#guyanaisnotarealplace is a hashtag that’s going around of late, used by people sharing stories of corruption, ineptitude and comic situations. Others paint the country as a mythical El Dorado, an “undiscovered” land, a English-speaking blip in South America. For me, Guyana is a place of small, sweet pleasures. The big stuff may get you down, but the small stuff – what’s real – that’s what keeps you smiling.
- Seeing people giving a ride to a loved one, friend or family member on the crossbar of their bicycle.
- A cool Banks on a hot day. (This was not sponsored).
- Moringa, tulsi, senna, eddo, soursop, caraila… are all just regular fruits, vegetables and leaves in your yard, not expensive ‘superfoods’
- Tearing off fluffy, hot roti or puri to eat pumpkin curry or baigan choka.
- A packet of long, crispy plantain chips (with sour).
- Being able to say ‘I ain’t able’ when you just ain’t.
- Those steps to nowhere outside rum shops where people sit and gyaff over “two beer”.
- People bringing fruits from their garden to share.
- Taking your shoes off before you go in someone’s house.
- Quick witticisms and creative cusses. Especially at the big market.
- When your neighbour plays soul classics on a Sunday afternoon and you don’t even need to switch on your own music.
- Horse carts (with light loads).
- “Water!” “Papers” “Broom!” “Bread!” Neighbourhood vendors saving you from ever needing to leave the house.
- Flamboyant trees down a peaceful avenue.
- You always know someone (or someone knows you) wherever you go.
- The Golden Arrow flag.
- “Just now” (the flexibility of time to allow for unexpected crises or happy delays).
- Men out in the early morning, picking seed for their racing bird in its cage.
- The ‘ahh’ feeling when emerging from the forest into the Rupununi savannah along the Linden-Lethem trail.
- Matching ribbons in schoolgirls’ hair.
- Flying homemade kites on the seawall at Easter.
- An audience singing along to Guyana’s unofficial national anthem, ‘Is We Own’.
- Awara rings, coconut shell earrings and other natural jewellery.
- Banana species do not end at ‘Cayenne’.
- The almost constant sound of birdsong – even in the city.
- Hammocks. Fullstop.
- Hilarious hecklers at a show.
- Masquerade dancers and drummers in full flow.
- Taking the no. 44 bus along the seawall, scoring the front seat, and catching a breeze.
- The pronunciation of ‘mattraas’ and ‘vi-hear-cle’.
- Sitting in the co-pilot seat on one of the small planes that serve Guyana’s interior and seeing all the amazing green below.
- Seeing people gleefully or nonchalantly riding on the back of a pickup truck.
- Gun oil soup, complete with cob of corn and double entendres.
- A seawall lime.
- Watching a blanket of stars in the savannahs of the Rupununi.
- That there are 11 living languages.
- Eating seven curry with your fingers from a lotus leaf.
- The sound of a tropical rainstorm on the roof
- The ‘What’s in your pot?’ radio phone-in.
- Welcoming in a new year with cook-up on Old Year’s Night.
- Drinking a coconut water at the roadside, then scraping out the flesh with the coconut shell ‘spoon’.
- The continued existence of petroglyphs (rock carvings) in the interior – and stories of people’s connection to them.
- Going to a family gathering and seeing relatives from every one of Guyana’s ‘six races’ – and many mixtures of the same.
- That something like 85% of the country is covered in forest.
- Drinking cashew wine and fly during Heritage Month (or any time really).
- Sopping up homemade pepperpot at Christmas with soft aniseed bread or cassava bread.
- Hearing poetry, stories or just a gyaff in Guyanese Creole.
- The magical hills of Mabaruma.
- Random wandering livestock.
- Floating in a cool, quiet black-water creek on a hot day.
- “Good morning everybody!” – when someone greets the whole bus/shop/waiting room
- That sweet (then not so sweet) smell as you drive past the DDL factory, which makes El Dorado rum.
- Telling it like it is.
HUMMING OF THE BIRD 