A few things I have observed over the last week. The background noise level is quite amazing. I’ll try to figure out a way to let you hear some of that. All I can say is that this is a very noisy place! For example at the moment I am sitting listening to an enormous amount of squeaking – imagine a wheel that desperately needs oil just turning slowly and squeaking. Then multiply that sound by 10 or twenty wheels. As far as I can work out it is the sound of airconditioning units. Most times I can block it out, but it can become pretty annoying after a while.
And then there is the litter. There is a garbage collectors strike on at the moment – probably over pay, it seems to be a common issue here. So that is part of the reason for the rubbish. But even if it weren’t for that there is a tremendous amount of rubbish just sitting around. The place is dirty and rubbish seems to just pile up. What is worse is all the trenches or drains, nearly all of which are wide, open ditches. Not only is the water a nasty shade of green and clearly infested with all manner of bugs, but the quantity of rubbish floating in the water in various stages of decay is just disgusting. It’s kind of sad really because just getting rid of the litter would make the whole place so much nicer to be.
On another note, I mentioned the motorcyclists in BA. Maybe it’s a South American thing but helmets seem to almost be an optional extra. Here most people seem to have a helmet and for the most part wear them but there seems to be little inclination to do up the chin strap – in NZ as far as the law is concerned if the strap isn’t done up you’re not wearing your helmet. And it is common to see the rider of a bike wearing a helmet while carrying a passenger without one. To make matters worse it is surprising how often you see a couple riding a scooter, both with helmets on, with a child sitting in the well, or standing at the handle bars with no helmet at all. Not Good!! Oh, and the other thing is the style of helmet – they are all the old WW2 German war helmets – like bikies sometimes wear, only these are all sorts of colours, some black, lots of maroon, metallic blue, I even saw a pink one today.
So the day began with another Bible study. No comment except that the sigh of relief was almost audible when it was suggested that we lead our own Bible studies when we get back together for the last week.
Then it was off on our day trip. The first stop was a fruit stall. It was raining at the time, the first rain since we arrived, and the others opted to stay on the bus while Marlon and Rev Stuart bought us some fruit. I decided I wanted to go and have a look and was rewarded with all sorts of fruit that I haven’t ever seen before. I can’t tell you the names of them – I’m not even sure if I heard right – but if I pointed one out and asked what it was the vendor promptly offered to give me one to try, which I did. There were all sorts of passionfruit – none of them looking anything like ours and none of them actually called passionfruit as I recall. There was one fruit – about the size of a midsized feijoa, bright orange on the inside and with a very large pip – there actually wasn’t much fruit to it. It was kind of like biting into soap L. There were huge pineapples and pawpaw the size of a rugby ball. The weirdest thing of all was that all the apples were imported from the US. Go figure! There were very small fruit that at first glance looked like grapes but were very hard and had a large pip. You rolled them in your fingers until they were soft and then sucked the juice off. They were rather nice. There were bitter fruit and stringy fruit and melons of different varieties. It was great.
After a brief stop to get some lunch we were off to the Demarara Floating bridge. The bridge is about 1.2 miles long (that’s just under 2km) and sits on a series of floating pontoons. The whole thing is steel and the noise of the vehicles travelling over it makes for a tremendous racket. I know because we walked the whole way – once you start you are committed. It was actually quite a pleasant walk that would have been better if it hadn’t started to rain again when we were only half way across. We could see the rain coming from miles away and there was nothing we could do about it. None of us had brought umbrellas and they would have been of limited use anyway. I got a few photos and some video so I will try to make that available as I go. I was bringing up the back of the group behind Kelly. She was having a tough time of it because every time a vehicle went past and make the bridge sway she freaked out, and then when the handrails disappeared to be replaced by chains for a couple of metres every 40 metres that was a trial too. It wasn’t helped by the fact that her shoes were completely inappropriate for the task. So I jollied her along and we had a good laugh as we went.
By the time we got to the other side and the bus all of us were completely soaked through. BUT that didn’t matter because we were warm and we just dried out as the day progressed. I like that in a country J!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment