Local sights

I haven’t said much about the HIV/Aids situation here and it is not that it is not a concern –as it is everywhere - but at least here it is spoken about and there are advertisements such as you see here, on billboards all over. Last week in the newspaper I was relieved to see that the insurance companies no longer consider HIV/Aids a death sentence but due to the advances in medication and treatment it is now considered more of a chronic illness and insured death benefits are being paid to families. Previously if someone died of Aids their insurance was null and void. This whole change, of course, will have more people seeking treatment and with more exposure, hopefully more knowledge and eventually less disease.

Dawn from our bedroom window over Georgetown. You can find beauty everywhere especially when you are woken by a number of beautiful birds as we are each day.

Can’t recall if I have shown you the sluice gates before but Georgetown is well below sea level and is kept from flooding by an enormous Dutch built sea wall and sluice gates. The floods of 2005 were caused by poor maintenance and vandalism of the gates so I don’t think that’s likely to happen again as it was devastating for all. A Ministry driver told us how he had to wait for a boat to comes each morning or to wade out through chest high water to higher ground in order to catch a bus and get to work.

Of course we had to go to see the Heritage Parliament Building and here’s a snap shot of the National Assembly where the 76 elected and 6 appointed members sit. It is a lovely building right downtown. When Parliament sits they do so from 2 – 10pm and often the sessions go through the night!

This is the coat of arms of Guyana with its motto

We managed to get to the Red House which is also a Heritage building and is now the Cheddi Jagan Research Centre. He was the charismatic leader in the early 50’s who because of his leftish leanings was denigrated by the CIA and the Brits. However he was vindicated after Burnham whom the Americans supported turned out to be an autocrat, a dictator and corrupt to boot. Jagan died in 1997. I came away from the centre wishing that I had known him or at least had heard him speak - he seemed a good man, though perhaps a bit misguided by the Markist-Leninist theories. His wife, Janet, is still alive and active in politics.