The road ends at a fence, but it is a public path that goes through to the back road. Mostly the gate is to keep the grazing animals away from the growing vegetables. The electrical line ends right here. The electric company comes around every once in awhile in company of the police and they arrest anyone who has set up a tenous wire to the last pole. But, if anyone goes into the office to ask about offical lines being extended they are told that there is no plan to extend electric lines. So everyone hooks up to the poles that are there with dangerous fire/electicution hazzard wires and relies on the word of the street being spread to them before the police show up at the door. The white pipe on the right is typical of the place where these children get their daily water. Usually it is a broken pipe, which sticks out from the stagnant water of the trenchs. The water comes out of the pipe usually once a day for a few hours, but sometimes nothing comes out for weeks and then everyone goes searching.

The last Stand Pipe. There is no water connection beyond this pipe, no water connection anywhere on the back road where hundreds of people live.

Hanging out under the eves while the rain comes down.

Drums. Some to keep the Culture, others to carry and store water for drinking and washing up.

Playing drums, singing and dancing. The start of an afternoon practice session for the youth of the neighborhood.

Deep in the middle of a drumming practice session for the young upcoming drummers of the neighborhood. They are going to be given a spot in a show coming up at the New Amsterdam town hall. They are learning to play together well, but sometimes the shaker plays too fast or the bassist drifts a little, then Braks puts a stop to it and tells them they have to concentrate. "Now, play the music proper." he instructs and they are off again chasing the beat.

The neighbor's burro and it's little one.

"The ball rolls down the road and you just have to keep walking behind it."
-Unknown Rasta

The road makes a great football pitch, coconut husks make good goal markers. The cheerleaders in the Green Bay Packers outfit carry the buckets, which they use to get the water that they need for daily life. The pipe is only about two hundred yards away, which is close compared to many places on the road and in the world.

When the rains come down the back road becomes a mire, and it impossible to walk in anything other than your bare feet or muck boots. In this picture the road was under two feet of water, and it effectively cuts the women and children who live in these houses off from the rest of the world of New Amsterdam. Our own house, with it's zinc roof, becomes a lonely enclosed place when the rain beats down its drum. The sounds from outside cease. It feels good to be alone and enclosed. But we have electric lights and water running from pipes inside the house, not to mention windows to shut out the sometimes sideways rain.

Children fishing in the trench on a sunny dry day. They get very excited whenever they pull anything out, be it fish on the line or tadpole in the bucket. Keep on biking down the road for about half a mile and these scenes are repeated again and again, adding to the real sense of life that happens here on the cow dam.

Another side. Where people leave the area, to go abroad or as they say in Guyana 'Outside', or simply to some other part of town. Then the houses stand unused and slowly rot or are eaten by wood ants. Or someone moves in and the building continues. In the mean time the children have more rooms to explore and play in.

As the road continues and the sun starts to set, the houses continue to be built in the reclaimed bush in the ever expanding unregulated side of New Amsterdam. On day not too long from now, these houses will be next to more houses and more children will live their lives in this beautiful yet burden filled Cow Dam.

I have decided to try a pictorial essay on the part of New Amsterdam commonly called Cow Dam. It is my intention to show some photos of what is a trip in my every day life on the bicycle to the backside of New Amsterdam. I hope you see many things as I do every time I go for a visit.

This is a road that leads back to Cow Dam. It is made of a broken rock conglomerate, which seems like a terrible idea as I bounce down its irregular surface, worse even than the cobblestone streets near another place I have called home in Philadelphia. But when the heavy rains come and every street floods, this material stays roughly intact. In other words you don't have to plunge barefoot through calf high mud, which is the case on any road that is smooth and dirt. This road was dirt just two years ago. Everyone says it is a great improvement. Like every road in New Amsterdam it is traveled by people on foot, on bike, and the occasional car, as well as inhabited by donkeys, goats and cows.