Skip to main content

A visitor's Review of the Guyana experience

I am not your average visito to Guyana, but ny 7th trip to Guyana was certainly an eventful one, as it was my first trip where I experienced the full everyday of Guyana – traffic, police, hospital, aggression on the roadways.

While what I am about to write, as a foreigner, might be critical of aspects of the country, let it be known that I love the country with a passion. My wife is from there. I got married there and I am always trying to go there to visit and would live there if the right opportunity came along. I write this as a person from the outside looking in, in hopes that some in the country might use it for some introspection. Yes, I am from the U.S Virgin Islands and I hate to see when someone visits a travel site to put my islands on blast, right or wrong, so I know I might get some clap back for daring to be an outsider having an opinion about the country.

The first thing I want to talk about it the aggression on the road. I am not sure, as yet, if what I see on the road permeates the entire society or it is just that when Guyanese people get behind the wheel, they take on a new identity. OF course, I saw the same think Jamaica during my 20 or so visits to that island and we have a few loose cases in the Virgin Islands, but our islands are so small with less roads so not too much space to really be aggressive, considering our hairpin curves and hillside roads.

So, there I was, on the roads, being all careful because I thought my Guyanese passengers would have freaked out if I was driving like other Guyanese drivers. After all, I am not Guyanese, not do I drive the roads daily so it stands to reason I would not “know” the roads like the local folks (I actually do know the roads). I thought that driving the speed limit, not overtaking everything in sight, not weaving in and out of traffic and not bullying every other driver I came across would have been a comforting thing. Well, to my surprise, occupants in the car were pushing me to drive faster, be more aggressive and be more nasty, meaning, not allowing anyone to squeeze in front of me or even stop to allow others a spot in front of me. Some of these occupants were the same ones lamenting all the accidents, from minor to tragic (like the little 7-year old girl who was cut in half by a truck at Agricola, while I was there), but in the next breath, encouraging me to engage in driving behaviors that lead to such accidents. This was indeed perplexing to me, even more disheartening when the vehicle I was driving was not even mine. As a result, after some back and forth, we had to come to an agreement that I had a wife and child to live for, I did not want to die or end up in a hospital because of some ego driven desire to make a point on the road.

While in Guyana, a situation came up where I had to visit Georgetown hospital. I understand the hospital has some fine doctors, but I have to admit, the hospital’s emergency room and the male ward left a lot to be desired. I am saying this even though on St. Thomas, where I am from, it is not like our hospital looks like an inviting palace either. The beds were rusty (heaven forbid a scrape), had no tables next to them where occupants could sit up and eat and no curtains between beds to provide some semblance of privacy. I certainly can understand employees there might be desensitized, but after speaking to one of my wife’s friends who is a local doctor, he pointed out that while there are certainly knowledgeable nurses and doctors at that hospital, empathy is lacking. From what I saw, the “Caribbean curse” (lack of customer service skills) is also generally absent in this sector also. Doctors and nurses were short and seemingly impatient. Admittedly, their plates were full and someone pointed out to me many seem to think they really don’t get paid enough to deal with the madness to which, on person countered by saying, “they knew this going into the profession, working in Guyana.” What would my experience not be if I was not pulled over by the police. It happened on a day when I had to rush to the Georgetown hospital with one of my wife’s relatives, followed by me falling through a wooden plank across from the hospital, with one foot submerging into a running drain, while holding my son in one hand. It was also later on that day I was stuck in traffic for 3-hours after the 7-year old child was tragically killed in that accident. Yes, it was that kind of a day when “Officer I need to make a few dollars” pulled me over and tried to first catch me on a tint charge, then worked his way down to paperwork to find some technicality. He found one based on my ignorance and escorted me to the station after he realized I was not reaching for my wallet. A few phone calls, one from his boss, ended his venture and that was that, as I walked out of the station.

Now, as in Jamaica and a few other places, this is really disheartening as it is a well-known part of the police culture in such places. It is because it suggests that the local police can be bought for pennies to keep them off your back or to entice them to do dirty deeds. Granted, they may not also be making much money for such a demanding and dangerous job, but again, they knew this before they signed up, I would want to believe.

Traffic was another huge issue. Heading to Diamond from Bourda Market one evening, I expected to encounter traffic, but not as far back as the back road at South Ruimveldt, nearly back to the La Penitence police station. Certainly there much have been an accident, right? Turns out there was one some 2 hours earlier, however, as I edged all the way from South Ruimveldt to the Harbor Bridge, there was not one accident to be found. Seems like the back up was all about traffic to the bridge.

Apart from my first item of criticism here, I keep telling myself that I hope Guyana plays its cards right with this oil discovery and take care of foundations and infrastructure first. Build new and more roads to ease traffic congestion. Build new hospitals and equip them with the latest state of the art equipment as well as refurbish and build new schools with the latest equipment filling the class rooms. Better bigger and better nursing homes and stock the social coffer with enough money to take care of less fortunate citizens. Just the building up of infrastructure would put so many people to work to build and to provide services to the builders and ease the employment crunch AND it would also be a great time to lift the wages to well above a living wage. A happy, well paid, well fed, well taken care of people, makes for a stable, peaceful, low crime society, I would think.

FM
Original Post
×
×
×
×
×
×