There are many things wrong with this sentence in my normal life. The biking to work, for one thing. The going to work in the morning, obviously, for those who know me. And, yes, the cow dung.
These are the things you won't find in the guidebooks about Guyana. Prior to coming here, of course, I had done my share of research, and I knew the basics (for those interested, here are the Guyana entries from Wikipedia, the CIA World Factbook and the UNDP Human Development Index). But nothing of what you read really prepares you for how different things are, how small the country is, how much work needs to be done. Upon arriving at our new home, in the Queenstown area of Georgetown, I walked out into our third-floor balcony to survey the small asphalt streets and wooden houses, and asked, "So, is this place the suburbs or what?" (The answer, as I found out the next day, was "or what." We were right in the heart of things, a few blocks away from Regent Street, the main shopping district.)
Now that I've been in the country for five weeks, I think I've gotten over the initial culture shock, and am somewhat qualified to let you in on a few hard-won bits of random information that will tell you more about Georgetown and Guyana than the guidebooks.
To wit:
1. Georgetown, as a fellow volunteer said today, has "just missed being a very pretty city."
The more polite guidebooks will have words in them like "endearing," "charming," "run-down," and "unkempt"--often in combinations that allow the authors to skirt around saying bad things, i.e., "some people find the slightly run-down capital rather charming" or "there is something endearing about Georgetown's dilapidated colonial architecture and unkempt parks."
You'll know what they mean when you get here. The whitewashed wooden colonial-style buildings are rather elegant in their own way, and there are canals that run the length of the main streets, lined with grass and trees. The entire place could look like one big beautiful park--if only the grass were trimmed, the litter picked up, and the canals not so scummy.
2. There are only three-quarters of a million people in the entire country. There are only about 751,000 Guyanese people in the country, 250,000 of whom live in Georgetown. By comparison, there are 10 million people in the Philippines' National Capital Region. Even our least populous region, the Cordilleras, counts 1,365,412 people in the 2002 census.
Like the Philippines, however, there is a very large Guyanese diaspora population. By some estimates, there are as many Guyanese living abroad as there are living in the country. Furthermore, according to an article in the Economist, as much as 89 percent of college and university graduates are living in developed countries. As one might guess, this has immense implications on the country's economic situation, its culture, and its overall development.
More on that in later and more in-depth posts, perhaps. But, in the meantime, here are the two loveliest Guyanese girls out of our 250,000 neighbors. These are Shania (the little one) and Romaine (the ate) Dover, who live in the house in front of us, and who can always be counted on to stick their heads and say, "Hi, Cookies!" to us whenever we pass. (Cookee has tried to correct this, saying, "Cookee. Only one. One Cookee." The latest development to this is that little Shania now says, "Hi! One Cookies!" But that's okay. Neither of them remember my name.)
3. Georgetown is safer than you'd think. Before I came here, I thought I was going to be mugged every day walking down my own street. While Georgetown certainly has a fairly high crime rate, I find that in many respects, it's safer for foreigners here than in many other countries.
For one thing, the locals like to look after foreigners. You'll get plenty of unsolicited-but-useful advice from total strangers: "Take care stepping out. This isn't a safe neighborhood." "Tuck the flap of your bag in." and even "You need a hat! You'll turn black under this sun!"* Another volunteer tells us this a story of being followed as he walked down the street by a man--who wanted to make sure the volunteer got home safely, as it turns out, as the man was worried that the volunteer was lost.
Sometimes, honestly, I don't know where the guidebooks get their information. I read somewhere, too, that Queenstown was a place to be avoided walking around after dark. So I was alarmed when I found out that that was where I was assigned to live, away from where most of the other volunteers are, at the locally famous VSO volunteer colony on Station St. in Kitty. As it turns out, though, Queenstown is one of the nicest areas in town--quiet (for the most part), with a cricket club and a number of embassies, hotels, and cultural centers can be found.
Also (and this will make our parents happy), the Alberttown Police and Fire Station are on the corner of our house, literally about 30 steps away from our doorsteps.
4. They only got traffic lights last year, and there's only one set of escalators in the country. True story.
Also, ATMs and fast food franchises are relatively new to the country as well. There are three or four KFCs around Georgetown, but happily, the one and only Pizza Hut and the one and only Popeye's are at the end of our street. Imagine that! Popeye's here in Guyana! Attention, family: Puede nang bumisita si Lola, kasi may Popeye's dito. And you thought it was only a New York thing.
5. There are areas where you have to be careful when taking a walk in the early morning or early evening. Because there are alligators. This is what the malaria doctor told the batch of volunteers who came before mine. He didn't mention anything about that to us, but he did tell us to shake out our shoes in the morning before putting them on, because there might be scorpions who've bedded down there for the night.
More information for the interested traveler as I learn more about this new and strange place.
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*not making any of this up!
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