Power-cuts and bribery in the city of sin

I am sat here typing in the dark. Power cuts are pretty frequent in Georgetown. There is one ever few weeks at home and probably more frequently if you looked at the city as a whole. Most nights I will hear a huge explosion like a gunshot. It took me a few weeks to realise that there weren’t that many guns going off. Just power-surges that blow the electricity pylons and drown whole blocks in tropical blackness.

I had a wonderfully cultured weekend as I was lucky enough to go to a play that a couple of friends were in on Saturday. The play was in the National Culture Centre and the main character was Cuffy. Cuffy was the leader of the Berbice uprising at the time when all the African slaves in Guyana took hold of plantations and the Europeans mainly moved out. The set was great and it was nice to see something like a play after seeing the raw, brashness of Georgetown’s streets. At the end however, everything got a bit awkward. For some reason, an acting judge came to the microphone and harshly critiqued what they must have put a whole lot of effort into! I just sat there and cringed!

Sometimes I forget how beautiful Guyana is. That didn’t happen on Sunday. I rode out to the Essequibo with my friend in the afternoon. It only took an hour of long winding tarmac roads with crazy undulations and random cows roaming onto the street. We reached Parika and my fingers were tingling through the vibrations but my ears were tingling as well with the instant re-population of the town of Parika compared to the empty road all the way down the highway. My ears were tingling because anywhere there’s people in Guyana, there’s a huge set of speakers blaring dancehall.

On the ride back to the city, the Sun started setting and for an hour everything was beautiful. The sky was torn across the horizon with a deep orange that slowly faded into pink then black as we rode on.

Everyone knows that Guyana is a place full of contradictions and my day was nothing different. Following a beautiful afternoon, as we were riding back through the city I turned a corner and found a police bike, lights flashing, asking me to pull over. Officer Johnson was incredibly efficient at belittling my friend then stating that my Guyanese driving licence was my dad’s! His confusion continued to the reason why he arrested me in the first place. Was I arrested?! Who knows? He then escorted us to the station where I was asked to give 10,000GYD (£33). I flatly refused, sat there for 30 minutes until they gave up and let me go, no details taken.

It was a strange experience but it didn’t ruin the day and it was only a matter of time until something like that happened.