G is for genuine hospitality and glowing light

I spent Diwali with friends on the West Bank Demerara. Alicia is Christian and her husband is Hindu. Back in Portugal I know some people who have inter-faith marriages, but it's all very difficult for the two families to come together, leaving the couple on a sort of emotional island, which can be very lonely and hard to bear.

In Guyana, though, people are used to dealing with friends and family members of different religions and   it was wonderful to see no tension. Alicia's mum was helping out with everything. I loved the fact that they involved us in the whole preparation of the day and night:

We helped making the wicks for the diyas - My right leg still has red bumps from rolling the 300 strips of cotton!

I filled the diyas with coconut oil and had a hand moisturizing party!

 And voila, as soon as the sun began to duck, everybody started spreading the diyas and lighting them, creating patterns of light in a very dark night.

Oh, the food! We ate 7 curries and learned how to cook some delicious desserts. YUM!
Thank you Alicia and family for such a special day!

g is for gap!

Yeah, great big gigantic gap between posts. Sorry about that, but I haven't found a solution to my internet access from Mahdia. I can access email form my phone but no luck with the computer-phone interaction. I want to make the most of the internet access while I have it, so I shall leave you with some piccies!

A secondary school girl is one of the sports judges for the Nursery School Sports Day - Mahdia. 

Nothing like an ice-cream when you come to town! - Georgetown

Former gold mining site, the water & minerals are left to settle down to avoid pollution. 

Who says old & new don't go together? (Annai)

My region!

It's always up and down. Up... and down (from Mahdia do Tumatumarie, in Region 8)

Hydro electric station in Tumatumarie. Good news: It is going to be renovated!

The beautiful black Potaro River, on the way from Pamela Landing to the Amatuk Island

Amatuk Falls, Region 8

A bit of a shock the first time I got medicine from the hospital in Mahdia...

Easter eggs, left at my doorstep. About 8 chicks were born (out of other eggs though, as me & some friends ate these!)

Random flower in my mahd little Mahdia

Moon & sun in perfectly opposite positions, Parishara village, Region 9 

Rabbit leaves & Rachel Rabbit... interacting

Gorgeous!

A friend's mum speedily grating cassava. My arms were dead tired and I hardly did anything...

In a minibus

Baby, before the builders found her and decided to "save" me from her...

Post-mining resort

Mahdia, where every cruiser (pick up) has a name.

offline

Dear all... or none after such a break in updating!
My modem is dead and I haven't been able to connect the internet.
But I'm hoping to connect again this week and update this place, promise.
Meanwhile, you can keep me posted, ok??
Hugs

F is for farming

F is for farming

Just a little note before the farming, to send an enormous transatlantic hug to the best f&f in the world: mine! And yes, this does include some people that are not in the video but are in my heart nevertheless. Loved it and can't wait to get it on a DVD so that I can watch it in loop!

Watching DVDs is certainly not my main pastime, so I've found something else to entertain me: my backyard.

My biggest surprise when I got here was finding out that I was in a place with tropical climate and no fruit. Those who know me can imagine how dramatic this is: I'm the girl that has two bowls of fruit in her kitchen and takes apples to discos. Well, complaining and nagging is not my thing, so I decided to ask around why people were not planting fruit and vegetables; I wondered why on Earth we had to bring things in from Georgetown, on an extremely bumpy 8 hour minibus journey. People laughed at me and said the soil was no good. Naïf, I believed them! Until the day I walked passed an amazing garden/farm and started chatting to the owner, Mr Young. He has anything you can think of growing in his garden and said that what you really need is to bring in a lot of cow manure. Hands on then!

I borrowed a big bucket, called another gyal I know was interested in growing veggies and fruit and off we went collecting buckets of shite. Some guys were watching from the guesthouse's balcony and took pictures of us. How sweet, ha?

Meanwhile I've created an artificial mountain to plant pawpaw on it (above photo), so that the roots don't rot. This morning, a neighbour of mine, who had lent me a rack, said he'd passed by my house and saw no plants, so I told him I was still looking for seeds. At lunch time he was knocking on the door to bring me lots of seeds. Very exciting! So, as soon as I left the office today I collected more manure (because he said I needed more…shucks!) and buried the seeds in shit.

Looks good... does it?!

Smelly beginning for a hopefully tasty ending!

E is for Electricity and Ecotourism

... Electricity

It was surprisingly easy to get used to no electricity during the day. Roger has a big generator that produces electricity for Mahdia from 6pm to 6am. Thanks Roger!

I had never given it any thought before deciding to move to Guyana, simply because I was used to having electricity any time any place; But the truth is that one needs electricity mostly at night, which is when I have it, generally.

I have some lamps and torches around the house, ready to be used when electricity fails. When that happens, I close the book, find my way to the closest lamp, turn it on, turn on the ipod and wait. It’s great to take a break!

Talking about ipods, I’ve wasted all the batteries I brought for the speakers. The ones on sale here are as powerful as the ones you throw away (what do you call a battery disposal place, like the “pilhão” in Portugal?).

All in all it’s easy to live with controlled electricity. It’s all about managing the electric points.

Before arriving, the biggest mystery to me was the fridge; I wondered if people could live without one in such heat. It turns out that most of them do, but I am part of the lucky bunch who has a fridge in the house. Well, fridge during the night, big cold box during the day. Keeping bottles of water in the freezer overnight does the trick for having cold water during the day and even some ice. Neat, ha?

... and Ecotourism

Tourism in Guyana is like Sundays: you can either have a beautiful, unique, magical experience, or you can end up disappointed, frustrated and finding all doors closed. To me, that is the biggest problem in doing tourism here, especially when you’re used to the idea of “satisfaction or your money back”. The only tourist experiences I have had hear were amazing, but I am aware that I was lucky.

Here are the contacts of the places I visited, and which I highly recommend. These people work hard and want you to have a good time.

1. Parishara Village - David Ng-A-Fook

+592 6974608

Dan and I were the guinea pigs in David’s experience. He participated in a workshop dedicated to tourism, got enthusiastic about the possibilities, got some neighbours together and prepared a wonderful couple of days, pretty taylor made. When you decide to come, please don’t ask him for too much, because I’m sure he will try his hardest to make it come true!

We stayed in a concrete house, but we had taken our hammocks and told him that generally eco tourists enjoy sleeping closer to nature. At the time (March 2010) a benab was being built, so you might get to sleep in one.

At dawn we went looking for the giant ant eater, but it decided to stay low, so we didn’t get to see it. I loved the savannah’s silence: no bird, no wind. Just the immense silence and a gigantic sky.

We learn how to make cassava bread, we ate delicious fresh water fish and we heard stories about the savannah’s people and animals. 

2. Maipama Eco-Lodge – Guy Frederick

guybalatacraft@gmail.com

+592 6969789

+592 6968461

This eco-lodge has been up and running for almost 10 years. It’s in the middle of the jungle and there is no electricity, but you can enjoy some vodka with freshly pressed orange juice on the rocks… ok, I’ll explain: at the lodge they are aware that the foreigners like to listen to the sounds of nature, and also enjoy the luxury of modern days, so they turn the generator on while the guests are away. Isn’t that sweet? 

When you visit Maipama Eco-lodge, you can either stay around, enjoying the lovely swimming-pool-like creek, or go for a 14km walk to the Jordan Falls. We did it the lazy way: went on one day, enjoyed the falls, relaxed, stayed overnight, went for a walk around the falls and came back to the lodge, but you can visit the Jordan Falls and get back to the lodge on the same day.

I highly recommend what we did: a couple of days in the huge-skied and perfectly silent savannah, at the Parishara Village, and some days in the mighty jungle, where the sky is tiny and nature’s soundtrack never stops.

D is for Dancehall

Hello again Raquel's blog. How's things? Here with a late D for you...

Now I can understand at least some of what people say in Guyanese Creolese, I can eavesdrop on conversations on public transport. Always a good pastime, and in guyana there is an extra advantage that it takes my mind off the terrible driving and various road hazards. 

[great photo - internet is too slow for it]

Today's eavesdropped conversation covered kids of today, parents of today, how back in the day they couldn't even afford a bus fair to school and would get thrashed if they weren't back 5 minutes before school ended, despite having to walk for miles barefoot, and the terrible music these days that is poisoning the minds of our children. It was basically a Guyanese version of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch. One of the Guyanese Yorkshiremen proposed an answer to all the problems with the youth of today - the government should outlaw all 'this music', and throw anyone caught with it into jail for six months without trial.

'This music' that is poisoning the mind of Caribbean children is Dancehall.

Dancehall is basically Reggae's younger brother, who moved to the city, got in with a bad crowd and fell into a life of crime, drugs and sex with anything in a tiny pair of batty riders.  Musically, Dancehall can be incredible - Gwen Stefani, Major Lazer and others have collaborated with dancehall artists to good effect, and the pure stuff can be even more striking.  As with Reggae and Soca music, producers compete to make rhythms that are then used as the basis for any number of tracks by different artists.  Lyrically however, the concerns are justifiable - explicitly sexual or violent lyrics are commonplace, and often heard here blasted out in minibuses half full of school children.

Another big concern in Guyana and elsewhere is that a spat between two dancehall artists, and their respective neighborhoods in Kinston, Jamaica, is sowing the seeds for a developing gang culture across the Caribbean. This has reached Guyana, evidenced by graffiti springing up in schools and on the streets and increasing rumours of various kinds of criminality gang activities, often involving school children. News of the so called 'Gaza/Gully' feud has even reached the Guardian newspaper in the UK.

I'm not sure the answer to any of this is to throw dancehall fans in prison for months,  although many Caribbean islands are refusing some of the artists involved permission for concerts, and dancehall artists have been refused permission to perform in the UK and US in the past for violently homophobic lyrics.  There are also artists with much more positive messages, and I've even heard full on christian gospel dancehall, but the most popular songs are often the most controversial.  The economic and social conditions in Guyana seem ripe for a gang culture to continue to grow, so this is a real area of concern for the future.

On the plus side however, some of the music is ace.

Dan

C is for Chutney

Dear all, today we have a guest, Dan:


Wow, I'm a guest blogger. I feel important!

(I am very easily pleased)

Anyway, on with the alphabet . . .

C is for: Chutney

Not the edible kind (although as an aside, achar, a spicy mango pickle/chutney type thing is one of my favourite food discoveries here, spicy/sweet/sour/tangy deliciousness, let down only by it's rather offputting dark grey colour).

Chutney is in fact devoured through the ears.  It is, simply speaking, East Indian Carribean music, a baffling collision of calypso, soca, bollywood songs and traditional indian styles.  The singing can sound whiny to western ears, and the music can sound cheaply produced and rough around the edges, but it certainly has an energy, style and flavour all of its own.

Together with the baffling mix of musical influences is a strong emphasis on storytelling in the lyrics. Almost all songs tell a story, and some even come in a series of tracks based on the same backing music, telling different aspects of the same story.  A popular series at the moment 'Catch me Lovah' tells the story of a man finding his girlfriend in the car with another woman, who as the series progresses is revealed to have been his best friend, wearing a wig.

Nearly all Chutney songs are about either infidelity, drinking rum (generally the men drinking rum, and complaining about the women telling them off for it) or whining.  Whining means dancing like you are having sex.  Again with Chutney this leads to a thundering collision of cultures, with twisty bollywood hand movements and side to side shaking hips combined with the low down and dirty grind of typical dancehall/soca dancing.

So altogether, a unique and spicy flavour, but it can be an aquired taste.

Video for 'catch me lovah' - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFtUZ




[Me again: Just to say thank you for your emails and text messages; I really appreciate reading about what you are up to, even though I often get over nostalgic when I realize that "my world and people" are changing without me being there.
Haven't received any snail mail yet, so it takes over a month to arrive...
Loving hugs to all]