Letter 11 from Guyana - It's a longun!

24/4/09-28/4/09

I am currently lying on a nice, big double bed in a beautiful Guest House on a hill overlooking Mabaruma – a town close to the Venezuelan border, west Region #1. In Guyana, ‘Teacher’s Workshop’ means going on a 5 hour boat trip through thick jungle, free accommodation in a nice place with excellent free food, chance to visit an absolutely stunning part of the country & having more productive days than I have had for months, things could be worse! We saw 2 giant otters on our way here (just to rub it in). I’m meant to be in school at the moment as it’s the 1st week back, but when Sir Glen (our HM) rang at 6.10 Wednesday morning to tell me the boat was going at 7.00, would I like to go? I was like ‘Why not? Nothing’s really going to happen at school this week’…..1st week at school is always full of not much work & not many students.
This really is a stunning place, red clay ‘roads’, hills and jungle, endless jungle.
Mabaruma’s real close to another Project Trust placement: Wauna – where Mirjam & Iona are. Iona’s been coming to the workshops too.
So, 8 months in, 3 ½ months to go, 10 more weeks of term (take off 5 for exams, revision etc) that’s 5 more teaching weeks! 9 weeks until Mum & Dad come to visit, 6 weeks till Louisa comes out. It’s going to fly by.
Easter holidays was so, so good. Though I am left with very little money *cough* HINT!
We went into town on the Sunday and met up with Ian, Stewart & Declan (St Cuthbert boys) & Chris & Nick (Dora boys) who we then got on a coach with & travelled down south to Lethem. The journey was 15 hours long & the road was more of a dirt track that cut straight through the jungle & then out through savannah. It was very bumpy! At several points in the journey we had to get off the bus & show ID. I’m guessing this was as we passed in & out of different regions & also parts of reserve. Different parts of Guyana feel more like different parts of the world. Savannah in region 9 is completely different to that in region 4. To be honest, savannah in region 4 is just sand with low bushes. It’s the same with other types of terrain in the country, it varies vastly wherever you go. Region 9 is generally very dusty, walking 2 minutes anywhere will turn your feet bright orange! It’s mostly extensive savannah & random mountain ranges in the distance (the Kanuku’s & the Pakaraimas). I longed to climb those mountains & was tempted even more when I was told that a certain range had never before been crossed on foot!
On arrival to Lethem (Tuesday afternoon) – a very odd place it is too – we decided ‘Hey why not continue on to Brazil?’, so we did ….
Filled in forms at the Lethem police station & on foot headed the direction that they pointed in when asked for ‘Brazil’. Was a very random route along a track, over some plants crossing a stream, through some trees to find a Mahoosive bridge. Up some giant steps, On to the bridge, Over the river & ……..BRAZIL …to discover that no-one here, however close to the border, speaks English.
[By the way, we’d met Milly in Lethem who decided to join our wee gaggle]
We spent Tuesday to Friday in Boa Vista, Brazil, basically just eating as much steak as possible. It was very odd to be back in a more modern city with novelties such as: traffic lights, cars, signs, proper restaurants, supermarkets & STEAK! The meat really was incredible & very cheap, as was the beer!
Our biggest problem was the language barrier. One kind of assumes that everyone knows at least basic English. However Brazil is so vast that it really isn’t necessary to speak our language, especially seeing as only one country that borders it speaks English – being Guyana ….& most of Brazil is probably as ignorant as you & I & has never known of the country’s existence! I managed to shock the other volunteers by getting us a hotel, directions & rooms purely with Spanish. Still got some of the GCSE lingo tucked away it seems!
Other times, it was less easy. Thursday night we went to the water front where there are some bars & restaurants. We didn’t understand any of the menu & it turned out the waiter didn’t speak any Spanish. We were particularly interested by one of the items on the menu & had to resort to sign language. We decided that it must be lobster so Ian began to sign language ‘the whole thing?’ or ‘just the claw?’ We gathered ‘the whole thing’ so Ollie ordered it & waited to see what came. Milly used a different tactic & went for animal noises. Millie’s technique proved more accurate, Ollie received beef.
The best morning we had was on Thursday when we found the ‘Chocobom’ chocolate shop & the sweety supermarket. Large domes of hard chocolate, filled with either condensed milky chewy stuff, or chocolate cakey mixture stuff, with either fruit or nuts in the centre. Ian, Milly, Ollie and I chose 9 at random & went & sat under a tree on the side of the road (classy I know) & each, one at a time, picked one, took a bite & passed it on. Our 40 minute chocolate tasting session left us feeling fairly sick – but so satisfied. Unfortunately, 20 minutes later, we found ourselves standing in front of a massive sweet shop which obviously had to be investigated! First aisle: bubblegum, 2nd: Throat sweets, 3rd: boiled sweets, 4th: gummy sweets, 5th: chocolate, 6th: biscuits, 7th: toothbrushes & toilet roll. It was Ollie’s dream shop, all wholesale, all at least 90% sugar all very very cheap! So Brazil was a success!
Friday morning, after an avocado milkshake (!), we headed back up to Lethem & Guyana for Rodeo.
Lethem is a weird place. There’s no central part to the town where you would expect essential buildings, such as police station, school, admin, travel, shops, bar/restaurant. Everything is so spread out & dotted around large spaces of red dust. The people have a completely different accent to up north, some seemed only to be able to speak Portugese, very odd.
Rodeo was awesome. Bought a cowboy hat obviously …(mainly because if I didn’t turn up cowboyish to a party I was going to be made to wear a coconut bra & grass knickers) but was gutted to find that I couldn’t get cowboy boots; Guyanese cowboys are hard core – they don’t wear anything on their feet.
Went to a party on Friday night by an English guy’s house – he’s ex-SAS & out here running jungle survival courses. It involved the usual: rum, music, fire, bull whips, bows & arrows, blow pipes & skittle vodka! I spent a long time perfecting cracking the bull whip & managed to give myself a lash around my back & face leaving long red marks for an hour or so! But once perfected, it’s so satisfying. There was also the usual dancing & beauty competitions that are always so psyched up & always so boring!
Saturday, Ollie, Milly, Stewart & I never made it in time to see any cowboy action ….We’d decided to go swimming in the river with Dellon (Milly’s boyfriend) & some of his friends. The river was stunning, very wide, Brazil over the other side, long white sandy beachy parts. We drove a minibus down the sand duney bank across the beach, into the water; I could foresee problems ….anyway we left Dellon’s friends all getting into the ‘cleaning vehicles in underwear (Y-fronts in this case) in time to crazy music’ mode of things, & swam over to Brazil. When we came back the bus was looking nice & clean but its wheels had sunk 2/3’s into the sand. It took 2 ½ hours for us to wait for a pickup to come & tow, while we all pushed & levered the minibus out & up the bank, by which point we were all very sandy, sunburnt & the bus was in need of a clean again! So by the time we got to the Rodeo ground most of the action was over & everyone was just preparing for the big evening party & fair.
There’s actually a project in Lethem so everyone went back by Steve’s house, bathed in the creek, strung hammocks up in the school & pick-uped back to the Rodeo for toffee apples, toffee grapes (?), steak on sticks, beer, rum, music etc.
The next day (Easter Sunday) we made sure to arrive at Rodeo in time to see some cowboys on horses! To be honest, generally they didn’t stay on the horses very long – they were bucked off. I have some awesome photos! We also saw lassoing of calves & bulls (which was really exciting, especially when one, really pissed off bull decided to charge the horse & rider). The sad thing was that the animals stood in the sun for the whole day, in the hot hot sun, with no shade & no water. By the end of the day some of the animals just refused to move & one horse died of heat exhaustion. It was horrible, I saw it all, it was fitting & bleeding from its ears. A vaquero tried to resuscitate it by knee dropping it, but soon fluids came out of all orifices & it died. Crazy that they let that happen. Generally vaqueros live for their animals, they do everything. Raise the cattle, kill them – by tying them to a tree, bludgeoning them on their head & then slitting their throat & draining the the body – cut it up, divide meat from other useful parts, cut the meat, skin the animal, make leather, use/sell the leather etc. Tough life!
Sunday night was a big party again – got back at 4.30am, slept an hour, before meeting Craig, his friend ‘Charlotte’, Ollie & Milly & heading back up for Karanamba – a 3 hour ride in the back of a pickup (not so good after a night of accidentally drinking beer on antibiotics …not a good mix!)
Karanamba is beautiful. Set in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by savannah, lakes, mountains & next to jungle lined river. The place was settled in the 1920’s, set up by an American who was interested in the balata trade. His daughter now looks after the place. Diane McTurk, the daughter, has set up a program restoring orphaned otters to the wild & has aided extensive research in the last 50 years. To financially support her program she decided to make Karanamba a place where tourists & researchers can stay & experience some of what this incredible country has to offer. It’s an incredibly personal place. Diane, who is 78 now, comes on every trip with her side kick 68 year old Pat, & they still are so excited by everything even though they’ve live there so long & led expeditions so many times. They are an awesome pair. Pat is a chain-smoking, very blunt & opinionated, rum punch lover who originally came to Guyana to achieve her dream of catching the world’s largest fresh water fish species: the Arapaima. Diane also lives on rum punch – it’s the drink of choice taken on all river & savannah trips & is offered at all times of the day. She insists that all guests eat together – amazing meals prepared by some locals she employs – where she tells some incredible stories, she really is a remarkable lady. I can see how Craig enjoyed working for them for a month last summer – 2 old interesting ladies, plenty rum punch, awesome food & one of the most peaceful places I’ve ever been. We stayed in little cabins, we’d go out on trips to return to clean washing, our bed nets down & beds made & the orphaned racoon ‘Bandit’ having squeezed through the window slats & drinking from the toilet! Unfortunately the otters that Diane had been looking after had disappeared 2 weeks back. She fears that they were attacked & killed by others as they’ve stopped leaving ‘calling cards’ – fish bones, rocks etc. - & have not returned. So we spent 2 days going on river trips, walks & a savannah trip to search for wildlife. We saw caiman, a capybara, monkeys, plenty birds -> Road-side hawk (Dad), many kingfishers, green ibis, storks, herons, parrots. We watched the world’s largest Lily species open its petals at night (the Victoria Amazonica), had fish jump right up over the boat – made me laugh & scream every time! But the best sighting was on the last morning when I spotted, using binoculars, an ANACONDA – big, black, shiny mass curled up in some dead branches of a fallen tree on the far side of a lake. Wow!
Ollie & I headed back to Town on Wednesday, by air! 12 seater plane that you couldn’t stand up in, could touch the controls from where you sat - & rained inside! Guyana’s incredible from the air (I really need some new adjectives) it’s all under water, savannah & trees, the colours are beautiful, especially on the savannah. Colour changes from browns , to gold, to yellows, to greens depending on how close the grass is to water/ was close to water seeing as it’s all dried up! We also passed over a gold mine which looked like some sort of a lost city.
Back in town we chilled out with some friends trying to spend as little money as possible. I was waiting for Ian to return from the Shulinab project back in Region 9 (otherwise known as the Rupununi). Shulinab is up in the Kanuku mountains, turns out Ian spent the time fishing under water with goggles & spears, % playing with human skulls found in dutch pots up in a cave on skull mountain! We managed to spend a couple of days together at the end of the holidays in town before heading back to our projects.
Good times!
So returned to Moruca on the Sunday taking with us Iona – who accidentally missed her flight back to Mabaruma! At this point I was expecting to go to Mabaruma Monday morning. It wasn’t until we got back that Sir Errol told me that it had been postponed. So we had Iona stranded with us in Moruca until we found a boat passing through – which didn’t occur until Tuesday!
When walking back from the landing to our house on Sunday we passed a Sloth that had just started climbing a telegraph pole at the side of the road. We were so close we could have touched it; got some real good photos on my new pink camera. I really did want to tell the Sloth that it wasn’t going to find anything at the top of the pole…& would have to climb all the way down again!
Jumby news from Moruca – on Palm Sunday 4 girls got ‘attacked’ in Mass at which point one of the teachers stood up & publicly blamed another for the whole thing. She’s now asked for a transfer (rumour has it) which would be awful as she’s one of the only outspoken teachers who gets things done & acts as a voice for all the staff. There were a couple more ‘attacks’ over the holidays & now an old monk has brought his psychologist sister from America in to properly assess the problem. We’ll see what comes of that.
Pass my thanks on to all who have sent me goodies & letters, they are still so exciting to receive. If I were you, be sending last stuff around the end of May so that stuff doesn’t arrive when we’re not here.
Only other news was a 5 hour house clean & cockroach massacre. About once every 3 months the cockroach situation gets so bad that when you get out of bed at night you hear the scuttling as they scatter ….nasty! So we have our cockroach cull. Craig goes in to the cupboard with toxic ‘Fish’ spray (insecticide that is sure to be illegal in the UK). I stand on one side with a swatter, Craig on the other & the splatting begins as they start to scuttle out by the 10’s. Ollie stands at a distance & spots for us. The whole process takes around an hour & a half & is both an adrenalin rush & very satisfying – apart from when cockroach guts squirt everywhere – like all over my leg (it stinks). It’s always a fairly loud activity – can’t help but scream when they creep out on you/ squirt on you, but hey it gets the neighbours back for waking us up at all hours of the morning with their screeching!
Just waiting for some rain now. Now using pond water for bathing with & the tanks are very low too. The river is the lowest I’ve ever seen. Savannah is actually attached to mud! Loads of people are, for some reason, deciding to burn it – don’t know why. Rainy season is due to start now & continue through to August, so I guess I should be making the most being dry in Guyana for the last time!
Yuck I just turned the tap on & a big tadpoley mush dropped out on to my tooth brush!
Hope all is well everywhere else, don’t get swine flu ….
Lots of love from
Emily
XXX