A morning of fascinating violence
How else do you describe watching Guyanese cowboys (or vaqueiros) at work in a corral? At Dadanawa Ranch, there was a bonfire for brands, and – high up in the rails – the boys clambered around, waiting for their moment to drop down and join the fight. Below them, in the arena, hundreds of animals swirled round, blind with dust and mad with panic.
Guiana and the abolition of slavery
In the UK, we tend to associate the end of this gruesome trade with William Wlberforce. But there are a few other Britons associated with abolition, all with links to either Guyana (then the colonies of Demerara and Berbice) or Suriname:-
Madeiran decendants
The ancestors who vanished, somewhere in South America. Most madeirans that I met had no idea that a large body of their ancestors had gone to Guyana (or British Guiana as it was was). They're aware of the Venezuelan connection but the rest of the continent is rather vague. Several people were sure that Guyana was in Africa ...
The Guyana-Madeira connection - 11
Too little water, everything dies; too much, it drowns. In Guyana, the problem for farmers has often managing the country's vast reserves of water; draining swamps, maintaining channels; stabilising the watertable.
The Guyana-Madeira connection - 10
The Madeirans immigrants will have been astonished by the remoteness and the emptiness of the British Guiana in 1835. It was the size of the Great Britain, and yet - under its recent Dutch masters - only 10% of it had been explored. It's borders had yet to be defined, and enormous features like the Kaieteur Falls were still unknown to the outside world.
The Guyana-Madeira connection - 9
Life in the Guyanese interior has always been tough, and the hunters there will have seen plenty of danger. But for the Madeirans, no hunt was as dangerous, as remarkable or as cruel as the one they'd left behind: the whale hunt.
The Guyana-Madeira connection - 8
For the Madeirans arriving in Guyana, the wild life must have been bewildering. Madeira has no indigenous land mammals at all, no poisonous creatures, and no snakes. By contrast, Guyana has the biggest ants in the world, and the biggest freshwater fish.
