Adventures on the Rupununi part 2: Brazil and the Lethem rodeo

Things have been hectic the past few weeks, but I wanted to finish this blog post series before I leave tomorrow. So, without further ado:

Saturday morning, we decided to make an excursion across the border to Bon Fim, Brazil. Lethem is only a stone’s throw away from the Takatu river, which serves as the border between Guyana and Brazil. The small border town of Bon Fim is not far away on the other side. However, we weren’t entirely sure if we could get there. American citizens are supposed to have a very expensive visa in order to enter Brazil (lucky us, huh?), but we heard from multiple sources that to travel to Bon Fim, it wasn’t necessary. After the hotel tried and failed to connect us with their usual guide, we decided to just hail a car on the road to the immigration office on the border and then see about finding our way from there.

The car we picked up drove us over the Takatu and left us at the immigration office on the Brazil side. There we encountered a fairly large crowd, which resulted in a long and unproductive wait. After discussing our options with a British friend who happened to be there with a tour group, and eventually asking an immigration officer, we concluded that the rumors about crossing to Bon Fim were not true, and that we would need the expensive visa after all (which, by the way, is only obtainable in Georgetown, across the country). We started to walk back to Lethem, taking pictures on the Takatu bridge on the way.

At the top of the bridge, a man in a little blue car stopped and inquired, “Are you getting good pictures? You can get better ones in Bon Fim!” After our unsuccessful inquiry in Brazil, his claim seemed a bit dubious. In spite of our doubts, he assured us that we could in fact get to Bon Fim, and that he would happily take us. To further assuage us, he even gave us a lift to the Guyanese immigration office to ask about this ourselves. After a short conversation, the genial officer subtly encouraged us by telling us to “never say never!” if we really wanted to get to Bon Fim, and by assuring us that we wouldn’t have a hard time on the way back into the country.

It was a little jarring to cross a river and suddenly be on the right side of paved roads, and to see stoplights and signs in Portuguese in a town that couldn’t be much larger than Lethem. Even New Amsterdam, the second largest town in Guyana, doesn’t have any stoplights. It was one thing to take a plane ride to Tobago and be in a much more developed country, but quite another to drive 15 minutes and see such a drastic change. Jimmy, our impromtu tour guide, carried us to a little restaurant in Bon Fim near his house, where we had a great meal and got a small peek at Brazilian culture. After lunch, we took a ride around Bon Fim and then headed back to Guyana for the main event, the rodeo.

The Guyanese rodeo was quite different from the rodeos I went to as a child. Here, the Amerindians were the cowboys, and the rodeo was like a small fair. We hung out with other volunteer friends, ate meat on a stick (a very welcome treat; before the rodeo I could count the number of times I ate beef in Guyana on one hand), and enjoyed watching the events. The real event was the music and dancing that started at night fall: lots of dancing and music!

Saturday morning, we headed to Moco Moco falls. This is a small waterfall that was once the site of a hydroelectric plant built by the Chinese government. Unfortunately, it was damaged by a landslide and has been out of commission ever since.  It was a nice place to go for a Sunday morning swim, and it was an enjoyable excursion that allowed us to pass through an amerindian village.

The last part of our trip, the stop in Surama, was much more peaceful than the start (besides the fact that we nearly got stranded there when it was time to leave), so there's not much to tell. Part 3 will be pictures of Lethem, Brazil, and Surama, which I'll post after I return.

On a final note, this will be the final blog post I make before reaching home. The reality of being back in the states has been in the back of my mind for the last week. However, I've been trying to focus on enjoying the remainder of my time here, instead of thinking about the readjustment process and the "reverse culture shock" of being back in America for the first time in 11 months. I'm not quite ready to leave Guyana yet; I wish I could carry my students for the next year, especially my 4th form students who will be writing their CXCs next year. I felt like I was only truly becoming comfortable in New Amsterdam in the last couple of months. 

There's a saying that if you eat Labba (a local animal) and drink the black water, you'll always return to Guyana. Over the year, I felt that experiencing the diverse culture and beauty of this country has been my way of doing that. It has been wonderful to work with my students and seeing all of the wonderful places, especially in the hinterland. While it hasn't been easy, I really appreciated the opportunity to live here and have this experience. I truly hope that I'm able to return here one day soon.

Adventures on the Rupununi part 1: The Road to Lethem

At the beginning of our service in Guyana, my housemate Corin expressed a strong desire to travel down to Lethem to see the rodeo that takes place every Easter. When I read about it in the guidebook, I was intrigued: an American had started a rodeo in Lethem, a dusty frontier town on the border of Brazil. It’s in a region of Guyana called the Rupununi, an area of savannah that contrasts greatly with the dense forest and swamps to the north. In the past, cattle herding was a major livelihood in this region of the country, and evidence of this way of life remains clearly evident even today. The rodeo provided the locals a way to show off their ranching skills. The guidebook made it sound like it was the thing to do over Easter, and that many people from the coast and different areas of the interior traveled to Lethem to participate in or watch it. I was interested in traveling to a different part of Guyana and seeing a different side of life from the one that I experience living on the coast, so I decided to join Corin and another volunteer in our group, Sarah, on the trip to Lethem.

The Easter break adventure began before we even got on the road. Due to communication difficulties and a last minute change of plans for the trip, we couldn’t book a seat on the more comfortable and probably more reliable Intraserve coach bus that runs between Georgetown and Lethem. As a result, our only (affordable) option for getting down to the rodeo was to take a minibus.  After living in Guyana for 8 months, I saw the sudden change in plans more as an opportunity for another true “Guyanese” experience instead of a major inconvenience.

We spent Wednesday night at Sarah’s house outside of Georgetown, and set out to catch the minibus in “little Brazil” the next night. We ended up on a bus with Charlie, our driver, his family, an Amerindian man wedged between my travel mates and me, and a rasta man (who mostly hung outside of the window the entire time because the bus had too many people). In all, there were 15 people and all our luggage on a bus with 12 seats. Overloading is actually a pretty typical practice for a normal minibus that travels shorter distances, especially in Georgetown. However, for such a long trip, it gets really cramped to have extra people in the back rows, and it probably led to some of our problems later on. After taking nearly an hour to load all of the Rasta man’s merchandise on top of our minibus, we finally set off from the capital around 8:30….

Loading up the minibus in Georgetown. Those boxes are the Rasta man's goods that he sold at the Rodeo.

Only to stop at the immigration office in town to fill out some sort of document called “the manifest” and present ourselves as travelers on the Linden-Lethem road (to be honest, I’m still not entirely sure why we had to do this).

We finally were on our way around 9:00 pm Thursday night. Besides a stop in town to pick up some fried chicken and a second random stop on the side of the road to drop a parcel (which is a pretty common occurrence when traveling anywhere in this country), everything went smoothly until we got to Linden, the last major town before the paved road ends. Charlie got lost trying to find the police station to present ourselves for the manifest, so we ended up driving around in circles for a little while trying to find it (mind you, Charlie works as a minibus driver on the Linden-Lethem road, so it would seem that he should know where it was). Eventually, we did manage to leave Linden around 11 pm and really get on our way.

The red dirt road south of Linden is rough. Because of the rain and the number of large “bush trucks” that traverse it, there are many large pot holes and deep tire tracks that make it hard to drive on for any vehicle besides the most sturdy 4x4. Most minibus drivers just speed down it anyway, but the going was slow for our bus. Charlie’s caution paid off: not long after we were overtaken by another minibus, we found it tipped over precariously on the side of the road because it had gotten stuck in a pothole. We of course stopped to watch an army truck and a group of men work together to get it unstuck, and then set on our way again.

We continued on for another hour or so until Charlie’s family decided it was time to stop for a food/ bathroom break in the middle of the jungle. This was my first true taste of the interior. It was a little eerie to be out in the middle of the jungle at night, with nothing around us but the trees and the sound of howler monkeys calling in the distance.

Our first stop in the jungle

The bus eventually made it to the first major truck stop on the way, called Mabura Hill, around 4 in the morning. It isn’t much more than a gas station, a bathroom, and a small restaurant, but arriving at place with an actual toilet and food to eat was a much needed respite from the road. The truck stop was shortly before the next manifest stop (which turned into a 30 minute restroom break in the pouring rain) in the village/outpost called Mabura. Mabura is at a junction in the road to another interior town called Mahdia, where Brazilian and Guyanese miners and loggers living deeper in the jungle converge to cash in their finds and stock up on supplies. Because of its location on the road, it’s pretty much the last true sign of civilization (i.e. the only place after Linden that has cell phone service) until Lethem. I didn’t realize it until the trip back when we passed this point later in the morning, but it seems to be an important area for the men who work in the interior.

We continued down the road at our sluggish pace, primarily because our bus was so overloaded with cargo and the girls in the bus wanted to switch spots often. At one point, Charlie realized that we couldn’t make it up a moderately steep hill. All of the passengers had to get out and walk up to the top, and a passing 4x4 towed our bus up to the top.

Getting some help up the hill. I think that white minibus in the background was the one that got stuck in the pothole the previous night

 

Eventually, we made it to Kurupukari crossing at the entrance of Iwokrama late Friday morning. Here, vehicles must be loaded onto a pontoon boat and carried across the Essequibo river. Because of the rodeo and the general increase in traffic along this road, we had to wait in line to cross. It didn’t seem like the wait would be terribly long…until two medium-sized buses full of tourists pulled up behind us. At first, this didn’t seem like it would cause a major delay. We happened to know several people on these buses, so their sudden appearance behind us was a nice surprise. We hung out on the bank of the Essequibo river, talking and getting caught in a sudden rainstorm.

The bank of the Essequibo river at the Kurupukari crossing

Pontoon boat that carries vehicles across the river

Another view of the river and Kurupukari village in the background

Drenched after the storm at the crossing

Loading the minibus onto the pontoon boat

It seemed like it would finally be time for our bus to load up, but then the two tourist buses behind us cut the line and got loaded onto the pontoon boat ahead of us. In all, we ended up waiting at the crossing for 2 hours, as the boat made a second round trip across while we watched from the bank. We did eventually make it onto the pontoon and across the river, and we were able to enter the Iwokrama forest in the early afternoon.

Iwokrama is a large area of protected rainforest in the center of Guyana. Known as the “green heart of Guyana”, Iwokrama is a project in ecotourism, rainforest preservation, research, and sustainable logging. We had actually hoped to visit and go on some of the tourist activities offered here as part of our Easter trip, but due to a lack of communication and the expense of staying in the lodges, we weren’t able to. Even so, I got an idea of the magnitude of the rainforest as we passed through. The enormous canopy trees stretched up towards the sky higher than any trees I’ve ever seen, and it was clear that the forest was dense just beyond the road.

The view of the forest from the minibus

Probably because of all of the activities that go on here, the road is relatively well maintained. Our progress through the forest was speedy. That is, until we encountered a backup of traffic in front of a bridge not far from the southern edge of the forest. A bush truck trying to cross a wooden bridge over a gorge broke through the wood and got stuck. There was space for smaller vehicles to pass it on the side, but just as we pulled up, another vehicle that was trying to pass had some difficulties and also got stuck. We were reunited with the tour buses that cut us in line at Kurupukari and walked around the bridge to view the damage and the progress of traffic. Eventually, the traffic was able to slowly start to get through again. After watching our minibus cross with bated breath, we finally got past the accident and were soon on our way. Unfortunately, the other two tourist buses were too large to pass, so they were stuck in the forest for several hours until the bush truck was moved.

It doesn't make a lot of sense that this truck was driving on the edge instead of the wooden planks in the center. Maybe it was and it slipped to the side?

Huge crowd of people watching the traffic jam on the bridge.

Around 5 pm on Friday evening, we exited the forest and entered the savannah of the Rupununi. The change was drastic; one minute we clearly still in forest (near the end it thinned out and the trees were smaller), and the next we were in grassy plains. It felt like we had suddenly crossed into another country entirely. This was the first time I saw Amerindian villages. The thatch roof buildings were dispersed throughout the savannah along the road.

We reached the village Annai and the next truck stop, called Rockview, shortly after entering the savannah. This stop was largely uneventful, until we tried to leave. The sun had set by this time (it was around 6:30 pm; the sun rises and sets quite early year round because Guyana is so close to the equator), and there wasn’t much light. Just as we exited the gate of Rockview, we hit a large rock. At this point, I was afraid that we would be spending the night there, because it sounded pretty bad. Charlie decided that the damage wasn’t enough to stop us, thankfully, but our progress after this point was really slow. The combination of the darkness, the poor condition of the road, and our bus issues meant that this last leg of the trip took 4 ½ hours instead of 2. To be honest, despite all the setbacks earlier in the trip and the fact that I managed to pick the worst seat on the bus (because of the position of the seats, I had to get out every time the people in the row behind me wanted to get out), I honestly was fine until this last leg. I think that the cramped seating on the bus, the lack of sleep from our frequent stops, and traveling over the rough road finally caught up to me. By the time we finally reached our hotel in Lethem at 11pm Friday night, I was extremely happy to lay down on an air mattress in a tent. We skipped the first event of the rodeo, a pageant that was taking place at our hotel, but after our arduous journey the rest was much needed. Total travel time: 26 hours.

And to think, all this happened and our trip had barely started! Coming up next: Adventures on the Rupununi part 2: Brazil and the Lethem rodeo.

Coming soon: Adventures on the Rupununi parts 1-3

Hey everyone,

The lack of blog posts for the last couple of months is not due to lack of things to write about, but because I never got around to writing about them and getting the pictures. However, my Easter break adventure to the southern part of Guyana is too compelling to not write about. I figured that if I officially made a promise that more stories are coming, I would feel obligated to write about the trip sooner rather than later. I'm a bit busier now because I'm applying to medical school, but I do promise to post in the coming weeks!

Random life skills learned in Guyana

 Hello, and Happy New Year everyone. Yes, I'm still alive down here. I took a hiatus over December and intended to blog when I got back from vacation, but I got busy and suddenly January is almost over. There are quite a few holidays coming up in February and March, so I'll try to be better about writing. 

With every new experience comes a new opportunity to learn and grow as a person. Oftentimes, a new experience gives us a chance to learn things that we didn't expect. My roommates and I had a conversation about this one evening, and it led me to further reflect on the things that I've mastered here that I couldn't have learned had I stayed at home. So, without further ado, a list of the random life skills I've gained:

1. How to neatly wrap books in paper and sheets of plastic. Now when I go to medical school, I can keep my textbooks looking like new by wrapping them in gaudy paper.

2. How to eat and drink out of a plastic bag without utensils!

3. How to ride a bike with a flat tire in a billowy skirt around cars, potholes, children, cows, dogs, flying insects, wooden carts pulled by donkeys, large delivery trucks that shouldn't be on the road, etc. Next i'll have to learn how to talk on the phone and tow someone on the back of my bike at the same time.

4. The best way to kill rats (rat poison mixed with plain white rice)

5. How to outsmart ants (because quite frankly, trying to kill them all the time is futile)

6. How to catch a toad that meanders into the house

7. How to avoid the little frogs living in my shower and bathroom that like to jump around unpredictably

8. How to kill cockroaches and flying beetles without bug spray (I'm not sure I'll ever be able to kill spiders, but at least they're pretty rare)

9. The necessity to using a ruler to draw any line, write straight on a piece of paper, or tear a page out of a notebook so that the whole thing doesn't fall apart.

10. How to improvise an activity on the spot when the planned lesson turns out to be too short.

11. How to make pizza without an oven (Next step: making an oven on a propane stove)

12. How to strike a match successfully without breaking it or going through half the box

13. How to eat just about anything with a plastic spoon or spork (i'm still working on how to eat noodles)

14.How to survive without a refrigerator.

15. How to understand people mumbling in thick Guyanese accents (well, sort of)

16. How to enjoy a rousing 80's ballad, or any other type of music: at a volume that the whole village can hear, of course!

17. How to catch a car on the road, and also how not get ripped off by the car driver when I reach my destination

18. How to dry my clothes during the rainy season in less than three days

19. How to write legibly and draw elaborate diagrams on a not so good chalkboard

20. How to appreciate the simple joys in life, and how to not take a luxury for granted

Happy Thanksgiving!

While you all are at home cooking, watching football, planning your black Friday shopping and sleeping off a turkey induced coma, I’ll be trying to finish up the last of my class material for the term, preparing for end of term exams, and grading a mountain of papers. However, I wanted to take a moment to celebrate the holiday in spirit and think about the things I’m grateful for.

1.       Running water

As you all probably remember, the first couple of weeks I was here the water pipe that runs to our house was broken. As a result, we had to connect the pipe manually every time we wanted to fill up our reservoir tank…and on a few occasions we had to go find a spigot at the school so that we had water to bathe and wash dishes/ clothes. Needless to say, it wasn’t too great to arrive to New Amsterdam for the first time after a long afternoon in a hot minibus to find that there was no water at the house. However, our water was fixed a couple of weeks after we got here, so I’m thankful for no bucket showers or toting water to the house to wash my clothing.

2.       A working fridge

The lack of a fridge was almost as frustrating as the lack of water, because it meant that a lot of food was wasted. We had to make trips to the market every couple of days because our vegetables went bad, and we had to eat everything we cooked immediately. The problem, as it turns out, was not the fridge itself but the electrical wiring in our kitchen. The electrician finally solved the problem a couple of weeks ago, so now we can enjoy ice, dairy products, and leftovers for our lunches.

3.       A french press

Coffee is one of those little things that I didn’t realize I would miss until I got here. A Peace Corps volunteer shared some of her coffee with us shortly after we arrived. However, we’re too poor/ cheap to buy a real coffeemaker, which would probably be imported from the U.S. and cost double the regular price. We ended up making coffee with a funnel, some coffee filters (an upgrade over the paper towels we started out with), and gravity. Mom mailed me the french press that my friend Amy gave me, and ever since then my housemates and I have been extremely grateful that it doesn’t take 20 minutes to make one cup of coffee.

4.       Miss Ingrid and the kids that live with her

Miss Ingrid is one of the security guards for Multi, and by extension, us, and she’s been really helpful ever since we got here. The children who live with her, Stephan, Julius, Tenesha, and a couple of her grandchildren, have also been great. From helping us to identify and cut up strange vegetables to showing us where to get our bike tires filled, they’ve frequently rescued us. In exchange, we help them with their homework from time to time, share our American treats, and lend movies to them. I’m grateful that we have friendly neighbors to help us and watch out for us.

5.       My housemates, Corin and Colleen

I’m grateful that I have other people here to talk to who are dealing with the same issues we face day to day, and who can relate to the unusual or ridiculous things we’ve experienced so far. While I could try to describe them here, there are some things you just have to see or experience in order to believe. The Peace Corps and VSO volunteers all have their own places, which has its own perks, but I’m glad that I’m not alone at school or when I get home at the end of the day.

6.       Rainy season

Rainy season seems to have officially arrived here in Berbice. While this means that my clothes get rained on when I hang them up to dry, and I occasionally end up biking home in the rain (which is probably my least favorite thing besides walking to my dorm at midnight in sub zero temperatures), it’s wonderful to not arrive to school drenched in sweat or continue to sweat all day in the classrooms. Plus, sometimes I’m actually too cold at night to turn on my fan while I sleep!

7.       Christmas in Tobago

My white Christmas this year will be in the form of white sand beaches! I’m grateful that I’ll be able to see my mom next month and have a vacation on a real beach (I realize that this comment is coming from a Floridian, but the local beach is very muddy and inadequate). In addition, I’m thankful that this year I won’t have to bundle up in order to go outside; I can honestly say that I don’t miss the snow or the cold.

President Jagdeo and Continuing Promise 2010

A few weeks ago, while my housemates and I were in Georgetown for wifi, air conditioning, and coffee, we ran into an embassy worker who mentioned an American ship that was coming to bring school supplies to our region. At first this was only a mildly interesting prospect, especially since we found out that the supplies were already allocated to other schools. Then the helicopters arrived, and American soldiers descended upon New Amsterdam for their weeklong humanitarian mission in the region, called Continuing Promise 2010.

The Iwojima was on a mission to take school and medical supplies to various countries around the Caribbean. Somehow, region 6 of Guyana was put on the list of stops, so there were soldiers here to renovate a school, run medical and veterinary clinics, and repair the incinerator at the New Amsterdam Hospital. For the first couple of days, my housemates and I started to play “spot the soldier” and joked that we should find people to bring us American fast food from the ship.

If the sightings of many more foreigners wasn’t enough to alert us of their arrival, the frequent helicopters sightings certainly was. A field just across the road from BHS and the hospital was turned into a temporary landing pad for the next week. The first day this happened, my whole school was captivated by the descent of three choppers that landed shortly before the first bell (after the first day, the frequent sound of helicopters flying overhead became an irritating distraction during class). Then, the deputy headmistress of my school, Ms. Tracy, suddenly announced that I along with two other teachers needed to take some students to the hospital. I had absolutely no idea why. All I knew was that I had to hurry to my morning classes and give them instructions on what to do in my absence, because their midterms had just been pushed back a week.

Eventually the group of teachers and students from my school made our way down the road to the hospital, to be greeted by a plethora of members of the navy, airforce, and marines, many of whom were part of a large band. In addition, there was a steel drum band (the first time I’d seen steel drums in this country since I’ve been here) and a tent and chairs that had been set up in the courtyard. I was still in the dark about what was going on until I received a program: it turned out that everything was set up for a ceremony to commemorate “Continuing Promise 2010”, and that the president of Guyana, Bharrat Jagdeo, was to be the keynote speaker. At this point I got excited; I had certainly never expected to see the president in person. I also was able to speak to one of the members of the airforce, who told me more about the mission and mentioned that volunteers had helped them out at their previous stops, and that if I wanted to help I should visit the medical site. The ceremony commenced soon afterwards. President Jagdeo spoke about the emigration of Guyana’s citizens to the US due to the policies of the Guyanese government in the 70s-90s, and thanked the organizers of the mission for the work they were doing in the region. All in all, it was a pretty neat thing to witness.

Much to Ms. Tracy’s disappointment, I didn’t get to meet President Jagdeo, as he was spirited away for a tour of the Iwojima shortly after the conclusion of the ceremony. The students did get to meet a couple of soldiers and take pictures. Plus, on Saturday I got to shadow the military doctors at the clinic they had set up in Rose hall, a town a few miles away. The prospect of going on humanitarian missions like CP 2010, in addition to the other benefits of joining the military, has made me consider military medicine more seriously. While we never got any McDonalds in the end, and my iPhone screen bit the dust due to getting wet while I was at the ceremony (it was raining sporadically the whole morning and my bag got wet), the visit of the soldiers was an interesting event.

The steel drum band

Ms. Bhajan, the regional education officer for region 6 (essentially the top official for education in the region)

President Jagdeo

The group of students from Berbice High who attended the ceremony

Helicopter flying away at the end of the ceremony

Updates Coming Soon

I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm still alive down here. There's plenty I want to blog about, including our school sports day, the american humanitarian mission in my region and seeing the president of guyana in person, and most recently Diwali, but it's been tough with midterm exams and an increasing number of blackouts. An update is coming soon!