Going on a vacation could be risky

Aug 24, 2014 Features / Columnists, My Column

In life, everyone needs a break from the daily grind, so some people who have the wherewithal pack up and leave for destinations overseas. But the vast majority of Guyanese simply take a break from work, but what they do not do is use the break to travel around the country.
I recall when I was a teacher at Bartica, one of the first things I did was travel to the interior. There was a group of us who was keen on seeing Kaieteur Falls, so we combined our resources to do so. Those were what people refer to as the ‘cheap days’, because we paid ten dollars a person to travel to Mahdia by bus. Then we pooled another twenty dollars for food and other incidentals. I was earning $215 per month back then.
I hasten to say that a large bottle of rum was a mere $4.25 in Bartica, but just over three dollars on the coast.
In those days there were the large trucks that frequented the road between Bartica and Mahdia, and represented the only way to go to a hinterland location. Those trucks had schedules, the same way buses have these days, so one had to plan one’s trip around the buses.
The truck left and our group spent the first night at a government rest house at a location called Kangaruma. We were about 25, men and women; the men also walked with drinks because a night is no good without something to warm the spirit. The chaser was largely the water that flowed along the Potaro having tumbled off the ledge of the mighty Kaieteur.
The fun really began the next day when we all boarded a ballahoo, powered by an outboard motor, up the Potaro River. There were falls along the way, so we had to portage (use the track beaten around the falls and pull the boat to the other side). There was Amatuk, then Waratuk and I learnt that ‘tuk’ meant stone. So Kaietuk was very high stone.
We spent the night at Tukeit where another guest house nestled at the foot of the Kaieteur Falls. We climbed to the top of the falls along a mossy trail, spent a glorious day at the top, then climbed down to repeat those things we did on the upward journey.
That was how I began to see the hinterland, long before I could ever think of boarding an international flight which I first did to attend the University of the West Indies, Mona. But by then I had visited Kurupung, Kamarang, Waramadong, Jawalla, Paruima, Ekereku and so many other locations, not to mention the falls at Orinduik, on a river that separates Guyana from Brazil.
These days people do not even consider such trips. They think of travelling to Trinidad and other Caribbean locations; many travel to North America just to say that they have been to New York, Miami or Canada. Well such travels have so much more to cause regret than heading to Guyana’s hinterland.
Just Friday I read about a college student out of Trinidad going to her room and opening her suitcase to discover ten pounds of cocaine in her luggage. She called the police.
I also remember Russell DeFreitas, a Guyana-born United States citizen who is now doing time in an American jail for plotting to blow up the fuel tanks at the John F Kennedy International airport, finding cocaine in his luggage after landing at that airport.
He told me that he turned back to hand over his find to the authorities, and it was a good thing that he did. An upstanding Guyanese woman on the same flight had been detained. The authorities had found two kilos of cocaine in her luggage.
It was a Delta flight out of Guyana and in those days luggage was not wrapped as they are today on request. Because the stuff handed over by DeFreitas matched those found in the woman’s luggage in the way the drug was packaged, DeFreitas told me that the authorities told him that he had just saved a woman from jail.
I never found out who that woman was, but Delta refunded the cost of her ticket and other expenses. I later learnt that the woman was scared to travel by air to the United States ever after. That incident was a wakeup call for me; I refuse to travel overseas with luggage. Anyone seeing me leave would simply see me pulling a carry-on piece with precious little.
There are others who exhibit the same fear in the face of efforts by some travelling companions to move cocaine to North America. A vacation is supposed to be a pleasant thing, so one needs not be afraid to proceed on the well-earned rest.
I have seen people going on a two-week trip and packing two hefty suitcases. I suspect that they try to carry many of those things that they feel their overseas relatives need—things like saltfish, cassareep, mettai, pone and fried fish.
These things are all available in North America, so I wonder why people go to the trouble. In any case, I fetch nothing, except for the rare occasion when one of my daughter’s friends gave me some things to carry. I was reluctant but I did, and lost my temper when I had to place my hand piece in the cargo hold and when I arrived at JFK, had to subject it to a scan. Airports are places where I hate to hang about and that day I had to. Fortunately I was not on vacation.
I still insist on people spending their time visiting the hinterland. People come from overseas to see those interior locations while we run from them. But then again, while we rush to see New York or Toronto, there are New Yorkers who never crossed the river to see New Jersey and vice versa. They are contented to stay where they live. For sure many of them are not breaking their necks to come to Guyana.

1 thoughts on “Going on a vacation could be risky”

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