This park is opposite the seawall
great young woman at front desk of hotel
barber shop in Lethem
Some information to share - money spent in US dollars
Outside of the plane ticket
The hotel in town - $55 a night
hotel in Lethem - $25-30 a night
meals - about %5 or 6
lots of things are $1or 2 - like drinks
bus ride to Lethem - $50
plane ride from Lethem to Georgetown - $100
Information I didn't post. Moco Moco village depends on agriculture, rice farming, cattle, fishing....
First, I found out this morning that Guyana has strict dress codes for government buildings including the library. I was not allowed to enter this morning because my shirt was sleeveless and my pants ended above my knees. Why such a strict dress code?
I didn't find a lot of local clothes. In Lethem I couldn't find a lot of Guyanese things like sugar cakes, etc.
In Lethem many of the shops are Brazilian; a number of Indo-Guyanese have incentives to move there for business.
Today I'm going down to the post office area to find Guyanese crafts.
I met a man in Lethem who works getting gold. He promised to take me into the bush on my next visit to video tape the process and interview the women who work there.
Right now I'm eavesdropping on a conversation between a Canadian man here in Guyana and a visiting Guyanese. The Canadian is explaining his work here in Guyana and it's all about how to develop Guyana's gold and diamond mines, the need of . better electricity to work and compete, the influx of Brazilians across the border taking gold legally and illegally, markets for Guyana - Caribbean, US, Brazil, how to cover costs and manage the terrain, building roads and costs, the time it would take, the dam being built in Guyana, .... The Caribbean imports about 6 billion dollars in food and Guyana has the potential to produce and export lots of food.
Something I thought of and noticed as I traveled to Berbice and back. There are Black and Indian villages, some are separate, some are mixed, all the school children walk in mixed groups. The groups in Guyana seem to get along and a number of people I spoke to gave me the impression that the issues start during the election year and are not among your regular person on the street.
What struck me is that Guyana hasn't really suffered from any natural disasters that seem to be affecting other places. After traveling to Jamaica and a few other places, it seems that physical poverty is relative to space and kind of land. A lot of the villages on the way to Berbice appear poor, but then it seems as if many people can use land to grow food and many people fish. In this way, it reminded me of the Costa Chica area in Mexico. I am not trying at all to lessen the importance and devastation that comes with poverty, but I do believe that a number of things make it different in various places.
Outsiders in those other places, tourism and tourists of a particular kind, seem to turn people into people who practice forms of prostitution (the selling of their wares, their labor, their affection) for money that affects attitudes and behavior. On the whole, Guyana does not seem to suffer from this phenomenon that seems to affect a sense of pride and damage self esteem. No one is caught in jobs where they dress in uniforms and perform duties that are demeaning for those who demand privelege based on money and color. On a large scale they are not dependent on working for people and serving people whose attitudes are racist, classist and dismissive. Of course, Guyana has all kinds of problems, but this one about tourism caught my attention because of my other observations.
It is debatable of course and maybe I am wrong, but I feel that I can literally sense this difference in the children and the people.
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