The Blythlyway in Guyana

Sunday, December 31, 2006

During the week before Christmas this year in Guyana I bought my first piece of Jesus art. It was among the many things that were new to me in this Christmas season where the rains come down hard (the snow just melt before it hit the ground I was told in consolation), BBQ chicken with potato salad and watermelon are standard holiday fare (if you close your eyes it smells like the Fourth of July), and on Christmas Eve everyone walks the streets which have been transformed into a county fair of picture booths, carnival games, and of course last minute shopping. I have found myself alternatively missing family, friends and traditions during this holiday time and feeling warmly embraced by those new friends and communities (and their tropical traditions) which I have found myself surrounded by here in Guyana. And in between the suspension of disbelief that it is Christmas time at all.

I have met two painters now in New Amsterdam. Besides the sign painters (who are amazing in their ability to block razor edge letters free-hand and whose work adorns the sides of the Canje Bridge and the donated cement benches of the Esplanade) there is very little representational painting or drawing visible on the streets. There isn’t even any real graffiti except left over political campaign slogans- Vote AFC For Change Not Race. While there are problems with graffiti, I will admit to feeling a certain comfort in seeing the expressions of individuality thrown up, brightly splashed and mingled with the more pedestrian grid work of blacktop streets, concrete and glass which are the primary colors of most cities. In Chicago, while attending two weeks of training for this year, I walked around the streets of Hyde Park and was consistently caught off guard by lovely, random silhouetted stencils on walls and sidewalks. One in particular, on a broken expanse of concrete nearly made me cry for the way this anonymous artist had captured the landscape of my thoughts as I prepared to leave friends, family, familiarity. In a standard sized panel of concrete sidewalk, otherwise entirely shattered by cracks, there was a Black Hand print with all the markings of an individual palm. Under it, on the next panel of concrete, which was completely smooth and clear, and cut from it, by the line separating the poured stability, there were the words in small lower case – im afraid ill be alone. There is plenty of random color here in Guyana, the roads are anything but orderly, the buildings their own individualities, yet I missed seeing how people represented their world with their own images- not merely the photographs of advertised dreams.

One day, months ago now, I noticed an image in my own neighborhood of Stanleytown. Up on the second floor of a seemingly abandoned wooden house on the main road there was a board where a window used to be and it practically cried out it’s color in contrast to the graying wood. I didn’t even recognize that there were figures on the panel until after a number of passings on the bike in the following weeks. Then suddenly they were clear as day. It was a painting of two women dancing. I hadn’t made it out because the image was sideways and slightly abstract, but now it provided me a hint of company every time I passed it’s merry-making. Eventually I asked somebody on the street, in view of the painting, if they knew anything about who had made it. The teenage boys I asked at first were wary of my interest in it or them (most likely due to the fairly brisk illegal, yet completely open, trade being plied on this particular corner). Then they were dismissive of it, as it was just a part of their daily view and as such no more unusual than the palm trees. I think they also wanted to reassure me that it hadn’t been done without permission of the owner of the house; presumably my ilk should care about that I suppose. When they began to understand that I liked the painting and was asking about the painter, they didn’t know much but directed me generally to some clothing booths on Pitt Street where they thought someone would know more. In another week I randomly picked a man in a booth selling t-shirts and he both knew who the artist was and that I had been asking about him. Unfortunately he didn’t know exactly lived (somewhere over the Canje Bridge he thought), but he did say that the man, named Stephan, was occasionally on the street outside the market selling his paintings. And then one day he was there and he had heard I was asking about him. We spoke for a while amid his paintings of life in Guyana. I see him often now and have noticed that his paintings are upon the walls of many of the businesses of New Amsterdam and in some of the homes as well. He is amazingly prolific in his monopoly. And of course he knows Braks the head of Conco-Nya, they have worked on plays together in the past. Maybe if things go I can get him to do some scenery painting for a project. For Miriam Adelaide’s birthday I bought from him a portrait of a mother suckling a newborn. It is a beautiful painting and hangs by the back door; we see it every time we come down the stairs.

Now you could argue, I suppose if so inclined to view the world through a certain lens, that this first painting I bought was a version of the Madonna and Child. I don’t need or care to argue the point, but I think you will see when I describe the second painting I have purchased here in Guyana why I say that it is truly my first Jesus Art.

The painters name is on the painting, but I know him as Jolly. The first time I meet him was when I bought rat poison from him inside the market at a little folding table containing various pellets of different shapes, sizes and wild colors all tied up in twos and threes within torn pieces of plastic bag. He asked me what one I wanted. I had no idea what type of poison I was supposed to use, said as much, and asked for his advice. I think he was impressed that I would say I knew nothing about something, as well as surprised at my ignorance of something so basic. He grabbed two blue ones, told me how to use them, and we exchanged greetings whenever I saw him around town after that. For I have never seen him at the poison stand again, but more often in front of the entrance selling watches or sunglasses, etc or simply sitting watching the flow of traffic on the street. He was standing there when I bought the picture from Stephan and he approved of the purchase saying, “When I first see that picture it mak me skin grow. Mak me skin grow Man.” Which was somehow exactly how I felt.

One day in early December the usual market side entrance was closed off and foot traffic was directed through the main part or the first grand building. I usually avoid this entrance unless I want to sneak into the market through the tight rows of clothing stalls inside. The market has been under repair since we arrived, so occasionally this detour has popped up. Instead of parking my bike in among the racks of bikes I have to pick out a secluded spot inside the market itself, between stalls or against a post- out of the way, but in the middle of everything. As I walked in I noticed that a different artist had hung up some paintings on the wooden walls leading in. They were all biblical scenes. I looked at them cursorily and went in to do the shopping. On the way out I looked a little more closely. One in particular was pretty good. It depicted the Luke 10:42 story of Jesus in the home of Mary and Martha. I knew this not because of my biblical prowess, but because it was written just like that on bottom of the painting. The details of the robes and dressing gowns were good work and the depth of the painting was fairly impressive, but I couldn’t imagine buying it. It just didn’t even occur to me that I would. I would have safely walked away tucking it away in my mind into the category of Jesus Art, which is I think a close cousin to Black Velvet Elvis Pictures.

Then Jolly was standing next to me, although at this point I didn’t know his name. We exchanged greetings and looked back at the paintings. It became apparent to me that he was the artist, though I don’t think he said so outright. I told him I like the Mary and Martha piece. “Everyone like that one Man.” I stated what I had inferred- you’re the artist. He smiled. Not shyly exactly for he is far too big a presence in the street to be even slightly demure, but his pride was printed in a way that only replicated the more vulnerable original etching he held back inside his breast as if worried the air might corrode it. And then without another word for me he suddenly spoke of his seven years spent in prison in payment for hacking the arm off of a man with a cutlass during an argument. How while he was inside we somehow got a hold of a picture book of biblical stories. How when he saw them it made his skin grow. He taught himself to draw there in prison and these paintings we what it had come out as in the end. I told him I was interested in the Mary and Martha painting and inquired about the price. He was asking 5,000 Guyanese dollars (25 US). I told him I was interested, but that it would take a few weeks to get the money together, maybe before Christmas, if it was still available, I would be able to buy it.

I saw Jolly occasionally in the next two weeks. Once I saw him in a verbal altercation with another man, which Jolly pushed in volume, posture and increased ferocity until the other man waked away. I never saw the paintings again displayed; they were just there for that day apparently.

A week before Christmas I saw him on the way to buy our vegetables and I asked him how I could arrange to get the painting as I had the money ready. He gave me his phone number and thus I learned his call name. He said he would give it to me for 4,000.

I bought a phone card to use to call our family in the states on Christmas. I used a little portion of it to call Jolly a few days before Christmas as our landline can’t be used for calling local cell phones without a card. He answered the phone and we arranged to meet at the market in an hour. “So what time is it now” about twenty to twelve “So I’ll see you at noon then” No more like 12:30 “Good, Good Perfect.”

I took a car over to the market as it was threatening rain and I didn’t want to damage the painting carrying it home on the bike. When I arrived Jolly was at the front of the market. His bike was parked slightly off to the side of the busy entrance- its specially welded front basket stand was down and it held a big box. He was standing on one side of a table bartering with three women who were interested in the rabbits sitting on top of the table. I said hello to Jolly who didn’t recognize me at first as I had just shaved my head and beard- my standard solstice shedding. We exchanged conspiratorial smiles. I had fooled him. (In the Rastafarian culture this long hair to baldhead transition is fairly common – mostly having to do with being forcibly shaved against their religious beliefs when they are in prison.). He asked if I would wait a few minutes and I stepped back to observe. At this moment I noticed that under the rabbits, beneath a clear sheet of vinyl and serving as the actual table for the bartering, the painting was laying face up. The three rabbits obscured Mary, Martha and Jesus equally.

I stood taking it all in for the next five minutes the sale took, then the second five minutes that it took to get to the same point in the sale after Jolly had run off for a box to put the rabbits in. The three young Indian women, two in fairly traditional saris, wanted the price to go down. Jolly, a fully locked Rasta in a camo jacket and camo shorts hanging below his knees, tried to explain that they weren’t his rabbits. He didn’t know anything about rabbits, but the big man rabbit in the box just sold for 4,000 and these three he had to sell for three thousand. In the end everyone was happy, the rabbits were boxed up and money exchanged hands. Before he could turn to me a woman in the crowd of people milling around on the busy market street shouted out to Jolly that she wanted a man. “I already sold that one in the box, but I can bring you a man tomorrow if you want one.” “Bring me a MAN.” Jolly caught on quicker than I did, but a half step behind the crowd. “I need a MAN’ the crowd shouting out with her now. “I bring you a man RABBIT, otherwise you on you own.”

At this point Jolly took the vinyl off of the painting. I handed him 5,000 “As we agreed at first” I insisted. And I was now the proud owner- guess I’m gonna have to find somewhere to hang it.

We stood together in the middle of the crowd pushing past in all directions and watched the world for a few minutes. I was about to leave when he indicated he wanted to say something more.

He began with his own inner sense of worth. His faith all tied to it. And then told me he had just had sex with a young woman right before I called that morning. Just like that. No – I was laying in bed- but straight to what he had actually done. Exactly like when he told me he had cut off another man’s arm. I wasn’t sure where anything was going, but I continued to listen, leaning into hear his words over the market din. “I was just telling her how I hoped luck be with me that day. How I need to hustle up sometin good for Christmas. And the phone ring with you.” Unfortunately I still hold on to the semblance of control I can have on a situation, mainly by choosing how I make myself available to the world. So I said I had to run that day. Needed to get home I think I said. But sometime here in the future, Jolly wants to have me come around to see his home. Can’t imagine turning him down.

That evening we went Christmas caroling with one of Miriam’s Churches through the village known as Cane Field. It started out kind of rocky. Nobody but the four of us showed up at first. Probably because it was raining and the whole area was in a blackout. But Pastor Roy knew that one woman in particular had made treats for the carolers so we started out for her house. In the dark that only happens in blackout and in a slight mist we sang Oh, Come, Oh, Come, Emmanuel. Oh, come, blest Dayspring, come and cheer Our spirits by your advent here. A candle was lit inside. We were ushered into the house, more candles lit, and we sat down to sing another carol as she dished out the channa (chick peas with spices) and tea.

Encouraged by our reception we swung back to the church and picked up a straggler or two and headed to another home where we were greeted at the door before we could even get to the end of the first verse of Hark the Herald Angel Sings. We were greeted with our first taste of black cake, a type of fruitcake, kind of, except the fruit is chopped really fine and soaked in rum. It’s name and color coming from the caramelized sugar and rum that is a major ingredient. Hers was just out of the oven.

Further emboldened Pastor Roy disappeared and we set off on foot with about 10-15 of us mostly kids singing our way back to the church in the still blackout and continued drizzle of the silent night. Once we arrived at church Pastor Roy was waiting for us with a large flat bed truck he had procured from somewhere. All of us carolers jumped up on the back, taking care to avoid the holes in the floorboards and really started to belt it out as we rolled down the back roads: mud puddles and ditches rocking he boat as we sailed between members houses. We sang steady for about an hour this way till the rain picked up again and we stopped for another round of snacks and tea to warm us in the 90-degree night.

When we loaded back up the truck wouldn’t start. We tried to push it back and forth in the muddy turn around at the end of the lane, but nothing doing. So we mustered the troops and pushed the truck through the mud puddles now and finally to some cement, eventually leaving it in front of the house where we first started singing. Again on foot we continued for another hour, got fed again, and tried to keep our feet out of the big puddles in the dark back streets. Pastor Roy got the truck started and returned it after two hours of work and we waited in front of the church for him to return with his station wagon so we could all pile in (about ten of us) and head to the last stop. I feel asleep in a chair outside this house till everyone called it a night around 11:30 and we got a ride home.

It was all supposed to happen again the next night, but serious rain kept Miriam and I at home. The wind howled and waves hit the house in steady twenty-minute intervals for five hours. Alice, Pastor Roy’s wife, said by phone that we should stay at home. We sat quietly playing dominos together on the kitchen table. It was our first night of nothing to do for a while. The week had already seen the four hour Christmas concert one night, and the five hour Christmas social another night (where in Pastor Roy handed out gifts to over 50 kids off an individually named list) I was feeling perhaps excessively connected to the parishioners of the church and I think we sang Oh Come All Ye Faithful forty times. It was good to get a break. Amazingly Pastor Roy found carolers waiting for him that night and they kept it up until 10:00 when another blackout hit and the rain really started.

On Saturday we made bullas- the Swedish sweet bread of my families tradition. It was our second batch and we were handing them out to neighbors and friends as quick as we could make them but not quick enough to guarantee ourselves a big enough personal stash (of course in days to come we received more Black Cake than was believable, luckily if you keep it soaked in rum it lasts for months). In this simple act of baking with Miriam, the stretching of dough, the scent of cardamom, the pie pans laid out on every surface waiting to go into the oven, in this tradition of mine transplanted to the tropics I felt the first stirring of Christmas and the connection to family that I had been missing.

Christmas Eve Day started with services in the morning, as it was a Sunday this year. Miriam led and preached her first complete solo service, then we met up with the third church for a readings and carols service in the small all wooden countryside church of Betsy Ground where I always feel so at home. At one point I really got behind the building chorus of Oh, Come let us Adore Him and by the time it was over I knew it had been my last heartfelt carol for the season. I would be faking all those to come.

After we returned from the service Miriam spent the day working in final preparations for the Christmas morning service which was to start at 6 am the next day (in those moments of early morning church I just work on keeping my posture good in the pews and marvel at my spouses ability to string sentences together from the pulpit while my brain tries to catch on to the fact that I’m upright). I took the afternoon to spin on the bike and stop in at the houses and gathering places of friends. The rains had made a mess of the dirt road at the back dam and I pushed the bike along in the slop not trusting myself to pedal through it without spinning out. How does the world look when you travel in mud on foot every time you leave your house?

I had seen Braks providentially on the road earlier that morning while in the car with Miriam and got the chance to introduce the two of them. When I got to Braks house he was excited by the meeting. I’m pretty sure he trusted me before hand, but getting a chance to see Miriam and get a sense of who she was built our relationship up that much more. I offered a ceremonial swig out of the pewter flask my sister Heather and Joshua her husband gave me for officiating their wedding. We had even found a single lonely bottle of Scotch on a market shelf ( it just happened that it was the same type that Miriam’s Mother and Gordon share with us before celebration dinners). And these elements coming together, the flask from my sister with the Celtic design, the scotch of family, combined with my Scottish ancestry on my fathers side, made me feel I was creating a genuine Christmas tradition in carrying it around and offering it to my friends. Braks of course turned it down as he doesn’t drink, but the gesture counted. I sat around for an hour or so as people came and went – many back in the neighborhood on vacation for abroad, but I didn’t have it in me this day to sit for long so I said my goodbyes and pedaled over to the basketball court where I had heard that the Standpipe crew were setting up for that nights big party.

The main basketball court in New Amsterdam is right in front of the library. Two days earlier I had been running a game there when I took a accidental elbow to the head and had to cut the game short because I figured that a bleeding head wound in a foreign country indicated a quick trip home to asses the situation before potential loss of consciousness. It turned out to be very minor but I got some great looks on the ride home. The last time I played football I had been told that the elders of the neighborhood wouldn’t let the Standpipe crew have their annual party on the football pitch as they normally did so they decided to move it to the basketball court which was a little more removed from houses in that it didn’t have houses actually ringing it. After seeing and feeling the size of the sound system and the fact that the music was still going strong when we woke up for church at 5 am, I can’t say that I blamed the elders for their decision. When I arrived stacks that bounced off of each other to lift the sound higher surrounded the basketball court. Two bars had been set up on either side of the court and lining the fences there were palm fronds, which created a wall. Because I had just gotten my shave the guys at the front looked at me funny as I walked up and two of them moved out asking me what exactly it was that I wanted. When they got closed and I said hello to these guys, one of whom I play football with, they broke up laughing at my change. “Man you look like a real white man now” “Boys' gonna start traveling in AC pretty soon.” I walked around talking to people, broke in their bar by buying a milk stout and refusing change for the 1,000 bill – insisting that it was for good luck. First 1,000 of the night. So they shared out a few more milk stouts and I passed the flask around. “Man that scotch burn” This from guys that drink straight rum like it is water. People started playing basketball amidst the speakers, which moved you sideways if you stayed in one spot for too long (everyone there was male -I forget sometimes after being here for a little while that the segregation of the sexes is so totally complete and so different from my experiences in the States). I left to get my shoes, but by the time I got back the game had stopped. Somebody made a comment about me bleeding last time I was on the court (if I haven’t made it clear already when ever anything happens to Miriam and I just about everyone knows about it no matter how few were around to see). I watched some cards for a while in a corner where money was held in bundles folded and placed between the toes. I could figure out what game they were playing and since they dealt in a different direction that I did I realized I didn’t have a prayer. Time to move on. Things weren’t even gonna start till 11 or later and it was only 4 in the afternoon.

I swung by the market and saw Z. Ally the moneychanger who I hadn’t seen for almost a month. I struggled trying to figure out how I should extend Christmas to this Muslim man who had shown me hospitality during the Ramadan. I weakly told him that he should come over for dinner that week, all the while trying to figure out how I could find a night free for it. But it’s more complicated that me inviting as I am the guest here and my invitation only made him talk about how he wished he could have me over to his house but he was sorry that he couldn’t because the ally he lived on was flooded and filled with garbage and sewage and things got into your skin if you walked through the water. I should have invited him to the Christmas social where the church could have fed him in the same way his mosque fed me one night, but sadly I, the Pastor's Wife, hadn’t thought of it. I was wrapped up in the activities of the church and had separated the congregation out of society and concerned myself more with trying to get through the days instead of looking out and extending my holidays to the other. "You are worrried and distracted by many things, few things are necessary" I left feeling disappointed in my lack of understanding of this religion that I am involved with even when the messages are dropped on my head.

When I got home Miriam was still working so I slipped over to the corner Rum shop. I have switched my allegiances away from the rum shop across the street and over to a little wooden shack a few blocks away. It is about 10ft X 20ft, with a counter, stools and one perpetually set domino table padded with cardboard so the sounds of the tiles slamming down doesn’t rifle through the place. They don’t play music at ear shattering volume, the crowd is older, and I’ve slowly worked my way in by the occasional drink in the quiet of early evenings and one well-placed later night session with the proprietor and two regulars. The place was more crowed that usual, but I grabbed seat at the domino table in the corner and Joe poured a 1/3 bottle of white rum out for me on the house- Merry Christmas. I drank a little and watched the end of Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon with everyone in the bar jumping the actor’s lines. Then played a few games of dominos and insisted some one finish the rum with me. I can safely say that the amount of liqueur that the men in this culture put away in one sitting is only equaled by the consumption I saw once in the Ukraine. And over the holidays it is simply astounding, not good or to be admired, but astounding that so many members of a society are deep, deep in the jar for days at a time. I don’t mean to imply that Joe’s place is a den of Debauchery. It’s a good upstanding working man’s drinking spot where the walls are filled with prayers and the regulars come for the talk as much as the drink. But that said I can’t begin to keep up and have to leave fairly quickly if I plan on doing anything at all with the rest of my day. So with that in mind I shared a pour of the scotch out to Joe and wished everyone a Merry Christmas.

Miriam and I went back out on the road a little after 9 that night, walking into New Amsterdam because we had been told that is what everyone did on Christmas Eve. It was dark and quiet enough through Stanleytown that it started to seem like it would be better to bike through the graveyard then walk, but almost as soon as we got into N.A. the people appeared and after a few blocks a road barricade announced the beginning of the serious crowd.

Usually crowds are interesting because you can blend into the masses and watch everyone else around you, equally observed yet invisible. This is hard to do when you are the only white faces in a crowd of tens of thousands of people. I felt fairly obtrusive. Yet welcome and a part of the street celebration. We turned off the main road onto Pitt Street. This normally crowded street with dark tight shops on both sides was now transformed into booths of games of chance and photo ops for Santa Claus. The shops were lit up inside and appeared incredibly cavernous. Two men did an inelegant pickpocket routine around us and the night and crowd felt so merry that it was natural t simply pull them closer, give their arms a little squeeze and mumble in their ears. “alright, alright, nothing there.” We stopped in at Pastor Roy’s and walked with him as he headed out for a last minute shopping excursion for Alice’s present. The back road was quiet and nothing happening yet at the basketball court, but we stopped in and said hello to Roland and the Stand Pipe crew. They understood of course that we couldn’t stay (there was that 6 am service after all) but also weren’t able to completely grasp that I couldn’t leave town for an extended period on Christmas day to go watch a football match across the river. It was a good reminder of the distance I cannot cover to become a true member of the Stand Pipe crew. Their music was audible throughout the entire city until 6 the next morning, but when we finally got home our ears were too full to hear much of anything.

Christmas day itself was notable mostly for the pepper pot. Pastor Roy and Alice gave us our first taste of this traditional dish of meet made with Cassava casreep and other spices. Then again for dinner as Samuel from the market stopped by to drop off a container of his wife’s special mixture. Mostly though we crashed after the morning services. Didn’t even open our gifts until we awoke from a nap. The few minutes we spoke to our family on the phone broke the world open for me and I wished for to be in their embrace.

Boxing day, or Pastors Christmas as I now call it, found us over at our neighbor Judy’s house with Brian and Kristen and Dick, all of the Guyanese Missionaries, for an American Christmas dinner of turkey, cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes. The hours speed by as we talked with freedom of the beauty and trials of the holidays and mission abroad.

Mostly we slept for two days after that. Tonight we went to what we sincerely hope is our last Christmas social, the New Amsterdam Canje Christian Council- an ecumenical gathering of all the local pastors, priests and spouses. It’s hard to believe that I will go to these events now. I get serious Pastor’s wife credit for attending- I think it was like a graduate level seminar. And I even managed to enjoy singing another round of carols. I am writing now late in the night as the extremely loud music from somewhere is keeping me up. I suspect it shall continue till New Years Day- three nights from now. Miriam has three sermons to give in three different services in the span of two days. Including a special Guyanese traditional Old Years Night service that goes until midnight which she gets to lead having never see before- as well as her first ever wedding ceremony the next afternoon on New Years Day. I will dutifully be in attendance, sitting with good posture and eyes riveted to the spot of attention, even if they are slightly glazed over from these many services. As Carmalita, one of Miriam’s parishioners says: Miriam is the strong one- I’m soft “like chicken.”

“You are worried and distracted by many things, few things are necessary.”

Tuesday, December 19, 2006


Before they go on stage.


Well I think I am offically a Pastor's Spouse now as I have directed my first Christmas Play. Angels, Shepards, Wise men Oh my. It was at times hilarious. Merry Christmas


The Bethal Choir singing during the Christmas Program.

I’ve been laid out with a flu for the last week or so, shut up in our house mostly, although I did attempt a trip out on the bicycle because we needed cooking gas. It seemed like a good idea at the time and practical until I realized, while pedaling back from the store with the propane canister balanced on the handle bars, that I was staring rather intently at the spectacle of the ground going by under my feet instead of watching for on-coming traffic. I put myself on bike probation for a few days after that. Spent one of those days comatose in the hammock unaware of the passing of time, the difference between light and dark. One good indicator that you are sick in the tropics is that you actually get cold- and the once welcome breeze feels like a flail against you bare skin- so you put on clothing and you lay in bed freezing looking for a non-existent blanket, while your spouse sweats with the fan on. And you shut windows in an attempt to keep the air still and, perhaps like sickness everywhere, you retreat slowly inside the shell of yourself, wishing you would disappear and yet fearful that you are already gone.

The enclosing canopy of the mosquito netting is a great aide in this isolation. If we bring the laptop into the bed and turn on the electronic phantasmagoria of a movie, the mosquito netting becomes a curtain for the world. The images can actually replace existence entirely for the duration of the film and whole experiences of life can be translated directly into the mind. Done too often though this private cinema paradiso begins to withdraw my very being from Guyana, so that when it is over, and I suddenly find myself hot and sick in the tropics, it can become an embittering excursion not worth the ticket price. If movies are disturbing reading a book under the veil can be outright dangerous given the right combustible mix of materials. For unlike a movie, which provides its own finite set of images to provoke, the written word on paper starts the mind going and allows for those moments of pause, between paragraphs or whilst turning the page, where we look up and cannot remember any longer where the line is drawn. Add a mosquito netting and a strange location and it can be through a glass darkly indeed.

All of which is to say: there is a great difference between being in my house after sickness, in the gentle musk of the now steady mists of the rainy season, staring out into the neighbors yard in Stanleytown verses being shut inside the walls of a house as the mind loses contact with the actual physical reality of the country and replaces the terrain outside the windows with scenes from the miasma of my mind. It’s still a little confusing to me but I’ll try to walk you through it. It has something to do with wealth, the extreme and grossly unequal distribution of resources in this world, and perhaps most directly my own bewilderment at how rich I find myself suddenly to be. But let me start by talking about our recent holiday.

We got another chance to travel further a field in Guyana. Miriam took some vacation time and we joined up with Brian and Kristen, the American couple that live up in Skeldon. Kristen has pretty good connections around the country (due to her time here with Peace Corp) and she made our travel through the country much smoother than it otherwise have been. Eventually we were headed for a city called Bartica, which is located up the Essiquibo river at the conflux of three major rivers- the Essiquibo, the Mazaruni, and the Cuyuni. I had first heard mention of the place when someone I had met said he was leaving for a month to stay with an uncle of his in Bartica. When I asked him where it was, he couldn’t really say for sure- he had never been himself. Increasingly as we spoke to others of our impending trip we learned that very few people from Berbice had been there before. Not that it is very far away from New Amsterdam (maybe 100 miles as the Canje Pheasant flies), but you can’t get there in a straight line. It involves a lot of travel by a variety of vehicles and they all add up. With the price of accommodation, if they don’t know someone to stay with in the area, and the trip is financially out of reach of the majority of Guyanese. That and the ones who can would rather save their money and go to New York or London. Besides the chance that they could find a family member to stay with are greater overseas.

We arraigned to meet up with Kristen and Brian in the capital Georgetown the first night, as they would be arriving there a few days prior to us and it was on our route. They had set up for us all to stay at the Parsonage of Redeemer Lutheran Church the first night before moving on from Georgetown. We packed up the house, locked up, said goodbye to the fowl (who we left in the good hands of the neighbor girl Faith) and without incident took the ferry across the Berbice river and found a car to drive us down the road to town. We have figured out that you can hire a car instead of a mini-bus for a slightly larger fee (about a dollar extra), which in our minds was well worth the price. Four people instead of up to twenty, same speed, but you’re closer to the ground. We were dropped off right outside the church and quickly found the parsonage. This parsonage has been uninhabited for sometime now. There was a nightclub right next to the house and the Pastor apparently couldn’t put up with the house shaking till 3 a.m.. Immediately it stuck me as an odd house: very large rooms with huge distended ceilings which diagonaled from one side to the other. And the place was on lockdown. Bolts on this, padlocks here and there, and grates on everything. Some of the windows, we learned later that night, had been tied shut, latched, and barred. Sheriff Street apparently isn’t the safest place in the country.

We went for a truly lovely walk on the sea wall during the cool afternoon period before sunset, only turning around at a point where part of the interior of the city drains into the sea, not raw sewage exactly, but the smell didn’t match the expanse of the view. We then stopped at an Americanized Shell gas station to pick up a few things to eat. In the states, only when we are on the road do we buy pre-packaged goods from convenient stores. Partly because I dislike most of the food you can get there-in, but also because I don’t believe it is either healthy for me or the world to subsist on a diet of artificial, preserved, packaged “food” shipped from who knows where, produced who knows how and grown in the midst of poison. I feel pretty strongly about it actually. So it was disturbing that I bought a package of Kraft Mac and Cheese (because I was missing my sister I can only assume), a variety of other name brand goods, and a bottle of wine (the first such bottle we had seen in four months). We dropped a quick 4,000 Guyanese dollars, about twenty bucks. Not an insignificant amount of money, but it was more the feeling that I had just participated in the model way to shop that really disturbed me. Reinforced, no doubt, by the four teenage boys who were loitering inside the store, getting their first taste of the Promised Land. The store wasn’t in fact a shell gas station, which you would see while driving in Topeka, but a tricked out model, with extra trimmings (thus the good wine selection), and the sense that more was in store if the people would choose it to be. I was obviously still affected later, while I made the mac and cheese, because I threw the brilliant orange powder straight into the water that was boiling the noodles. I swore a little too loudly upon discovery of my error and then remembered that there was a church meeting going on directly under my feet. Lesson learned: Don’t swear loudly in the parsonage, at least not in someone else’s parsonage. Hey I’m new at this Pastor’s wife stuff, OK.

Later that evening I was laying in bed, under the mosquito netting reading, when I had my first, pre-sickness vision. We were staying in a spare room. Many doors and grates and gates were locked between us and the outside world, not to mention other parts of the house even. It was close – no air circulation except for a little fan, which recycled our exhaled breath back to us. The room had a ceiling which on the far side was 15 ft high or more and yet sloped downwards in such a way that over our heads it was less than 8 ft. On the tall part of the wall there was a closet, which stretched from floor to ceiling. I couldn’t even reach the bottom of the top door and it was hard to imagine what good that closet was to anyone. I read late into the night under the mosquito netting, which also was shaped like a pup tent so that our feet were almost hidden from view. I was reading a book by Octavia Butler entitled “Parable of the Sower” I had read it before, but was trying to re-examine it in the light of Guyana. The book takes place in the not so distant future in California. The state of the union is not so good. People live in locked down, walled off communities eking out a survival while outside their armored walls, murder, rape, and general chaotic lawlessness reign. At one point I put the book down and pulled my eyes away from the page towards the interior of the room. I had forgotten where I was and now seen unexpectedly the closet reinforced the sloping walls so that I felt I was shrinking into a corner of a cell. The mosquito netting made it appear hazily padded- for my protection of course. I didn’t sleep well that evening, even though the night club had been shut down a few months earlier (it could be coincidental that the man who owned it was just extradited to the United States, maybe illegally, because of either his drug activity, or his criminal networks and/or something about him maybe working with the government on a shadow group made up of criminals and businessmen which is believed to be responsible for the extra judicial killings of other criminals, as well as maybe the theft of AK 47’s from a police storage facility.) Life mirrors fiction or fiction mirrors life. It was confusing to me that night how little I knew of life.

The next morning we took a taxi to the central market and then, with Kristen in the front, proceeded to wind our way through the cars and stall and people. It is fascinating to be both very odd, four white people with backpacks on our backs winding our way through a foreign capital market, and yet also have at least on of us be completely knowledgeable about what and where we going. I didn’t really know anything- just weaved. We went through the backside of the market where I had been in the middle of the night and I didn’t recognize the area until we were almost through it. It was all commerce and people moving now, none of the quiet of the previous groupings remained. We got to the wooden ferry dock and walked down stairs to the waters edge where we loaded ourselves onto one of many open wooden boats with an outboard motor lined with benches to accommodate up to 30 people. These are the passenger ferries across the Demerara River. Everything appears so random and haphazard to the tourist that it seems remarkable that there are life jackets for everyone, and even more so that everyone puts one on without command. After waiting for a few minutes for the boat to fill, they backed out and motored us through ocean tankers and fishing trawlers and then quickly across the broad expanse of the river to another ferry dock, which was flanked by the rusting hulks of abandoned freighters and iron docks long neglected. Fisherman reeled their nets in hand over hand, bouncing barefooted on their keels in the turbulence of many wakes. The fare for the trip was 80 guyanese dollars- about 50 cents. Once we disembarked, more people to weave through and then the jostle with conductors for this car or that bus. Here again Kristen just held the reigns and before I had thought about anything we were in the back seat of a car bouncing down the road. Must remember to get myself a guide more often. I hadn’t realized how pleasant it could be not to have to deal with anything or anyone.

I am becoming far to used to these jaunts down the coastal roads of Guyana. They are not as interesting as they were at first; they become simply crowded roads that you must traverse to get from here to there. I imagine that after you’ve done the commute twenty times it’s about as exciting as driving on the interstate in rush hour. Except there are those unpredictable cows and burros to deal with. And every once in awhile you pass something which makes you snap to attention. Like say a forty foot tall India God with a Monkey head. But I’m sure that becomes fairly average quickly, like say the twenty-foot pink elephant with glasses on the side of the highway outside of Madison Wisconsin. Nothing to see here. Mundane travel. Are we there yet?

Parika is the small town at the end of the road where we bought some provisions from the roadside stalls and the dark alleyway groceries. We milled about in the lethargic dusty Sunday afternoon. We lost our nice metal water bottle in this town in classic tourist style. Put it down in a pile of our bags, some of food, others with our gear, and then walked away a half hour later after picking up everything in a hurry, only to realize it was gone twenty paces down the road. And of course nowhere to be found after that. Maybe the kids whom I didn’t give any money to got it when we left it behind, or perhaps the old woman who was sitting nearby- come to think of it she did look kind of shifty. You can start down that path or just realize that it is gone and probably more interesting to who ever picked it up than it was to us. It was a nice water bottle thought, served us well and shall be missed.

In order to get to the next form of transportation you have to sneak around the unmarked side of a larger ferry terminal, squeeze down a narrow alley of vendors and across some sand of the river beach to a half shack where they take your name down and the number of your party and then you can proceed to the waters edge and load into a smaller wooded vessel with an outboard motor which seats 15. Of course I merely bleated and followed. There were suddenly a large number of white people gathered around as we got on the boats. VSO, British volunteers, on holiday like ourselves. There is an odd instinct not to look at other white people when you first see them, almost an overcompensation in an attempt not to acknowledge them as different than anyone else around. Or maybe it is that I don’t want to think that I could possibly look as out of place as they do.

The boat ride takes and hour plus some depending on the weather. The boat is the major form of public transportation up the Essiquibo river to Bartica. There is also a larger ferry, which is cheaper, but it takes five hours or more. Potentially there is a dirt road or track, which follows the river, but its reliability is questionable and it is used seldomly, not to mention that there is no bridge at the end of it and Bartica is on the other bank. The Essiquibo is extremely wide. It holds thousands of little islands. The biggest island is the size of Barbados. Quickly the continuity of docks and wood mills is replaced by the blank wall of the forest. Then individual clearings sporadically pass by. Some with two or three grand cement houses in the India fashion, with great verandas, all amidst the cultivation of banana trees. Some just barley visible through a break in the bush- starting at a plank for a dock and ending in the thatch of a roof or the gray wood planking of a less grandiose dwelling. If the rain clouds come, the boat drives through them and everyone huddles under their benches sheet of vinyl spread out over laps and stretched over ducked heads like a picnic interrupted. Always the green wall re-asserts itself and I admit that I was not fond of the prospect of being dropped off at its face, needing to be swallowed by it to get somewhere else. I rather preferred the openness of the water to the dark green unseen.

We were dropped off a little before Bartica at a private area known as Shanklands. A woman met us at the dock and as we were walking up the hill she and Kristen talked about the arrangements, which had been made. It turned out that the bunkhouse had been filled by a group of Guyana University Students, but they were going to give us one of the houses for the same rate. The buildings were at the top of a hill, and the house was facing out to the river. It felt Palatial: open air bedrooms, bathrooms in each room, a large kitchen area, and a huge porch with both hammocks and pillowed benches. Yes, I think we could manage all right with this change in plans.

We cooked a fine dinner of burritos with tortillas made from scratch and drank that bottle of Chilean red wine as the sunset and the river slowly faded out below us. Two toucans barked at each other from opposite trees in the yard, one on a full ancient mangrove, and the other on the skeleton of some unknown species. It was the most relaxing place in Guyana I have been, so separate from the locks and chaos that it was hard to place both locales within the same country. I slept the sleep I imagine the rulers of Grenada slept when using their summer residences.

In the morning Miriam and I took out a kayak and paddled on the river to a small island where we swam briefly (we had swum the previous day for the first time in this land of many waters, as nowhere else did we had been did anyone seem to think it was clean enough to get into the water). The island was like so many in lakes in Minnesota or Wisconsin, but it still had something of a jungle on it and flip-flops didn’t seem protective enough to explore even that miniature interior. In the water when logs floated by it was hard not to see caiman alligators instead. On the island next to the one we swan on Eddie Grant (Guyana’s famous musician of Electric Avenue and Romancing the Stone fame) was refurbishing a house. Later in the morning we walked the system of paths they have created in their back forest at Shanklands. We ran into the Guyanese University students collecting amphibian specimens. That afternoon we were picked up by our next host and taken to Bartica in his small outboard motorboat. The bill for our night at Shanklands was five dollars a person.

Balkaran is the proprietor of a wonderful guesthouse in Bartica, as well as a guide for the whole region on the river and off. As we where going up the river, a fish zinged when it should have zagged, and suddenly leaped up into Miriam’s arms. “Good luck” Balakaran declared and I would not argue with him. Balkaran used to be a diver for gold up the river. He would be attached to the air line coming down from hundreds of feet above and work on the bottom of the river for twelve-hour shifts. Unsurprisingly he got the bends once. Actually about 40 others got it as well in a short period of time. He was one of 2 who actually lived. Because of his vast knowledge of the region, scientists from around the world use him as a guide. He has an insect named after him. His wife and he are extremely hospitable people and the guesthouse has a wrap around veranda where we sat and took in the expansive views of the river for hours. The nicest room in the place cost us 30 US$.
Bartica itself has actual hills outside the main town. It elevates the neighborhoods somehow, for while the houses are made almost identically to everywhere else in Guyana, there is not a grid and the people seem tucked away in their homes not stacked on top of each other. We walked through the jungle surprised by the occasional agricultural plots with wide views to the lower river. We came across army ants for the first time. Thousands of ants make their own path and eat everything in sight; nothing in the jungle messes with them. Eventually we came out at the river near a little section of beach where someone had once tried to start a resort. Across the river, on an island, is the highest security prison in Guyana. On the side we were on there was a large house, a huge dock and deck, even a covered bar- all abandoned and partly falling into the river. Which is kind of the way I prefer my resorts. But it is always somewhat surprising how many fairly large projects people have abandoned over the years in Guyana. This area of the country was the first place the Dutch originally settled. Until it became not so worth the investment for them and they packed up and moved to other shores. The sea wall they built in the 1600’s is still mostly intact, though it is the sea wall that the British built in the 1700’s that holds back the water. Of course the British left fairly recently, during their 20th century empirical devaluation and downsizing, but they stayed around long enough so that English is the language spoken on this little peninsula on the confluence of three rivers, one of which reaches into Venezuela, another almost to Brazil. It is very odd to be so deep into South America and not speak or even hear any Spanish or Portuguese even. It is a very good indicator just how isolated the country is from it’s land neighbors. Bartica sits at the beginning of the dense interior of this portion of South America. Boat travel is the only real way to get anywhere, besides flying, and the rivers farther up turn into demanding rapids which only the most knowledgeable even attempt to navigate. The police and boarder patrols have boats that are much slower than many other people’s boats. To say that smuggling exists is to insult many of the people who have keep the people of this country alive for the last hundred years. It also is a good reality check on the idea that governments can control the flow of illegal goods, such as drugs.

Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to go farther up river with Balkaran as he was already engaged in a few such trips. The gas for these trips is incredibly expensive and would have doubled the cost of our stay in Bartica. But most likely it would have been worth the money to us. Instead we ate out one night at a little Brazilian restaurant, which some peace corp volunteers had recommended. I’m not sure that it had a name. It was just a small little one-room interior with an outside area under a zinc roof. The chef stood outside at his large vertical grill and he brought swords to us stacked with meat off of which he cut any piece we asked for; beef, chicken, sausage, slices of crackling pork fat. He offered us meat when ever it was ready and we had to fight him off more than once, to which he replied “I’ll be back very quickly” It was simply the best meat I’ve eaten in awhile. After an hour and a half we left, and yet, even with a nice piece of what I would call flan, it cost only 4$ a person.

Time caught up and we retraced our steps by boat, then mini-bus, then boat and car again, till we were back in Georgetown for one last night away. In the coarse of that day we had the openness of two rivers, the hot cramped wait for a bus to fill, and a walk into the center of the Starbroek market- crowding humanity at every elbow and space enough to squeeze barely through. To wash the travel off we were taken to a certain residence in Georgetown where, by flashing our passports at the gate, we could stroll into the pool area and, all alone, swim laps or dive deep under the water exploring the tile floor. Concrete walls blocked out the world and only palm trees and the American flag broke the continuity of the blue sky.

The next morning we visited one of the larger grocery stores in the capital and stocked up on some of the more hard to find goods; certain spices, balsamic vinegar, more wine, and whatever else it was that we hadn’t seen in awhile. We passed on the Americanized version of fresh vegetables: individual onions wrapped in plastic, two tomatoes on a Styrofoam tray wrapped in plastic, a sad eggplant also strapped down to a board with plastic. Then we used plastic to pay for everything we had gathered up- the first place we have been able to pay with a visa card. I’ll admit that we almost bought a pint of Ben and Jerry ice cream for 10 dollars, but we held off (exercising extreme consumption discipline I thought). We loaded up Brian and Kristen’s car and took off towards the ferry dock. Where we proceeded to wait for two hours behind a line of trucks. But we didn’t mind, we needed some time to read the paper, sit quietly in one place before being suddenly back home. As we sat there reading in the car, three different men offered to walk up to the counter and buy our tickets for us hoping only for an extra 50 cents in compensation. Two other men washed the car with a bucket and rags, doing extremely good detail work for 2 dollars.

Upon our arrival home we calculated that we had spent about 50,000 Guyanese dollars or about 250 US$ for five days of travel in an exotic location. It was well worth it to us. A teacher’s salary is around 20,000 Guyanese dollars a month; a Police Officer gets maybe 30,000. Not sure how they would make the calculation work out.

Fairly soon after our return I got sick. “Traveling is dangerous” was the reason I was told. And I dropped out of the world beyond the four walls of my house. I lay in the hammock for hours reading books on the Atlantic Slave trade which so shaped this new world and the old, and some on the various histories of the Caribbean revolutions of the last two hundred years. C L R James is a reason by himself to get sick and read. Throw in a few movies- some depicting Ethiopia and Cambodia while others contrasted those countries with the landscapes of Europe and the social extravagances of America - and by the time I could stand up for a few consecutive minutes without slumping back to bed I had realized that I was extremely, unequivocally rich.

And I just had the flu, some unnamed variety even, who knows what’s gonna happen if I were to get some serious ailment. A friend related their two weeks of Dengue fever, lying in bed sweating with a blinding headache and no fan available. And the stories of Malaria-- I’d rather not even contemplate how that might affect me. Yet people deal with these and worse daily, often without access to any medical care at all. Or even when there is a facility it isn’t any medical care that I would consider worth the money (which isn’t much) or the risk (which is fairly staggering). Because, unlike so many, I can consider my options. There is no question that entering the Guyanese medical world is not a good option. We have been told, by both Guyanese and Americans who have seen the system at work, we should get out of the country if serious illness or injury should occur. Waive your passport at the gate.

Without going into any of the really terrible details, two simple facts should make the point fairly clearly. First, one of the things that the women’s group at Miriam’s parish does every year around Christmas is to visit the New Amsterdam hospital. The main items they bring with them are congregationally tailored bed linens. It’s a great, practical, hands on way to help the hospital. But the point here is that the New Amsterdam hospital, which is the second largest in the country I believe, cannot afford to buy sheets for it’s beds. Secondly, the hospitals throughout the country do not always have adequate supplies of clean water. It is not simply that there are serious questions around sterility of equipment and supplies, but they don’t have water- to drink for instance. Not because there is not a lot of water around, but because they don’t have storage tanks in order to have adequate reserves, because the municipal system only pumps water at certain hours everyday, give or take, etc. etc.

It comes back again and always to infrastructure. Or lack there of. To resources. To the availability to acquire and implement sums of money. The small, yet unapproachable amount of money required to take your children to see the landscape of your own country; if they can’t see it why would they stay in it to help it grow. The huge sums of money that are required to build bridges across huge rivers; without these bridges everyone has to wait for hours to go half a mile. The small sums can be easily passed from one person to another, one family to another. I don’t have the slightest idea how the large sums of money get accumulated and properly used. Well that’s not true, but the details are not very exciting and I would probably just get upset talking about the international banking system. But I would finish with one thought. Debt relief for countries such as Guyana is not nearly enough. It is not enough to say to someone who has no money that they don’t have to worry about paying you the interest on the money you loaned them years ago. They can’t pay you back anyway and they can’t afford to send their children to school. If you have enough to eat, enough clothing to wear, cars to drive and even interesting jobs with which to stimulate your wallet and the minds of your children, then give people who don’t have any of these things the money they need to invest in their future possibilities. Go further and pressure your government to do the same. Not simply money for food now, but money for infrastructure, for building and inspiring the future. Look around a little, in whichever country you are in, there are plenty of people to talk to, share with, and learn from. There is so much of everything you can think of in the world that there has got to be enough to go around. As they say in Guyana “You gotta keep trying”.

Friday, December 01, 2006

We got to spend a night in the house on top of the hill. The night before we stayed at a Parsonage in Georgetown on Sheriff Street, which is where all the clubs are. So one night the whole place was locked up and metal bars on everything and the next wide open windows and porches. A welcome change.


My first game of chess in Guyana.


The public transportation to Bartica. Though technically it isn't public since every individual mode of transportation is privately owned and comes with it's own name (Cool Breeze, To Blessed to be Stressed, etc.). In order to get to Bartica from New Amsterdam without owning a car you get to the N.A. Ferry and take that boat across the Berbice River. Then take a Mini-bus to the Starbroek Market in Georgetown. Board a thirty person open boat which takes you across the Demerara river. Another Mini-Bus drive gets you to Parika. Here you get onto a one of these boats pictured here with fifteen others and travel up the Essiquibo river for over an hour. Both times we split the travel into two days. Even just half the journey takes about four or five hours if you are lucky. Each time you change a mode of transportation you often have to wait until that vehicle fills up. So Mini-buses can take a good half hour to fill. And depending on the day or the time of day the boat fills immediately, slowly, or interminably long. Amazingly enough everyone is given and actually wears a life preserver on the smaller open boats. The tree pictures is a mature Paw-paw which gives large fruit the shape of acorn squash exept larger. They are sort of a cross between a melon and a squash. Pretty tasty. Balkaran gave us one off of his tree.


Sitting on the Veranda looking out over the Essiquibo river at Bartica. Bartica was a beautiful change from the other parts of Guyana that we have seen. Besides being an small Peninsula which sticks out in the confluence of three major rivers, it also has hills which expand the views and forest accessible by a quick walk. The breeze was fantastic at night. We wished we had been able to go up one of the rivers further with Balkaran as he has a wealth of knowledge of the area. But he was booked up and we could only stay so long.


We stayed at the Yellow House owned by Balakaran and his wife in Bartica. There are two sea walls in this picture. The outer was created by the Dutch sometime in the mid 1600's. The inner wall was created by the British in the 1700's. Bartica and the area around the Essiquibo River is one of the first areas where the Dutch set up settlements.


Sitting on the old sea wall in Bartica.


After Balkaran had picked us up in his boat, and while we were in the middle of the river on the way to Bartica, this fish jumped into Miriam's arms. She is actually pointing to the bruise she got from it not her muscles. Balkaran thought it was good luck.