Petroglyphs

If you come to Aishalton, you can’t miss the petroglyph site just outside of the village. The interesting part is getting there in rainy season. It takes a skilled driver to get us out there because of the muddy roads, but once you’ve hit swamp, well…you’re on your own. Be prepared to do some swamp walkin’. Take off your shoes. Don’t think about the dirt, bugs, and parasites in the water. Don’t think about what’s in the mud squishing between your toes. Don’t worry about the sand flies, kabora flies, and mosquitoes. Just walk….because you do it to see some amazing things. By amazing things, I mean rock engravings.

The engravings are fading as the rains cause erosion and the sun weakens the rock surfaces (some have cracked and chipped off!), but locals will come out to trace chalk or paint the engravings so that they’re still visible. Unfortunately, nobody I was with knew what the pictograms meant…but it was still fun guessing what the creators were trying to portray.

Some carvings are in a cave on a mountain…so up we went. We didn’t walk with a cutlass (machete), so we had to dodge bush rope (hanging vines) and thorny branches, and break through bushes. Also, I love my Birkenstock sandals, but they’re no good for climbing up mountains with wet soil and leaves as turf. And walking across a tree trunk bridge with them is also a bit terrifying when the moss is slippery. But we made it to the top (although very slowly) and were rewarded with a beautiful view (of course!).

If mountain climbers weren’t rewarded with a beautiful view at the top, I’d question why they want to climb mountains in the first place…Anyway, I digress.

So…

Where are the puppies?!

Right here :)
These rascals live at Burning Hills in Aishalton. I want to keep them all! But they have a nice home here…so why interfere with a good thing?
The brown one is my fave!

I have never travelled for so long and so far just to go nowhere.

We started off in Shulinab, went across a creek to Shiriri, back across the creek to the main road, went on to Katoonarib, and then Sawariwau to pick up other workshop attendees. Then we went to the river crossing with hopes that we’d be able to drive across the Rupununi River to reach our destination. Unfortunately, it started to rain hard on Sunday morning so the river started to rise and we couldn’t cross with the vehicle. If we attempted, we probably would’ve gotten washed away. And I’m not sure I wanted to drown that day…nor did anyone else.
So we turned around and went back to where we came from. le sigh.

The next day, Monday April 30, 2012, we attempted to go to Aishalton again. This time with a different plan. And it was a success.
Most people took the vehicle, which had to go to Sawariwau and Katoonarib to pick people up, but I really didn’t want to sit in a vehicle all day again, so I hopped on the back of a motorcycle and went to Dadanawa Ranch to wait for everyone else. The road was slippery and muddy which can be dangerous for driving/riding…but I chose a great rider so I was safe (don’t worry, mom!)
Dadanawa is the only place where you can cross the Rupununi when it’s high. They’ve got boats and a pontoon…but if the Rupununi River is TOO high, well you’re just shit out of luck and stuck on whichever side of the river you happen to be on.
So how do you get motorcycles across a river?

Like this:

The point of this whole story is that we successfully made it into Aishalton after crossing the water at Dadanawa Ranch and hiring another vehicle (which so happened to be already on the Aishalton side of the river since we didn’t want to load up a truck on the pontoon).
We stuffed about 8 people, including the driver, into a jeep. One person sat in the trunk/back with all the load, 4 in the back seat, and 3 in front (driver included). It was uncomfortable, needless to say, and we got stuck in a swamp as soon as we set out from the ranch… but we made it!

P.S. Aishalton has internet (whee!) and interneting from a hammock is one of the better things in this world.

So I’m just gonna do a run-through of what’s been going on.

Rupununi Rodeo, Easter Weekend

• I watched many vaqueros (cowboys) get thrown off their broncos and bulls.
• I also watched a GBTI (bank) sponsor representative partake in bareback bronco riding…for someone with no experience I was impressed that he didn’t fall off immediately after the gate opened.
• Beef was definitely a big part of my diet since meat on a stick is THE thing to eat at Rodeo.
• I wore a cowboy hat and pretended I had the right to wear it – like everybody else.

Falls, Work, and more Falls

• I tried out my Vibram toe-shoes (thanks to my parents for sending them to me!) at Kumu Falls. They were well used in the creek, on rock beds, on boulders and fallen trees, and along trails as well.
• I went to Moco Moco to demonstrate some book keeping processes to the managers of the Moco Moco Falls Tourism sector. It was my first one-on-one financial management session :D
• Rewards for travelling to Moco Moco: spending time with a fellow VSO before she leaves to go back to Indonesia and meeting awesome people, one of whom took me to Moco Moco Falls to do more river-walking and boulder-climbing
• I began to admire Amerindian grannies.
  
  When an urban grandmother says they’re going for a walk, they mean for a short trip around the block.
  When an Amerindian granny says they’re going for a walk, they mean a half-hour walk, a climb up some steep stairs and down, climbing rocky banks and boulders, a dip in a river, and back over the rocks for the half-hour walk back. Amerindian grannies would own urban grannies.
  Nuff said.

• the many cockroaches that invaded my bathroom (past-tense since I got my place sprayed!)
• the lizards scurrying around my bathroom. In fact, they eat the cockroaches so I like ‘em
• the spider that stung me as I finished taking a shower
• the scorpions that have decided they like to hang out in my place
• drinking creek water – I did it and am living to write about it
• the fear of one big unexpected/unseen bump in the road that would throw me off the back of a motorcycle

The scariest thing I’ve experienced so far is…riding down a rocky mountain on a small horse.

The horses here are significantly smaller than the ones back home; this doesn’t inspire much confidence. Although I have a lot of experience with horses, nothing prepared me for a bush-trekking-mountain-climbing adventure on horseback.

Going up the mountain was no problem so I was ill prepared for the journey down…which was terrifying. Especially when your horse stumbles and you imagine yourself and the animal tumbling down the mountain side against all those jagged rocks.

But don’t worry. That didn’t happen. I survived (phew!) and will probably be climbing down the mountain on foot next time.

Don’t let my words convince you that the horses aren’t fit for the job though…they are actually quite good at navigating rocky mountain terrain and jumping over dried creek beds. I just felt like a terrible person who only added dead weight onto the horse’s back.

So why the adventure into “the Bush”? So I could put my big red boots to good use of course…oh and to see all this:

Worth the terrifying climb down the mountain, right?

As you may have determined, I have no access to the internet or cellular service so you won’t be able to reach me very often unless I go to Lethem to catch up on emails/calls. There is a village landline from where I can make calls, but it’s not all that reliable. Option 2 is to go to a satellite community called Quiko (Kwy-ko). There is a little mound I can stand on top of to get cellular reception – all I have to do is point my cell phone towards Lethem. It sounds ghetto, but it works! I get enough signal to receive some text and bbm messages and maybe a couple of emails. It’s not sufficient, but it’ll have to do won’t it?

The water only runs intermittently – so far, I find that it runs in the daytime when everyone is at work/school/farm, and later at night (post-dinner). In the mornings, I go to the water tank which they kindly built next to me, to fetch buckets of water that I’ll need for the day.

My bathroom is an outhouse, also known as a long-drop toilet. Cockroaches live in my toilet. They are the size of my thumb! I’ve gotten used to them and I usually make a lot of noise and bang my way into the bathroom with a stick to give them a chance to scurry away. FYI, they’re pretty damn hard to kill. Those suckers are resilient.

My shower is outdoors as well. There is a pipe that resembles a showerhead but as noted above, water only runs some of the time. Don’t worry, I have a big bucket that I fill with water required for bathing and laundry. Bucket showers actually aren’t bad at all. Bathing outside is kind of nice too – I get to watch the sun rise and/or see the stars at night.

I have a gas stove/oven so I’m eating okay. I could be eating well if I wasn’t lazy haha. Fresh fruit and vegetables aren’t all that easy to find if they’re not in season, so I’ve bought a lot of tinned or powdered things (tuna, veggies, soup mix, etc.). My line manager Faye has also given me bananas and tomatoes, which I consumed fairly quickly! She also feeds me sometimes (phew!). Okay, I gotta give some credit to Tessa, who cleaned and set up my home – she has been so awesome. She taught me how to make bread and how to prepare farine so that I could save money and have quick meals when I want. By the way, my bread’s pretty good, if I do say so myself.

Okay, enough about my place – more about the village. Shulinab is full of friendly intelligent people. Everyone says good morning, good afternoon, good night – this is what community is. Everyone’s willing to help each other out and they’re always asking how I am and if I’m alright. They’re genuinely concerned about my transition into the village which I adore them for.

I spend a lot of time with SCPDA (South Central People’s Development Association) staff. They’re bright, enthusiastic, hilarious, and fun to be around. SCPDA is involved with a lot of projects and organizations, so it means I will get to meet tons of people in the region. I am certain I will have to travel to different communities to get to know everyone and establish where I can be of assistance so that’s another thing to look forward to.

So far, I love this experience. I don’t know when/if culture shock and homesickness are going to hit me, but I don’ think it’ll be anytime soon. That being said, I still miss you all and wish you were here. Xo.

P.S. My Scorpion sighting count is 6….that’s probably not a good thing. And I already got stung by a spider and bitten/stung by a zillion ants. ouch.

Georgetown

1. I got distracted by orientation, prepping for the move, and meeting loads of people hence why there was no post before I moved to my village of Shulinab.
2. Mash happened. Mashramani (a national celebration not unlike Caribana for us Torontonians) was on Feb 23, 2012 and a bunch of us partied as is, naturally, required. This means I was in no condition to blog during the days leading up to Mash and the ones following it.

Georgetown to Wowetta

1. Three of us got shipped off…by shipped off I mean we got packed into a pickup truck for a very bumpy ride (the roads are terribly pot-holed) into the Interior of Guyana. All our belongings and two scooters were jammed tight on the truck bed. We left Georgetown at night and made it into Wowetta in the morning where we spent a day and a night.
2. I got to visit the Aranaputta Peanut Factory which is an enterprise led by some brilliant women. They provide peanut butter and cassava bread as part of a school snack program to the surrounding villages. The peanut butter is delicious and au naturel. The purpose of my visit was to gain a bit of knowledge on how the business was run and what successes and challenges occurred. I got a chance to take a look at their books (sales, expenses, etc) to better understand how accounting for businesses operates in the Interior.
3. Kids have never made me laugh harder. Miss Zita from the Wowetta Nursery School asked if Samson (another volunteer placed in Aishalton) and I would like to interact with the kids for the day while we waited to go to Lethem. We obliged and were rewarded with songs (the kids love to sing!) and very entertaining games of football, cat & rat (cat & mouse to us), and a walking race. Yes, a walking race – watching kids hold themselves back from running is pretty hilarious. We also had them spell words for us.

   Me: Do you know how to spell ‘tree’?
   Kids: YES! T-H-R-E-E. “TREE!”
   Miss Zita laughs. I am a bit stunned.
   Miss Zita then tells me that I have to point to a tree if I want them to actually spell the kind of tree that grows from the ground.
   So you see, the kids weren’t wrong; I just wasn’t specific enough. One, two, tree.

Wowetta to Lethem

1. Lethem – It’s a small town. Nothing really special about it, except that it’s the only place where I can probably do internet research, answer emails, and blog to you all. It’s also where you’d go through to go to Brazil – you can cross without a visa/passport to Bonfim which is a short walk’s distance from Lethem.
2. The drive into the Rupununi is amazingly gorgeous. That description doesn’t even do it justice. Imagine rolling savannahs with a perfect view of mountains all around. A lot of people told me how the Rupununi is a beautiful place, but I never imagined it like this. And I get to see this stuff every day!

Here is where I cut this post short – I don’t want to kill you with too much info. The next post will be about my new home.

Because they don’t call an eggplant an eggplant…they don’t even call it an aubergine. They actually call it a “Boulanger” or a “Baigan”. huh.

A Guyanese saying is that if you eat labba and drink black water while visiting Guyana, you are bound to return.

• Labba is a small agouti or South American rodent that can be eaten in a dark stew called “pepper pot”
• “Black water” is the water of muddy streams…it’s self-explanatory, really.

No, I did not drink black water, but I guess I don’t need to since I’ll be living in Guyana for at least a year. I’ll let you know if/when I try labba.

My family and other globalisers

By SWAMINOMICS/SWAMINATHAN S ANKLESARIA AIYAR
Apr 2, 2005
Published in the Times of India

In 1992, I wrote a book titled Towards Globalisation. I did not realise at the time that this was going to be the history of my family.

Last week, we celebrated the wedding of my daughter, Pallavi. A brilliant student, she had won scholarships to Oxford University and the London School of Economics. In London, she met Julio, a young man from Spain. The two decided to take up jobs in Beijing, China. Last week, they came over from Beijing to Delhi to get married. The wedding guests included 70 friends from North America, Europe and China.

That may sound totally global, but arguably my elder son Shekhar has gone further. He too won a scholarship to Oxford University, and then taught for a year at a school in Colombo. Next he went to Toronto, Canada, for higher studies. There he met a German girl, Franziska.

They both got jobs with the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC, USA. This meant that they constantly travelled on IMF business to disparate countries. Shekhar advised and went on missions to Sierra Leone, Seychelles, Kyrgyzstan and Laos. Franziska went to Rwanda, Tajikistan, and Russia. They interrupted these perambulations to get married in late 2003.

My younger son, Rustam, is only 15. Presumably he will study in Australia, marry a Nigerian girl, and settle in Peru.

Readers might think that my family was born and bred in a jet plane. The truth is more prosaic. Our ancestral home is Kargudi, a humble, obscure village in Tanjore district, Tamil Nadu. My earliest memories of it are as a house with no toilets, running water, or pukka road.

When we visited, we disembarked from the train at Tanjore, and then travelled 45 minutes by bullock cart to reach the ancestral home. My father was one of six children, all of whom produced many children (I myself had three siblings). So, two generations later, the size of the Kargudi extended family (including spouses) is over 200. Of these, only three still live in the village. The rest have moved across India and across the whole world, from China to Arabia to Europe to America.

This one Kargudi house has already produced 50 American citizens. So, dismiss the mutterings of those who claim that globalisation means westernisation. It looks more like Aiyarisation, viewed from Kargudi.

What does this imply for our sense of identity? I cannot speak for the whole Kargudi clan, which ranges from rigid Tamil Brahmins to beef-eating, pizza-guzzling, hip-hop dancers. But for me, the Aiyarisation of the world does not mean Aiyar domination. Nor does it mean Aiyar submergence in a global sea. It means acquiring multiple identities, and moving closer to the ideal of a brotherhood of all humanity. I remain quite at home sitting on the floor of the Kargudi house on a mat of reeds, eating from a banana leaf with my hands. I feel just as much at home eating noodles in China, steak in Spain, teriyaki in Japan and cous-cous in Morocco. I am a Kargudi villager, a Tamilian, a Delhi-wallah, an Indian, a Washington Redskins fan, and a citizen of the world, all at the same time and with no sense of tension or contradiction.

When I see the Brihadeeswara Temple in Tanjore, my heart swells and I say to myself “This is mine.” I feel exactly the same way when I see the Church of Bom Jesus in Goa, or the Jewish synagogue in Cochin, or the Siddi Sayed mosque in Ahmedabad: these too are mine. I have strolled so often through the Parks at Oxford University and along the canal in Washington, DC, that they feel part of me. As my family multiplies and intermarries, I hope one day to look at the Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona and Rhine river in Germany and think, “These too are mine.”

We Aiyars have a taken a step toward the vision of John Lennon. Imagine there’s no country, It isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for, And no religion too.

My father’s generation was the first to leave the village, and loosen its regional shackles. My father became a chartered accountant in Lahore, an uncle became a hotel manager in Karachi, and we had an aunt in Rangoon.

My generation loosened the shackles of religion. My elder brother married a Sikh, my younger brother married a Christian, and I married a Parsi. The next generation has gone a step further, marrying across the globe. Globalisation for me is not just the movement of goods and capital, or even of Aiyars. It is a step towards Lennon’s vision of no country.

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope one day you’ll join us. And the world will be one.

Original link: My family and other globalisers (Times of India)

Other things I (and the other volunteers) learned:

Cabs

• Use them at night instead of walking. There are some parts you shouldn’t walk through at night; there are also parts you shouldn’t walk through at all (e.g. South of Hadfield).
• You feel incredibly stupid cabbing the distance of a 5 minute walk – but better safe than sorry I guess (right, ma?)
• Everywhere you go you’ll be offered a taxi ride. Just say no.
• Call a cab vs flagging one down for security reasons. We use Cyril’s.
• A cab ride is about $1.50 CDN (G$300) within the city – flat rate.

Minibuses

• They are abundant at Stabroek Market which is like a main terminal.
• They are cramped little things.
• You can ask to be dropped off anywhere en route. (what bus stops?)
• The cost is $0.30 CDN (G$60) within the city. Don’t pay more.

Tidbits

• St. George’s Anglican Cathedral is one of the tallest wooden churches in the world



• People are super helpful in the markets. In Stabroek, we wanted limes and didn’t know that there were so many different types of limes (duh). The vendor helped us out by indicating which ones were best for rum punch ;)
• People love to suck their teeth (flashback of a school principal telling a kid off: “Don’t suck your teeth – brush them!”)
• Georgetown is small, so it’s very walkable though you might not want to do it that blistering heat.

There are a lot more observations, but I don’t wanna bore you. Maybe you should come visit and observe/experience first-hand instead :)

4 volunteers, including myself, arrived in Georgetown yesterday (Thursday). 1 volunteer arrived on Wednesday. 1 is to arrive tomorrow on Saturday. Everyone so far is great – they got to enjoy drinks at The Hibiscus yesterday (located across the street from Rima Guest House, where we’re staying) while I tried to troubleshoot my damn Goal Zero Sherpa 50 Adventure Kit <-- I'd normally link that to the product, but I'm not happy with Goal Zero right now so let's save the link and the whys for another day and blog post.

Anyway, most of us spent all day unpacking and resting since we got little to no sleep on our flight into GT, but we did manage to make it to the Seawall. The Seawall is where people go to lime (hang out), swim (in brown water…ew) and some even run along it, if not on it. I’m not a runner, so you know I opted to walk on it :)
The Seawall is where it’s cool in Georgetown…I don’t mean hip-cool, I mean breezy-cool, refreshing-cool; that walk was the best part of yesterday.
One thing you gotta watch for is people walking in the opposite direction you’re going…as in you gotta try to avoid bumping into them without losing your balance off the wall. It’s not a big drop to the ground, but it will probably be painful no matter which side of the Seawall you fall off (rocks vs pavement).

And now…off to our first day of In-Country training and back to hating my solar technology purchase (shut up, Chet!)