Travel Diary - Day Thirty Three

Day Thirty Three – False Start
Thursday 01 Oct 09

GuyExpo was due to begin today with everything opening at 9am. We didn’t have anything particular planned for the morning so I suggested that we go in to see it. So off we went. We took a bus into the Georgetown buspark, and from there we caught another bus out to the showgrounds. We got there to find that there was no way anything was going to be ready before the evening and turned out that the official opening wasn’t until 9pm that night – so much for TV advertising!!! In the end we went and wandered around the AmerIndian village and sat in the shade for a while. While we were there some of the students from the special school right next to the showgrounds came out for their interval break. Several of them came over to us and Harry struck up a conversation with them. I wasn’t particularly interested in talking but Harry is amazing at talking to people and making them feel comfortable. To be honest, if it had been in NZ the school probably would have called the cops about two strange men sitting and talking to the students. But it wasn’t NZ and we had a fascinating conversation. It is interesting trying to explain where NZ is when the people you are talking to have no idea of where the Pacific Ocean is, let alone Australia or any of the Pacific Islands.

The interval break came to an end, and after I had made it quite clear to Harry that I had no intention of walking 7km in the heat we made our return trip, back to the buspark and then to Plaisance. It wasn’t what we had intended but ended up being a rather pleasant way to spend the morning.

I spent a large chunk of the afternoon working on catching up with my writing – it is so easy to get behind! You miss a day and all of a sudden there is a ton of things to remember and write about. Late Thursday afternoon Dwayne came out for a meeting. Harry was due to be at the meeting too and he took me along. It was a bunch of stuff that had nothing to do with me so I sat on the steps outside watching the world go by and amusing myself by texting various people. One of the CWM participants was having a bit of a hard time and so I wound them up a little and got them laughing. The meeting finally came to an end and Dwayne came out and asked if I wanted to go to the expo with him and his wife, Delicia. I said that would be great and Harry decided to come along as well – you can run but you just can’t hide!

We caught a taxi so that we could pick up Delicia who was waiting for us a little further down the road. The closer we got to the showgrounds the more it became obvious that taxi was definitely the way to go. Worth noting that a 15min taxi ride for four people including 2 pickups cost just $G1000 – that’s $NZ7. Not bad!

The tickets to the expo cost $G500 each – we didn’t pay anything in the morning – just as well ‘cause there was nothing to pay for!! We all had to go through a weapons check. It was really funny to see the look on the face of the woman doing my check. I had come straight from using the internet to the meeting and had my computer mouse in my pocket – the ones at the café are rubbish. She asked me to take out everything in my pockets and her expression when I took out a computer mouse was priceless . The expo really is just a cut down Easter Show. They had the President of Guyana doing an opening speech and then they had some Indian dancing before some famous Calypso singer came on. He would have to be the funniest singer I have heard in a long time. His songs captured so much of life in Guyana. The amazing thing to me was that they captured so much of life in NZ too. Go figure.

From there we wandered around the show being offered free samples of this, that, and the next thing, Dwayne gazing longingly at the cellphones on offer and me making fun of most things. You would not believe how many free condoms were on offer – they were everywhere. Guyana has a significant HIV/AIDS problem and this is one of the ways that they are attempting to reduce transmission of the virus. Personally I think they would be better off working on people’s general behaviour but I guess this is better than nothing. Just as an aside I find myself wondering if, to some extent, the moral failure of a large chunk of Guyana society can be traced back to corruption in Government. Just a thought.

Anyway, we finally found our way around and back to where we had started and headed to the gate. From there we picked up a taxi that dropped Dwayne and Delicia at their place (they live relatively close to Sophia Presbyterian Church), before taking Harry and me back home. It was a good night. We had lots of fun and I managed to pretty much stay out of trouble.