Guyana and Suriname

From Brasil to Guyana and Suriname, the top of South America and the end of Latin America, the start of Caribbean culture. You're forgiven if you didn't know there were countries called Guyana and Suriname, I only found them on my map a few months ago. Do to the deterorating situation in Venezuela I thought the safest way to make my way to Jamaica would be via Guyana. I crossed into guyana via a speed boat, across a river into a dust bowl of a town, from Brasil into a backwater and my first english speaking country in six months. Guyana is Caribbean in culture, the taxi driver was black with dreads and everyone, including the cops, speaks with a strong accent. The people are about half African decent and about half subcontinet Indian, East-Indian, with a smattering of indigenous Ameri-Indians and Chinese. The dustbowl I entered held little appeal so I organised a jeep ride to the capital, LonelyPlanet billed this as the trip of a lifetime, it nearly took my life. After a three hour delayed start we finally headed off with the wrong driver in a pick up truck with benches in the back and a roll cage to strap bags onto 12 people packed in. I drifted off to sleep on the bumby dirt road at the cabin end of the benches. I wake to screaming and we're swerving all over the road, a second later we've rolled onto our side and are sliding through the savana off the road. Given my proximity to the front and been on the side that we rolled onto i had seven people on top of me, glass was everywhere, I could smell petrol, everyone climbed out. Luckily I only had a few cuts and grazes to goto together with my sun blisters and cuts all over my back from drunkingly falling one level on the Amazon boat trip, I missed the top step. But this old Ameri-Indian woman with Axel Rose style hair pulled back in a bandana, looking about 80 but was only 50, had a terrific slice to her nose leaving it dangling by a bit of skin. This nose made Michael Jackson look good, a little bit more and she wouldn't have had one. Blood was everywhere, primarily on me as she'ld been seated across from me. She pulled out her makeup mirror had a look at her self and said "oh dear, nearly lost me nose". I put some anti-septic on it, some of that medical webbing stuff and stuck it all to her face to hold her nose in place with some sticky tape. Luckily about five minutes later a rasta with dreads flew over the hill on a motorbike, hailed him down and he took her into town. Once the truck owner saw the old lady with her nose held on by sticky tape he came down to pick us up ad took us back to town for a second start. This time we headed off at 9pm at night, I had my doubts about this but the Ameri-Indian woman was going so I might as well. With 13 of us jammed into the jeep we headed off on the dirt road, through savana, through rain forest, though rain, going so fast that one of the women from the accident was shaking and crying til 3am and a river without bridge, just a ferry that ran during the day. Some slept on top of the jeep others inside, massively cramped, I had a foot in my face, the Guyanese woman who wanted to sue had not stopped talking to breathe all day, I asked her as I was trying to go to sleep if she would talk til 6am when we planned to go, she said yes. Still I slept and at 6am we were off for another eight hours til we got to Georgetown. So to the capital which feels like a provincial town, every building is made of wood, rotted, including the churches. I moved to a dump of a hotel that still cost A$15 a night. I was in the bar downstaris making a phone call, middle of the day and heard a tense conversation going on a few meters behind me, I turn around and this guys got a shot gun pointed at three guys sitting down having a beer. They get up, the guy with the gun searches them, they've got hand guns, they leave at gun point and get into a van. I met this German guy who works for a advertising and marketing company, the Guyanan government are paying him to design and launch an advertising campaign in Europe for tourism. He said I should leave the country. Guyana has convinced me of the merits of foreign currency speculation, that my true carer lies in moving vast wads of cash through border posts that have no idea of the correct exchange rate. For the first time ever I made money on a currency exchange. In Guyana on the Brasilian border the exchange rate was wrong by 20%. I'ld figured it would be hard to get visa card cash advances so I get a wad of Brasilian currency and ended up making A$65 profit on the transaction. My few days in Guyana brought me to the swift conclusion that Guyana is without a doubt the most shithouse country on the planet and I should get out. So off to borderig Suriname. Some countries give me a good feeling on entering and others don't. On entering Guyana I thought if I stay here longer than a week I might be dead, on entering Suriname I thought if I stay here more than a week I might never leave. My introduction to Suriname was in Guyanan border town when I went out for dinner. Wandered into a restaurant where a new Suriname chef had taken over, they were doing a television commerical and wanted me to be in it. So with one shoulder badly burnt bright red and the other pasty white, in a tank top and sewn together shorts, unshaven for five days, multiple scars and bandages everywhere I complemented the food to the handicam. I got a free meal, a run of diahorea and an introduction to Suriname via the Indian Surinamese chef and his wife a Christian part Chinese, part Indian part Indonesian Surimese. All over Suriname, Hindu's and Muslims marry, Christians and Muslims and so forth letting the children decide their religion. The population is roughly divded in quaters into Catholic, Prodestant, Muslim and Hindu. And they all get on. There's Javanese food stalls in the street, the smell of Indian curry and Africans bouncing down the street. All speaking some hybrid of Dutch, English and half a dozen other languages, I'm not too sure if I'm in South America, this is no longer Latin America. The central Mosque and Synagogue are next door to each other. I met a man who is mixed Sephardic Jew, German, Javanese Muslim, Ameri-Indian and African, four hundred years of inter-marriage. In Suriname I've met my first South American atheists. Hmmmm the food, food is good and here the food is better. Brasilian food is pretty good, but when you get to choose between Javanese, Indian and African its difficult to look back. Added to it all the Surinamese would have to be the most polite people I've ever met, incredibly friendly, no hostility, no machismo. Paramaribo the capital is waiting for a big fire, every building is wood, the main Catherderal is made of wood, the government buildings, the police station. The entire country has an air of traquility, void of the culture of violence that oozes out of every pore of south america. Its as if this place has had a completely different historical experience. This is not the case, there has been attempted genocide agaist the indigenous people, the barbarity of slavery, military rule, all the hallmarks of the south american experience. A number of people have commented on the Brasilians that come here prospecting for gold, they work hard but they kill each other, the countrty is littered with Brasilian graves. So I am again at a loss as to what makes a society violent. Before I was set on the historical experience, but maybe this is only a small contributing factor. So to my next thoughts on the barbaric legacy of colonialism. Its a mute point whether you can judge the colonial regimes of England, France and Holland on the Guineas but if you do you get the following. The English left Guyana with crippling race problems where the Africans and Indians massacre each other and an edge of violence that is worse than Brasil. In Suriname the Dutch left with a ethnically and religously intermarried population where you can walk the streets of the capital at night. In French Guyana, from what I've heard, historically there have been race problems, they have the European Space Centre and everyone is a snob. So now I fly to Barbados for a few days then onto Jamaica for two weeks, then up to New York for a week, London for a day, am not getting out of the plane in Singapore and will be back in Australia in less than a month.

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