Eddie Doyle, 26 Feb 2010 22:52 hours
Georgetown, Guyana Ghana, a hop, skip and a jump and you're in Guyana Hello All and greetings from Guyana and not Ghana. At least the spellings are very close . After 2 years I finally got back on the plane to Sweden (that in itself was a horrible journey compliment of British Airways).
Before leaving lovely Ghana I managed a great festive season which more or less ran until the 9th. Of Jan. and included my 50th. Birthday party at a beach resort not far from Cape Coast with Behi and 3 very closes friends (Dave, Gloria and Isaac). It was a nice way to finish off and all thanks to Behi who had arranged everything and had even been in touch with people all over the world so there were greetings cards and prezzies from afar. Thank you all!!
Getting on to a plane in +30°C in Accra……. finished with me getting off in Gothenburg 36 hours later (24 hours late) to -15°c and snow. At least Hannes and Ulf (a mate) were there with a big winter coat and a warm Volvo. A quick couple of weeks there was enjoyed in the fantastic winter weather, unfortunately I didn’t get to see everyone I had hoped to see before going to the UK. I have never travelled much in the UK so it was lovely travelling around to various places and meeting a lot of Behi’s friends and some of ours from Ghana, finally ending up in Manchester which I really enjoyed despite the fact that it is the home town of “The Red Sh#tes” Who were totally destroyed by Everton last weekend and enjoyed by Toffees worldwide!!!!
After exactly 1 month in Europe we stepped onto a T and T (Trinidad and Tobago) bound flight which connected to Georgetown Guyana. After almost 35 years of travelling, it was a magical moment for me to step onto the South American continent for the first time……….and find the people in just this S. American country speak English!!!.....although I can see by the expression on some of their faces they are not of the opinion that I speak English
Guyana is about half the size of Sweden (pop. 9 million) with a population of just 750,000 people and 90% of these living along the Caribbean coastline. Georgetown the capital is built on the coast at the mouth of the Demerara River, it is also about 2 meters below sea level which causes havoc when the rains come or they get the tail end of a hurricane. For just this reason many of the houses don’t have a ground floor but are in fact built on concrete stilts, the majority of buildings are also made of wood including the Catholic church which is the tallest wooden building in the world.
We have been here almost 3 weeks but will not go to our placement destination until next Friday. I say our placement destination in that VSO have now found a placement for me, teaching carpentry/joinery to Amerindian (indigenous people) youths, Behi already had her placement fixed working within her profession as a food technologist(and a few other things) with some cottage industries producing peanut and cashew products. We will be moving to a place called Letham on Guyana’s southern and only border with Brazil, our nearest city will be Boa Vista, about 2 hours into Brazil.
We will have an internet modem in Letham, which basically means that I have no reason for not keeping up with my blog or e-mail…….sh#t. No photos this time but I will have mastered that technique by next month too…..again, I just forget!
Take care until the next time.
Eddie
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Tuesday 9 Mar 23:39 