There is a lot here

Jan 04, 2009 Features / Columnists, My Column

The past week was fun because every Guyanese wanted it so. It was fun for me because I had the good fortune to be healthy; I had food on my table and I had friends and relatives around me.

People came from overseas to enjoy Christmas and they really enjoyed themselves. Perhaps the exchange rate made them enjoy themselves more because some of them really went to town, my sisters, brother-in-law, niece and nephew included.

One of the crowd, my brother-in-law, had not been home in ten years so he really took in the scene. He had been a teacher here and when his wife was posted to New York he simply left. Today he is a Canadian citizen, but still 100 percent Guyanese, so he had to get a taste of true Guyana.

The first night we went out he had the mosquitoes. I enjoyed the scene. There he was, slapping and brushing and I am there sitting because the mosquitoes in Guyana are probably fed up with Guyanese blood so at the first taste of something foreign they descend, ignoring the locals.

But the rum more than compensated because the next morning there he was talking about the good times and forgetting about the mosquitoes. My sisters could not care less. As they put it, they have been working all year and they would make nothing stop them from having a good time.

It was then that I really came to grips that life overseas, while it could be rewarding, could also reduce people to being hermits. It is going to work and going home at the end of the day, perhaps taking some time to sip something alcoholic then bed, only to repeat the cycle the next day.

That was why I could appreciate when they loaded it over me about going on cruises and paying real money to do so. They need the escape.

So it was that they came to Guyana instead of rolling along on some boat going to places far removed from Guyana and eating everything but real Guyanese food.

This time they made up for it. Imagine something like souse that I take for granted was something that they would have died for. I was in my element, boasting that I make souse whenever I wanted.

But there was more and it was this that made me proud of my country. It does not have much to offer by way of entertainment and riches and fancy things but it has a natural asset that most Guyanese have never had the chance to feast their eyes on.

While they lived here they more or less stayed on the coast. They had to leave this country to rediscover it. As we welcomed the New Year from my favourite place, the Police Officers’ Mess, they kept talking about going to Kaieteur Falls. It was this trip that made me feel really proud.

I had gone there a few times, once by traveling overland and climbing from Tukeit. The first glimpse was breath-taking and it still haunts me to this day. The year was 1972 and I was a teacher at Bartica. A group of us pooled $30 each (that was when money had value) and decided to make the trip.

We drove to Kangaruma, made a real good cook and the next day we traveled by boat to Tukeit, pulling the boat over rapids and walking around those that we could not negotiate.

There are hosts of other waterfalls along the way, but none can compare to Kaieteur. I returned there when Nigerian President Yakubu Gowan was taken there and then there were some other visits.

My relatives flew in for a tidy sum but when they returned they all said that it was worth every penny. All they could talk about was this gem. Apparently there are a few additions because they spoke of watching the falls frontally, of going to the bottom, and of course, standing at the top.

It is raining now so the falls is at its majestic best, tumbling all the way down to form a thick mist and carving out a cave at the foot.

The Tourism Ministry has been arranging some cheap flights to this majestic beauty but not too many people seek to capitalize.

A side attraction is the Orinduik Falls that nestles on the border between Guyana and Brazil. At full flow it is not too much fun and people have died there. On one occasion a pilot drowned there.

At low tide it is perhaps nature’s best sauna. I have seen people breaking their necks to go to Dunn’s River Falls in Jamaica. Against Kaieteur that is a bicycle to a jet.

My niece, with her face stretching in an unending grin, boasted that she was going to post tons of photographs on Facebook. And she is going to sell this wonder to people around the world.

I pen this column because often we do not know what we have and quite often, we have to leave to rediscover that Guyana offers many joys.