Henry in Guyana

My first weekend in Guyana has gone reasonably well, it's been cooler as it rained a bit but still warm enough at night to wear just a t-shirt. Power has been good until I started writing this - it's been on and off twice in the last 20 minutes. Fortunately my laptop battery can handle it but the network drops out which is a little annoying.

Yesterday I went out to do a bit of shopping along Regent street, one of the main shopping areas in Georgetown. Shops are a little different to England; most items in non-food shops are behind a counter, and when you want to buy something you are given a piece of paper with a price on it. You take this to the cashier, who is in an armoured cubicle and through a tiny hole you pass your money. Then you return to the desk and the person hands over the item to you.

VAT was recently introduced in Guyana at 16% but it is never made clear whether quoted prices include VAT or not which has caught me out a couple of times. Also you are always shown that something works before you buy it - I bought a light bulb and they had a socket on the wall just for that purpose. Anyway in my travels I picked up some bits and bobs including a radio and a pair of jeans. There are endless phone shops and electrical stores it seems.

 There are also wandering vendors with carts of cds for around £1 each so I picked up a few. I am told there are no copyright laws in Guyana, and I'm not convinced that the music my on copy of Daggerin' Time 2 was copied with the permission of the owner...



A little later in the day I went with a few people to Agrifest, a massive outdoor agricultural expo. It was quite good with lots of stands about sustainable farming and so on. It doubled as a big party - during the afternoon there was a Spongebob Squarepants live pantomime thing for the kids (the first time I've heard Spongebob speaking Guyanenglish), and later some other entertainment on a big stage including the Soca star Rupee' who had flown in from Barbados although we went home before he came on. There was a wide variety of food - I tried some cane juice, and there was a woman making it by putting these big canes into a mashing machine with juice coming out of the bottom. It was quite tasty although it had a hint of marshland about it.

John - the chap I'm staying with - got talked into buying a bottle of El Dorado 5 year old rum for 1800 dollars (around £6) and somehow by the end of the evening John and I had finished it. After a stop at a nightclub and a Chinese take-away to pick up an "Imperial Chow Mein" we got home, much to the amusement of Ronnie, the other chap in the house. Today will be a day of rest.

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...

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...

Monday was my first day at St. Stanislaus College - not far from where I am staying and has around 550 students. It is made up of old wooden colonial buildings but like many of these buildings in Georgetown they have degraded over time and the wood is hard to keep looking smart. There is a feel when walking around of what it once was, but sadly no longer is. The chipped paint, broken windows and messy classrooms I imagine cause the quality of teaching and student interest to be reduced, which is a shame.

However, this is a problem of adequate funding, and having said all that Saints, as it is known, is a lively and in parts well equipped place. The IT rooms, of which there are two, are air conditioned and have a good number of working computers with a shared 384kbps internet connection. It will be a while before I have the measure of the place but projects I may be involved with include setting up a central file server with individual accounts and teaching various computer skills to staff (Office, internet use etc). There is a serious problem with power - there is no power for a few hours at least every other day; on Monday the power was out all morning, and on Tuesday it went out in the afternoon during a lesson. It was an interesting experience as whilst a large group of students worked in pairs on the computers, the lights, screens and air conditioning to drop out at once. Fortunately it was nearly lunch time so the students enjoyed a longer break.

 
I haven't achieved much yet but I have only been there for two days, and it will take me a while to understand how everything works. There seems to be the usual misunderstandings and political issues that exist in any institution and I must tread carefully for now. I will also have to learn a fair amount of technology myself to get it all going with the help of another technician in the department but I hope to make a significant contribution during my stay.

After the blackout the power came on in the night so I could enjoy a bit of breeze from the fan. However the water supply seemed to have stopped as well - I enjoyed flushing the toilet with a bucket this morning!

The creepy crawlies also have a good time in the tropical heat. There's usually one or two little lizard things around the shower area but they are very shy and not offensive. Things like cereal need to be kept in sealed tupperware as things enjoy that a lot. I had a look at some cereal that had been open but in a cupboard for a few weeks and there were some little flying things in there. Cockroaches are also an occasional problem - I think better now that some of the little holes in the flat have been sealed up. I took this picture of a few chaps who strayed onto some roach paper that had been left for them behind the fridge:

Sorry chaps.

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.