Articles and insights in tales of kwakwani
There was an important lesson for me to take away; if you win, you will find that you have a lot of supporters. If I had been reprimanded by the Minister and ordered to withdraw the letter, then I do not know how many of my supporters would have stood on the same side of the street when they saw me coming. Winners have many fathers and losers none.
In Guyana I never heard the term ‘rain-forest’. People used ‘backdam’ or just ‘bush’. Even ‘forest’ was not used, though we lived in the middle of it. These lands were not truly uncharted because people, mostly Amerindian hunters, and loggers, had long gone along the trails that we drove on.
One of my major learnings was that responsibility, variety, challenge, and satisfaction in a job are largely in your hands if you use your head and can influence people. I was not the only person who saw the way the forest was treated or who saw that timber that was being burnt could become an independent source of income. I was the only one who translated these thoughts into a workable business model.
Living thoughtfully is living responsibly. Leaving a legacy is not about showing others. It is about justifying to yourself that you returned something for what you consumed during your life. What was that return? Was it a good return on the investment that all those who encountered you, made in you?
That was an important lesson for me to take away; if you win, you will find that you have a lot of supporters. If I had been reprimanded by the Minister and ordered to withdraw the letter, then I don’t know how many of my supporters would have stood on the same side of the street when they saw me coming. Winners have many fathers and losers none.
It was a beautiful idyllic existence doing all that I loved to do and doing it all for free. I know that you could spend thousands of dollars to take a trip up one of the major rivers in the Amazonian system, camp on a sandbank by a fireside and spend the night in a hammock gazing at the stars over the river. And I did all of this and more at will, free of cost.
The language of the Guyanese is called Creolese. It is an English Patois and as distinct with its own flavor as French Patois is from French. Creolese has the taste of Cookup, the sound of the Steel band and the aroma of the rain forest. It is a language of the people and reflects their culture. I used to speak it so fluently that new locals I met wouldn’t believe that I was not a native.
The lessons I learnt in Guyana had also to do with handling conflict and negotiating. Learnt not from case studies or in workshops, but in real life with real consequences. That makes for immensely powerful learning, because your career and in some cases, even your life depends on learning fast, right, and well. There is no alternative to sincerity. When you are saying what you genuinely believe, it convinces more than anything else and takes little effort. As they say, what comes from the heart speaks to the heart and has great power. Reputation is worth its weight in gold. And anyone who sacrifices that for short term gain, is well… let’s just say, far from intelligent.
The language of the Guyanese is called Creolese. It is an English Patois and as distinct with its own flavor as French Patois is from French. Creolese has the taste of Cookup, the sound of the Steel Band. and the aroma of the rain forest. It is a language of the people and reflects their culture. I used to speak it so fluently that new locals I met wouldn’t believe that I was not a native.
I’ve lived in many places and with many people; but the way Guyana and the Guyanese entered and stayed in my life is different from all else. To this day, I remember those days as if I were there just last week. It has now been thirty years since I left Kwakwani, but I can still hear the sound of the tug-boat’s horn as the captain alerted us to say he had seen us on the other bank and was coming over to ferry us across the Berbice. Guyana changed my life. When my family left at the end of one year, I had the option of leaving with them or staying on. I stayed on. For another four years. I applied for a job in a mining town two-hundred miles from Georgetown, called Kwakwani which became my home. I got my first house after my father left. My own house where I lived alone. I got my first car, a bright yellow Land Rover pickup truck that had seen a lot of life. And with me, it saw still more.
On these excursions, if you shone your torch over the surface of the river, it would appear as if the water was sprinkled with diamonds. Shining stars, eyes of Caiman, young and old, out fishing, floating on the river with only their eyes and nostrils above the surface. Like alligators and crocodiles, the Caiman is a fish eater but not above taking the unwary to add variety to his diet. They also eat turtles and so their jaws are adapted to taking in broad prey and exerting tremendous biting pressure to crack their shells. You definitely wouldn’t want to go swimming with one especially as a big one can grow to 6 meters (20 feet) in length. Caiman are seen as a nuisance by riverside dwellers as they destroy fishing nets and sometimes attack cattle. I hate to think of little Amerindian children playing in the water all day jumping in and out of it – I expect when one did not show up at home at night is when you know that something had happened. But at night, the shining eyes used to be an amazing sight and I loved to shine our torch and look at it.
Lying in the hammock waiting for sleep to come, I would listen to the sounds of the forest and try to identify each one. The Amazonian rainforest is a rather silent place in the night, unlike Indian forests. The animals are less vocal and the forest itself muffles sound thanks to its density – you don’t hear much except insects. If you are near the river there are not many mosquitos but you do get vampire bats and so you need to cover up unless you wish to be bitten by one of them. That doesn’t turn you into a vampire or anything so romantic, but the wound can bleed for a long time as there is heparin in the bat’s saliva which prevents blood from clotting. In addition, I am sure vampire bites are not exactly what any doctor would order so it is better to stay off their menu.