Furnishing a home

Yesterday I received this message from Amar, the Indian Jesuit who is in charge in Aishalton (and is therefore likely to feature widely, broadly, squarely or otherwise in this journal in future):

“When you are in lethem pls do some of your personal need like cooking vessels, gas stove, buckets mug, jug etc and one big matras since the bed big, is ready.”

So today we went shopping for everything needed to furnish a house that has only doors, walls, one table and a bed big.

First we went to the poison shop to buy Triton, an insecticide which should be effective for three months. The shopkeeper measured our 50ml carefully into a second-hand hipflask-sized vodka bottle, labeled it “POISON” in red, and then explained that it should kill cockroaches, centipedes, wood ants and scorpions as well as mosquitos. Since we have already met all of the above fauna in our spring-summer-autumn-winter-and-spring cleaning in the new house, we found this reassuring. Across the road we bought two Brazilian hammocks from an afro-Guyanese lady whom I love because she calls me ‘babes’. They are soft and wide and look very comfortable. All chairs in Aishalton are solid wood, dead flat and a bit hard on the butt, so our seating will be hammocks.

Next we went to R&R, the hardware store. As befits Lethem the wild west town, this store features machetes, fishing net and a wide range of crowbars as well as batteries and inverters, nuts and bolts and tools. Here we bought screws and fishing net, as B had the brilliant idea of using it for storage in a house innocent of wardrobes and drawers. Third stop was the Savannah Inn, home of quality items. This was the big spend. A hallucinogenic red double bed mattress, two pillows, mosquito netting and two sets of 1950’s soap opera bedding (just sheets and pillowcases of course- remind me what a ‘quilt’ is?!). A mirror, much to the hilarity of the Jesuits: “What’s that for? Do you NEED it? Can’t James tell you if you look OK? Tee hee!” 8 hilariously feeble coat hangers for £3 which seems a bit steep frankly. A huge round tub for B to be Washerman while I’m at school, ‘Destruction’ washing powder (that’s not its name ONLY because they don’t have a Trades Description Act here) and clothes pegs. Everything for the modern kitchen i.e. a two-ring gas hob, one pan with lid, one baby frying pan, a flask, two mugs, a tub of solid soap for dishwashing, 3 scrubby sponges, two buckets with lids to serve as bins, 2 large and 3 small cockroach-proof storage boxes, a mop, a brush and, most important of all, two buckets for the well.

With this embarrassment of riches we will travel to Aishalton on Friday. The entire house furnishing (minus the bed big) cost 65,840 Guyanese dollars; about £220. It would have been much cheaper in Georgetown but transportation is prohibitively expensive, so it probably comes out quits. Before, I was looking forward to arriving; now it’s an excited yearning to create a home after more than three months of living out of rucksacks. It’s gripped! It’s sorted! Let’s offroad!

PS There’s a prize for anyone who spots cinematic references in this entry...!

Heading South in Starlight

As we leave Georgetown, the stars are vivid over the sugarcane fields. Frogs whoop dreamily in the canals that divide one plantation from the next. The Big Bus blows its airhorn every time we overtake a pedestrian, and my cheekbones vibrate in sympathy. We pass the El Dorado distillery, reeking urgently of warm rotting sugar with a hint of urine. We pass tiny Hindu temples in people’s front gardens, a minibus emblazoned with ‘In God do we Trust’ (very wise, with that driving style), rum bars with their bare concrete walls and oddly cosy striplights. At the Linden highway, we leave the Demerara river perpendicularly behind us, and begin the long journey inland.

After two hours we reach Linden, where all buses must check in at the police station. There is a delay whilst a man is charged. The woman constable is shouting that he is a murderer, a wife-beater, it’s attempted murder, ‘dat why he fit for da lock-up’. The male police officer is smiling and joking and trying to write up the initial report. A minibus-load of passengers is being looked over one by one, Creole hurled at speed, a raised eyebrow when the Brazilians fail to understand. Eventually they wave us off, not even checking names. The Big Bus has a bona fide reputation, so the police concentrate their attention, snide remarks or hostility (depending on mood and professionalism) on the minibus passengers. The Brazilians melt away too, looking at the floor, perhaps grateful to the wife-beater for the distraction.

Next comes six and a half hours on heavily rutted unsurfaced road. Five times we stop and the lights go on- two more police checks, three toilet stops (three beers just before the journey wasn’t clever last time guys, and it isn’t this time, but I bet you’ll do the same thing next time too!). It’s a fitful and languid sleep, but somehow pleasant with the breeze swooshing through the bus. At 5:25am we reach the upper Essequibo. B is sleeping like a granddad, mouth hanging open, stertorous breathing (I love that word and have never had a chance to use it before- thanks B!). I get off the bus and spend the next hour and a half watching the sun rise over Kurupukari crossing.

It isn’t a dramatic sunrise. At first I just gaze, dazed with sleep. Then I plug in my ipod, for the first time in weeks. My father is playing Liszt, softly, into my ears (with the caveat ‘-and if it’s not good, I shall wipe it!’). The rainforest looks friendly here, domestic. The trees are not tall, many of the leaves look like familiar deciduous trees of my childhood. The sun falls on the opposite bank with a caress today, not a fanfare of trumpets. I have one of those rare prismatic moments; where every colour, relationship, event of my life, past and future, is concentrated here, now. The vivid, thrilling richness of it appears as a fact, not as a challenge. As if my past and my future want nothing of me, except to be welcome to join me here on the bank of the Essequibo, listening to beauty that was created for me as a gift, and looking at the road that lies ahead, cutting into the welcoming forest on the other side of this river.
xx

Doing Nothing

Anyone who knows me can attest that I am not an intuitive relaxer. If I were a pharmaceutical, I would be in the stimulants rack, not with the sleeping pills. If I were a car, it would be a stressy conscientious Peugeot (B has the temperament of a Bentley, with the odd flash of Maserati). My animal is most decidedly not the sloth. In the drinks fridge I fear the family resemblance is less Copella and more Red Bull.

So take me out of my extremely busy natural habitat and put me down in the middle of the Guyanese savannah with nothing to do, and who can tell what will happen?

We have been in Lethem for a week, and have just found out that we will be here for another one. We have no role here, except as the kind of pesky house-guest who overstays their welcome and spends their time rubbing your nose in how busy they aren't, while you work twice as hard getting on with your life AND looking after them.

B- to the manner born...

Added to this, Lethem is possibly the most undiverting town I have ever seen. I don't mean the nastiest, not at all. That title hangs in the balance, at this point in my life, between two places: Milton Keynes, where I spent many a cold despairing hour waiting for a bus to my tutoring engagements and pondering how any town could be so built for convenience and yet so incredibly, soul-wrenchingly wretched; and ShiJiaZhuang in North Central China (have a go at saying it- "shrr-jeea-djuahng"- slowly through a mouthful of porridge, and see if you still feel so sunny about life), where I thanked God I was not getting off the train as it looked like the confluence of Dickens' bleakest cityscapes with the anti-Communist-propaganda photographs in my school history textbooks. No, Lethem is not nasty. It is simply barren of diversions. There is nothing to go and see- no town hall, no museum full of comic caricatures of Amerindian ways of life, no cinema, theatre, old church (or old building of any description)- and very little to do. The shops are innocent of anything most of you could possibly want, and even to us with our 40kg of life possessions, the fake tupperware is about the most exciting. There are very few restaurants and the waitress service is, judging by recent reports... errrr... bracing. There seems to be one bar. We might try it out if we ever get bored.

So what do I do instead? I look into my heart and I can honestly say that at this moment I am not bored at all. I don't know if that surprises you, but it astounds me. It is thrillingly out of character.

I watch the roosters with their furry breeches racing purposefully round the yard, necks extended racehorse-style. I swing in the hammock, paying heartfelt homage to the extraordinary view of the Kanuku mountains. I invest grateful attention in a cup of Maxwell House ground coffee that I would have rejected scornfully six weeks ago. I read wonderful battered novels with their covers missing that I would have ditto. I notice my foibles instead of hurtling past them or blaming them on busyness. I am gentler with them too, because I have the leisure to contextualise. I get up at 5:45 despite the empty day that yawns and stretches before me like a cat in the sun. I go for bike rides that remind me of China- deep sand skids, rough gravelly stretches, hat-compelling sunshine, pick-up trucks full of standing young men, swaying with the bumps and yelling cheery heckles that get carried off in the dust cloud.

Everything I do is a digression. Look at the meandering, unfocussed oxbow of a blog entry I've just wound round the back passages of your poor bewildered brain! But a digression from what? I've just read Albert Schweitzer's extraordinary "On the Edge of the Primeval Forest", an autobiography of his time in West Africa. He had a grand purpose; to cure the diseases of the Black Man. It's full of wonderful good sense- "in the tropics a man can do at most half of what he can manage in a temperate climate" alongside the ingrained racism of his time- "the negro is a child, and with children nothing can be done without the use of authority. We must, therefore, so arrange the circumstances of daily life that my natural authority can find expression". Schweitzer has been a bit of a hero of mine for a while, but I do not envy him his terrible clarity of purpose.

Who knows what will happen? It will be good to live each day as though life itself is more important than work. As though it is NOT my role to know, to judge, to direct, to manage. Schweitzer's goal was progression. Perhaps mine is digression.

x

Journey to the South

Sunset from the Jesuit garden in St. Ignatius village, Lethem
(B's favourite photo angle- from below- hippopotamus maximus!)

It’s the end of an ordinary day in Lethem. A small Amerindian boy chases someone else's horse out of the church compound. Only the commonest birds are in sight, flying home to roost- parrots, in pairs, squawking like toys, battering away frantically at the air, and lazy vultures cruising, on the lookout, gliding out over the river into Brazil and the sunset.

Our journey down here was (I’m told uncharacteristically) smooth. We had a royal send-off in Georgetown from Dengue Steve, Typhoid Ramesh, Laptop Rayan and BMX Britto. They came to drop us off at 7:30, and sweetly killed time with us till 8:30 when the bus actually arrived. We all managed to board and set off bang on time, 9pm. The Big Bus would have looked pretty shabby to me two months ago. If you drove up to Victoria Coach Station and started loading, there would be a few complaints. No-one could call it fancy. But it was the most comfortable seat I’ve sat on since leaving England, despite being plastic and ripped. We had the front two seats. Luxury!

The journey starts with two hours of surfaced road, and a stop-off at Immigration at Linden. Immigration? Have we crossed a border? Does the bus cross a border at all? Nope. But Immigration check us all out, especially the Brazilian passengers.

We then set off on the main part of the journey- on a good trip such as ours, a mere 12 hours on unsurfaced road. This “highway” is the main artery to more than three-quarters of Guyana. In my one hour Traffic Survey, I counted 6 vehicles. As you can tell, most of the population does not live in this three-quarters! The suspension copes so well that both of us manage a fair bit of sleep between 11pm and 5am.

The last five hours are the best part. At 5:45, the Big Bus is first in the queue for the Rupununi ferry- a 500 horsepower plank raft with a steel undercarriage. First, all the passengers walk on. Then each vehicle reverses down a steep muddy riverbank, and then across two planks on to the raft. The angles involved did not suit the Big Bus at all. Considering the palaver, it’s hard to imagine they go through this every day. The minibuses fit themselves on round the big bus, and the passengers keep hopping out of the way each time another vehicle gets packed on. At about 6a.m, a prime time of day for biting insects, the ferry sets off. It pulls upriver for a while, crossing the current high enough to counter the pull and nudge up to the opposite bank with aplomb. A boy in a vest and ragged denim shorts refills the fuel tanks with a chopped-down bottle as funnel, rinsing out the old diesel into the almost-pristine river.

Looks like it defies physics: Big Bus and Small Ferry

The road now goes through Iwokrama rainforest for an hour. I see my first “don’t litter” sign in Guyana, warnings against hunting and logging, alert-looking wardens. It’s heartening. Sadly every right-minded creature in the forest avoids the Big Bus like the plague. We stop for breakfast at Annai, a small village with a positively posh eco-resort and a red dirt landing strip. In the ladies’ toilets there’s a faded photograph of Prince Charles and a giant otter gazing at one another in mutual benevolent befuddlement (there isn’t one in the gents, B tells me). I get a decent cup of tea for breakfast; I’ve come to terms with the ubiquitous powdered milk.
The rest of the journey is over the savannah. We see egrets and vultures, and a few herons, but nothing more exciting in the way of wildlife. I don’t blame them for scarpering in the face of the Big Bus. The Kanuku mountains march us the last two hours into Lethem, rising abruptly out of the flatlands, cloaked in rich green trees.

One of the many plank bridges over the creeks

Once we reach our destination, it’s one last trip to Immigration, where you’re waved through swiftly unless you’re crossing the border, and we descend one last time from the comfy seat’s embrace to greet the equatorial heat and the dustclouds and the sweat and the cicada scream that I already don’t notice and the manic all-night cockerels and the kaboura flies of Lethem.