Just to finish Surama

This is the school room at Surama where the 60 children attend. All 6 classes in the same large room divided by blackboards. bet the teachers among you are envious!

When the students reach secondary school level they now go into a neighbouring town by special bus. Our guide told us that when he got to secondary school he and his peers had to go to Lethem, a town on the border with Brazil, where and they had to stay as boarders just a few years ago. He told awful stories of always being hungry and not having the money to come home for the weekend. Things are better now it seems.

Here on the right (hopefully) is a picture of the Christmas special Guyanese Pepperpot. This is a local dish nice and spicy and made with tapir which is a wild boar like animal with a longish snout. It was served with rice and chowmein. I did taste it - for a vegetarian quite plucky don't you think? - Mick declined however. It tasted fine just like meat, of course, not too gamey BUT I hasten to add it was just a taste. The spicy sauce was nice though. I understand that you can make a variety of pepperpots choosing your own main ingredient.

This past weekend we bought a book of Guyanese Cuisine so we'll give it a try with something other than wild meat I expect.

Herewith the Christmas tree, rescued from the rain and re-erected outside the school, and all the Christmas presents Mick and I were asked(as guests) to handout to the villagers and children. It took quite some time i can tell you and everything was beautifully packaged as you see. What we both noticed was the recurrence of the same family names. Seems that the village is really made up of about 5 families and there are several generations of each there.