from the news it looks like it's a very different story in the UK!

Life is returning somewhat to normal now and term has just started. However I'm about to head off on another adventure - this time a survival course in the jungle where I will learn to build a shelter, light a fire, kill my own food and do other cool stuff. After spending around 10 days learning what to do, you are then placed in isolation with a machete and some flint to fend for yourself for three days, finding your own food and water etc. I'm pretty excited about it - since I arrived I have wanted to see what the jungle is really like, I'm about to find out! I'm also heading to Kaieteur falls as part of the package which everyone says is a must-see so I'm looking forward to that also.

Bushmasters, the company running the trip, provides all the equipment but suggest that you bring a headtorch for night time (I don't think there are any streetlights out there.) I've hunted around Georgetown for a while with no luck so I'll just have to manage with a standard torch unless someone lends me one. The reason I mention it is that despite my normal experience of indifferent customer service here, I was pleasantly surprised that upon asking in a store the person I asked a) made the effort to call someone to ask if they had it in stock and b) gave me a number of suggestions as to where I could find some (without me even asking). It turns out if you go to the right places people know how to get their customers to come back. This store, Giftland Officemax, has a good reputation  among other things stocks a huge selection of DVDs which I have spent a reasonable amount of time perusing. They didn't have any headtorches though.

I'll be heading into the bush during term time, which on the one hand is not so convenient (but the only time I could go) on the other hand it will be a chance to see if everything will work without me there to keep an eye on it. I've spent this last week preparing proper documentation for the systems we have in place and ensuring the technician I work with has everything in hand. I'm treating it as a bit of a dry run for when I leave; a standard problem for volunteer types I think is to come and set up some whizz-bang system and then leave without anyone knowing how to maintain it (or even what it does...) Anyway I hope not to do that, so we shall see how the next few weeks go.

Provided I am not eaten by a Jaguar, Anaconda, Cayman, bitten by a venomous snake or die of starvation I'll be back in a couple of weeks with plenty of pictures and stories to tell. Until next time...

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...

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.

Well, I've been here for one week and a lot has happened. Blackouts have been frequent; Saints is on a different grid to the apartment, and at one point I came home because there was a blackout at school and a few hours later got a blackout at home. One night in particular everything went off just as I was going to sleep - it was very sweaty. When the fan came on (I'd arranged it so it was ready to go) in the middle of the night it was a sudden release from stale heat to refreshing breeze..

A couple of days ago I took a trip to NCERD, the National Centre for Educational Resource Development (they spell centre correctly here!) Because of Guyana's vast interior, teaching resources are limited so there is a plan in place to equip 50 schools with computer labs and have some kind of content distribution to help teachers. I haven't really worked out what is going on there so far but they are willing for me to get involved so I will go and spend a day next week. It was a stark contrast to Saints - most rooms were air conditioned and there was a lot of flashy equipment (big flat screens) around. Government departments (although perhaps not their staff) seem comparatively well funded.

Last night after work I ended up drinking on a street corner. Another chap I work with who is my age has some friends who live nearby and a couple of them own food and drink stands. A bit later on some old boys turned up and started playing Dominos. Now in the UK, drinking on a street corner is seen as the lowest of the low, but here it's more like having a little party outdoors. It was good fun and everyone was very friendly, and quite amused at the prospect of me being here for 6 months. One of the chaps ran a stall selling puri - a kind of flatbread which I had some of. A bit later I got the munchies so I had another, this time with shark in. It tastes like a mix between chicken and fish, and in my opinion champions the best bits of both! Most chicken and fish in this country comes fried (think KFC). The other chap had a stall selling ice drinks so he had plenty of ice for us (which you need).

I have also had curry roti (another kind of flatbread) a couple of times - these are sold anywhere from street stands to McDonald's style restaurants. They're pretty tasty and quite cheap. I also ordered a "cake slice" but I would describe it as more of a cake - it was huge and less than 50p. A bit of a contrast to £2.99 for a slice of something in Starbuck's.

Tomorrow sees my first weekend in Georgetown...

Posted once the blackout was over...

This morning, my first day at St. Stanislaus, began with a power blackout and so for the first half of the day we couldn't use the computers. This evening I was just enjoying my dinner when another blackout hit. Some fresh mangoes had fallen off a tree overlooking the yard so the landlady gave them to us - in the picture you can see me chopping them up (rather badly) as me and the other two chaps in the apartment sit in the candlelight. The others have gone to bed now and I am sitting here at 9pm (it's pitch back outside) running off my laptop battery with one candle having burnt out and only the stub of another left. I'm feeding bits of wax to it to keep it going. Need to not drop my torch in when I go to the bathroom...

Earlier I took a walk down Regent Street which is the major shopping street in Georgetown. I popped into a little supermarket style shop and picked up a few Western delights - milk, cereal, squash and a pack of sweets. In particular I picked up this "Tropical Punch" which isn't quite squash but you wouldn't have it neat either. It's very red, and really sells itself with the slogan (which you can see if you click to enlarge) "Irresistible" followed by the slogan "Less than 1% Juice". Hmmm. Anyway I also picked up these cubic jelly sweets called Jubes which are quite tasty. It was perhaps not as authentic as venturing to the market but it was a little taste of home to walk around a shop with aisles and fridge compartments.

The food so far in general has been very good - the landlady is a caterer and provides us with plenty of food for a good price money. In fact food in Georgetown is very cheap compared to London - you can get a big meal in a cafe for around 650GYD which is just under £2. Travel around town is ok too - walking in daylight in crowded areas is fine (although muggings do occur) but everyone I've met takes cabs once it gets really dark (about 7pm). Cabs are everywhere and inexpensive - a short drop is 300GYD, just under £1.

The heat is a slightly different story; I'm still enjoying it but long walks are not really on and our apartment is very sheltered and thus doesn't have a breeze. Fans and cool drinks make it perfectly ok, although you need a fan right on you to sleep. I hope the power comes on at some point tonight as without fans it can be quite stifling and bed time will probably harken back again to the days of the lightweight dream. I'm not a bad sleeper however the landlady owns a couple of dogs which seem to be permanently chained up in the yard (they're not big on animal welfare here) and they like to bark aggressively at each other every couple of hours during the night. One is outside my window so it can be a bit of a shock sometimes but all of these things only add to the adventure - whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

The last candle just went out.