predencia

A few hours ago Mr Austin, the owner of the renouned Austin’s Book Services said yes to stocking Dare to Love. It was a timely agreement, given that I’m about to do a radio interview in two hours. I can now confidenty say that the books will be available in the largest bookstore in Georgetown. While I’m extremely happy about this, I am happier about the nature of the transaction. Mr Austin is an exteremly charming person with a great sense of humour and a very sharp wit, a shrewd businessman but seems fair.

Haloween isn’t something that’s celebrated massively here in Guyana, although there was an ‘All Black’ event on Saturday night and a few children dressed up tonight. Being in an hotel I guess we are missing whatever is going on out there. There is more evidence on ‘Dancing with the Stars’ that it’s Haloween, than there is in the wider community.

Today was a busy one. Marcelle, the journalist who wrote the Starborke News article, came to collect us this morning and took us to meet Rupert at the Guyana Information Agency (GIA). He weaved a very special brand of magic and I ended up doing a TV news interview. I don’t know if it was used tonight because I didn’t see the news at 6 p.m.

After we left, with radio interviews set up for tomorrow and Wednesday, we went to join Marcelle at the Starbroke office, a more formal affair, where I met the editor Cheryl Springer who welcomed us and discussed the follow up article to the main one published on the 22nd.
Marcelle also introduced me to Denis, a veteran reporter, who is happy to accompany me to Austins, the main bookstore in Georgetown.

I am totally bowled over by the hospitality of everyone I’ve met so far. I look forward to the interview tomorrow and to meeting more people.

The meal fiasco in question was a chicken chow mein I ordered at Buddys on Sherrif St. Both my eating companions also had chow meins, prawn and beef. Their’s were fine, lovely in fact, but mine was just a tangle of noodles and four slabs of roast chicken with orange skin plonked on the top of the noodles with a sprinkling of raw shredded cabbage. I can hardly think of a time I’d experienced a more unappetising looking meal in a restaurant. If it was unapetising to look at it was worse to taste. The chicken was like old flakey cardboard, and the noodles tasted like they’d been tossed in slightly rancid soy sauce.

My friends were generous enough to there meal with me as I found mine totally inedible. Probably only the second time in my life that I’ve ever left a meal untouched. The first was in a Greek restaurant in Kefalonia in 2007, and there the proprietor refused to take my money. Not so here, when the waitress finally came to clear the plates (not ever once coming to ask if the meal was OK) I told her of my dissatisfaction with it. We couldn’t believe it when she asked if I would like a bag to take it home in.

We were thinking of staying to go to the nightclub but decided against it after that experience. Instead we went to the Transport Social Club which played lots of old time music and where men asked women to dance, and waltz them across the floor.

The night had begun with with a walk to the sea wall, then along it, and then to Buddys. About six miles in all. It took us past the wide square, with the Pegasus on one side, and the American Embassy on the other. Down the grove with the mature trees ringed at their base with white paint, looking like overweight school girls in white socks. The heat of the day had subsided, the air was cool, inviting, and filled with the aroma of spinning candy floss as we headed to the wall. There I understood the engineering feat that allows Georgetown to be inhabited.

We had initially been heading for an ‘All Black’ Haloween event in that area , but the walk and the sea air had so opened our appetites, that we had to find a place to eat. The walk from our intended destination to Buddy’s further sharpened our appetites, which is why I felt the disappointment of the meal so acutely. Where the walk built the appetite, the dancing used up the meal pretty quickly. We relied for energy on rum and coke. It was cheaper to buy a bottle for the table, much like I’d buy a bottle of wine on a night out, instead of glasses.

It was a fabulous night, dispite the electricity going down twice during turrential rain. The music was spot on, the guys could dance and the women were friendly. We left at four o’clock when it became obvious the electricy was not going to come back on. But it was probably time.

As the plane flew over Guyana I really got a chance to appreciate the splendor of the rain forests and the vast expanse of land that is this country. It was a muggy day as we disembarked, and rain began to drizzle as the taxi sped and crawled intermittently into Georgetown. There’s always something inherently tantlising about discovering something and somewhere for the first time.

The mix of housing along the route, the haphazard way they seem to have sprung up around each other, the new and shiny, co-existing next to wooden and rusting corrugated structures; some looking like their occupants have long deserted them. Past the splendid banks and other finance buildings, the distillery, the Demerara River on the left tracking our every move. Past the many school signs, sponsored by Moneygram (get them early?). Being schooled by the taxi driver in the precautions necessary not to be ripped off, the steps we needed to take to stay safe, as Guyanese are not honest, will not miss a trick to take advantage of strangers. Finally arriving at the Sleepinn with aprehension mounting, only to find it was the wrong one.

The very considerate driver took us the two miles or so to the next one, where I was unable to find my purse. The purse I knew I had in the taxi only a few minutes previously. After several fruitless searches of my bag, and the taxi, I came to the conclusion that I must have somehow left it at the first hotel. A call from the receptionist quickly confirmed this, so back to the hotel to pick it up. All the time I was thinking that there was a lesson I needed to learn from this.

When we got to the hotel the receptionist pointed to a gentleman sitting on one of the chairs opposite the counter, and said he’d seen it on the chair where I’d left it, and handed it in. They encouraged me to check that all its contents were there. They were. Then I got the message. I had begun the trip full of aprehension and mistrust, here was an opportunity to see things differently, to recognise that Guyana is not full of thieves and charlatans and people just waiting to do you over. There are probably more people like this man here, but no one is writing about them or encouraging you to see the good in the nation. So, my attitude changed. I gave him a hearty handshake and five US dollars and gave two dollars to the receptionists amidst much gushings of gratitude. A small price for the misery and inconvenience a lost purse would have caused.

I finally managed to get in touch with my friend who brought me a copy of the Starbroek News with my article in, showed us around Starbroek Market, and gave us a guided tour of the area while helping us to find somewhere to eat. This was followed by a tour of the Allbouystown area, ending the evening in a lovely bar. We talked about so much, including my interview at Mix 96 fm yesterday, which was a great success.