Adventure travel of a different kind on a smuggler
Two days pass, then on a Thursday as I’m eating dinner a young man comes in and declares himself “captain” (helmsman) of a pirogue going to Venezuela. Negotiations begin. The boat is not quite ready to leave as some repairs are needed, but it should be ready by Sunday, maybe Saturday. This leads to some complex calculations, as my Guyanese money won’t last long enough for his fare and the hotel, yet I don’t want to change another $100 and end up with unexchangeable Guyanese money. Thus, I need to have a clear date for departure so as to plan my finances. We agree that tomorrow I can move out of the hotel and stay with his family as part of the fare of $55 which will just about clean me out of Guyanese money. As he remarked, “Why give money to the hotel?”
The family home proves to be along the riverbank, about twenty minutes walk away. The ground is barely above water level, but is firm, and there are large trees all around. Although the building is a bit shabby, the room I’m shown to is neat, and the mosquito net over the bed is in good condition. This is fortunate, as at dusk the air is filled with a deep whine from the millions of mosquitoes taking to the air in search of their meal. Each mosquito may be small, its sound slight, but it seems that every cubic yard of air has its own occupant so that the whole universe seems filled with their whine.
There is no electricity here, so an early night. Suddenly I hear a rustling flapping low-pitched buzzing noise in the room. As soon as I switch my torch on, it stops, then once the light is out it resumes. A few more tries, then I catch a glimpse: a bat! It has come in through the ventilation gap between the ceiling and the top of the walls, and departs just as easily. Then I notice that the annoying whine of nearby frustrated mosquitoes has ceased! Aha! I approve of bats all of a sudden. Every few hours this procedure is repeated, and I imagine a bat patrol, on circuit of the village, sending a detachment into each residence in turn, having discovered that staked-out humans lure the mosquitoes as if to a buffet.
Saturday turns out not to be a good day for departure, so Sunday is definite. But although I’m ready for the nominated eight a.m. departure, this is not a good day either. I’m instead introduced to the boss, a short stocky man of native Indian descent, who wants the money now in order to ‘Buy petrol for the journey’. Bah. I decline, though offer to pass over half the fare on getting into the boat. This is not pleasing, so we part. The captain tells me that his boss’s nickname is Caiman, “because, in fights, he bites”, and that the arrangement is that the captain takes no pay, but is allowed one passenger of his own per trip, and that’s me. Anyway, we will leave on Monday.
Meanwhile, the captain shows me around the local area. Out in a field he finds a friend, who stays in a shelter made of palm fronds to guard the crop from birds. He says it is a good place for meditation, and he has nothing better to do. This despite having trained as an engineer in Russia (so he speaks Russian), and despite the almost unlimited need for civil engineering works in Guyana. There is, of course, no money for any such projects. The last here were in the colonial times, when dykes and drains were built to convert vast areas of swamp into sugar cane fields, and local gardening.
On Monday, we don’t leave. Instead, I’m invited to visit Caiman’s residence, wherein lurks the owner of the boat, his wife, who is the one relentlessly demanding more money so he has no option but to pass it on to me. She looks rather self-satisfied with her luxuries, lounging on a sofa (“Come into my parlour”, said the spider to the fly) but I’m unimpressed, refusing to cough up more money, still less beforehand. My repeated suggestion of half on getting into the boat remains likewise unimpressive, so the impasse remains.
Other people support me in my resistance: how could I place confidence in a boatman who did not reserve enough money to pay for his next boat trip?
On Tuesday the word is that all is ready, and that we will leave on Wednesday morning, but nothing happens. At nine a.m. I’ve had enough, so the Green Toad and I return to the Purple Heart (the insect nest has been removed), then I go back to the stelling area to take passage on a minibus to Anna Regina, the nearby town that has a bank and where I can change a travellers’ cheque for wads of banknotes. The largest has a value of about twenty cents, so $100 results in a number of ‘bricks’ of a hundred notes
tightly wrapped together. Also at Anna Regina are a number of stalls
that offer second-hand books, so I can stock up afresh. Actually, by their look, they�ve probably met many more than two sets of hands.
Back to Charity. The trailer full of coconuts stranded with a broken
axle in a road bathtub that we passed on the way out is still being unloaded. If there was more traffic along this road, there would be less temptation to grossly overload what few vehicles do make the journey.
So, now I am in the same position as when I first arrived. Uncle Dad (the proprietor of restaurant Amazon Pride) grins as I explain the latest development and suggests that I go back to the stelling and watch the boats zoom about. The annoying thing is that I had already declined some offers of a place, as I had an agreement to stick to.
Just downstream is a large concrete wharf, part completed, backed by a large building, part completed. This is an aid project, paid for by the Canadians, and the money ran out. It was to be a fish-processing factory, and good intentions were thickly strewn. The main point was to provide a market for the locally based fishermen, who could have their catch frozen and conveyed to the protein-hungry folk of distant Georgetown.
It is difficult to recall just how many ways in which this project failed. There is no reliable supply of electricity to keep the freezers running – power can be off for weeks on end here, even months, as much was generated from burning ‘bagasse’ (the residue of squashed sugarcane) that provided the power to process the sugarcane crop, and the sugar cane estates have collapsed. And also, the road out of Charity is so bad, it destroys the heavily-laden vehicles that destroy it, so the catch couldn’t be delivered anyway. As for providing a market for the fishermen, Charity is long miles upriver from the ocean: Anna Regina, almost on the shore, would have been a better choice. And anyway, fishermen here find far fatter profits in smuggling.
It is true that during construction, there was some money injected into the local economy through the wages paid to local employees, but most of this went on booze. A lot of extra money went for various ‘permits’, the main reason for the shortfall. In terms of delivering benefits to the community, the Canadians would have been far more effective if they were to have sent a fellow with a briefcase full of money around to every house, and placed a wad into the hand of every woman with children.
In the meantime, the only functional wharf remains the stelling, large baulks of tropical hardwood slowly ageing in the sun. A few boards have broken so that you have to watch your footing, but it remains useful.
I too am prompted to attempt an aid project after being jolted afresh by the ride to and from Anne Regina. On the road outside the Amazon Pride are a number of potholes, and I’m sick of the noise as vehicles bash into them and out, or swerve around then rev away so I think of filling a few with some dirt. Tropical soils form laterite easily, just exposure to the sun and mud sets rock-hard, so I ask Uncle Dad if he knows where I could borrow a wheelbarrow and shovel. But he asks me not to try. Er, why not? I’ve got nothing better to do. Well, it seems that some time back, the local people made just such an effort on their own behalf while petitioning the minister of transport, but when he visited (by helicopter) he said that “Your road is not so bad” and refused to allocate any funds for proper road maintenance.
Later in the afternoon I have some petty satisfaction. Caiman has managed to fuel his wife’s boat (a forty-four gallon drum is standard) and comes to where I am sitting on the stelling to offer me passage, but his greed for money is notorious and I want nothing to do with him. Shortly he is back in his boat ready to depart, but I am resolved. He departs without passengers, and I wave him off with a handful of the banknotes he won’t be getting, to the delight of all on the stelling.
Read the whole adventure:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4