Eating and Drinking – Guyanese Style

In North America, the current culinary buzz words are local, fresh, organic, 100 mile diet, home grown, and sustainable. All of these attributes apply to the food items available in Guyana except without any of the “bon appétit” stylized hype. What they do have to eat here is fresh, plentiful and defiantly home grown, sustainable, fresh, local etc. etc. even if the range is somewhat limited for my spoiled palate. As bit of a self professed “foodie” I like to rise to the challenge and cook from the local products rather than focus on what they don’t have...like cheese, wine, sushi, tiramisu, chocolate, butter, granola, yogurt, and…sigh…coffee.Food shopping is daily occurrence with most of it done at low rent style street vendors and insanely busy outdoor markets. So what’s for sale here? Well the fruit is all tropical, fresh and plentiful. Mini bananas and water melons (like the ones sold in whole foods for mega bucks) are so cheap they are practically free. They have large long tapered pineapples for well under $2.00 that are sweet and less acidic than the imports we get in Canada, succulent red fleshed papayas as large as house cats hang in mesh bags, plump limes are about 25 cents a bagful. Also plentiful are “gimbits” a kind of a sour lychee nut, fresh passion fruit, coconuts, guavas, star fruit and mangos and avocados in season. You can sometimes also find apples, pears and grapes all imported oddly not from near by Chile but from far away New Zealand. I have broken down and bought a few pricey apples as I really miss them. Vegetable wise they have nice tight crispy little cabbages perfect for one person slaws and stir-frys, herbs or what they call “seasonin” which is large bunches of fresh thyme, chives, and basil (amusingly called married man in a poke) that are combined less than a dollar and smell divine. They sell a lot of what they call “ground provisions” which is cassava, sweet potato, plantains and “alloo” (or what I would say are small yellow potatoes) Ground provisions are eaten cooked up with rice, called not surprisingly “cook up-rice”, as a mash or even cooked into breads. I have gained a strong liking and appreciation for plantains, which are very good for you and here are sold as chips (green or yellow) cooked like wedgie fries and served with fiery pepper sauce or ketchup. Both sauces incidentally are just left out on counters in the blazing sun, but perhaps I have gained immunity to this strain of salmonella bacteria by now. They have fiery cherry bomb peppers that are hot as hades, a relative of the infamous scotch bonnet pepper proven to be the hottest pepper on earth. I accidentally ate half of one these babies whole in a curry...and HELLO!...ok we won’t discuss the aftermath of that incident. They also sell eggplants, nice little vine tomatoes, some woody carrots, cucumbers that are actually fat pickling cukes, absolutely lovely little onions, fragrant garlic, long string beans and I do mean long,….like a yard long, and giant squash the size of microwave ovens that they hack up with machetes and sell in pieces as “pumpkin”. Not much in the way of greens except for some wild spinach they call callaloo, which is kind of a weedy tasting, and better cooked than raw and that’s about it. Any imported vegetable sits insipid and expensive in the coolers of the higher end grocery stores. Fish, eggs and chicken are sold fresh....perhaps even too fresh! You can get...ahem “live and pluck” chicken and duck, and any fish you buy is usually still moving around. None of the names or types are familiar to me, even though I once worked at a fish market on Granville Island names like ”bangamary” “skake” and the so called “trout” which look a lot like mean little catfish which I fear come right from the bottom of the filthy canals, “shark”, which seem to be indeed mini sharks, ferocious brown crabs sold tied together on strings…looking very alive and ready to fight you from their death row perch, “snapper” which look nothing like snappers I’ve known more like pike or pickerel. Mostly I just point hopefully and chose them by size and they will always gut, scale, de head and filet them for you for no extra charge. A whole fish runs about $ 2.50 Cad. Quite a different price than the $50 – $70 you might pay in Canada for a whole salmon! There is a local chicken producer that sells frozen chicken in grocery stores...but all other meats here scare the hell out of me...dog meat, goat, wild monkey, iguana, turtle, paddo or bush meat, cow face, cowheel....are all wa-haay outside of my comfort zone. My vegetarian roots have come back in full swing and thankfully due to the Hindu and Rastafarian cultures here there are lots of good options including good soy proteins and legumes. They grow beautiful sugar, rice and they are disgustingly cheap and very good. Canned goods while plentiful are not that cheap and you will pay though the nose for anything imported. Butter when I finally found it was about $17 for a lb, frozen berries the same, canned olives about $12, a bottle of cheap Chilean wine that might be $8 in Canada is about $50 here...yikes!..on a $200 a month salary that’s rather out of my price range, yet a 40 ounce bottle of Absolut vodka is a mere $22. They produce a local beer called “Banks” and it is widely consumed and available everywhere including on the street, sold semi warm from coolers. The other popular drink is of course rum (it’s considered the Caribbean here even if you are in South America) El Dorado is their local brand which is proudly proclaimed to be “the best rum in the world”. Have you ever noticed all rums seem to lay claim that that title? The 15 yr old rum you can sip like scotch apparently. Sadly not being much of a rum or beer drinker I can’t comment on the merits of either national drink. I’m at a loss in a world without wine, scotch or martinis but I have discovered a nice little Trinidadian drink called lemon lime and bitters which is delicious on it own and just happens to pair very nicely with the reasonably priced Absolut vodka. They produce a nice local mineral water and have lots of fresh juices, punches and iced teas. So you know what I have been drinking…how about what I have been eating and cooking. Well lots of curries, channa (chickpeas) vegetarian stews and fried rices, poached fish, occasionally some chicken, plantains, cabbage salads, roti (homemade) yes I grew a foot as a cook when I mastered this, panneer (a vegetarian cheese) lots of fresh fruit, soy milk smoothies and …sigh..instant coffee. Rumor has it that some real coffee is on its way down to me…yay and thanks! Once or twice a week I do treat myself and go to the only coffee bar in town for a latte and croissant...(ahhh! just like France…ok not so much…but still good) Sadly my wallet won’t allow this to be more than an occasional indulgence. Somehow without trying I appear to be losing weight on this diet as my clothes are all loose. Some attribute this to the constant state of sweating but I think it is due to the lack of butter, chocolate cheese and wine, my four favourite food groups.

Working 9 to 5...what away to make a living

I am now into my third week of work as an M&E disability advisor for NGO’s in Guyana. So what am I actually doing each day in my lovely air conditioned office….oh did I mention it’s air conditioned??? Ahhhh…it’s so nice at my desk…in fact it’s almost chilly. I have never appreciated the fabulous technology that is air conditioning before. Here in Guyana it is an opulent luxury and something to look forward to on my commute to work. The said commute is either a half hour walk (I no longer ride my bike in traffic after a near death encounter with a horse) or a ten minute bus ride. Most days I walk unless it is already 40 degrees out at 8am in which case I’ll decrease the amount of time I sweat in my clothes by 20 minutes and take the bus. The mini busses (which are all 15 seater Toyota vans) are jammed with people of all kinds off to work and school children in their prim uniforms and elaborate zigzagged, corn rowed, be-ribboned hairstyles that both delight me and make me wonder what bloody time they get up in the morning to get their hair done! I now have a firm grasp of bus riding protocol from flagging one down, to where you sit, how you have to repeatedly get out to let out other passengers from the back and then move back yourself, when you flip down the extra seats, when its ok to allow them to squish in another passenger on your lap, and most important, how to get them to stop for you when you want to get off. Bus fare is $60 GD (or about .30 cents Canadian), and there are no transfers, so if you take the wrong bus, you need to pay again, if you need another bus, you need to pay again, you get the idea. The buses all blare music, honk wildly, have 20 – 30 air fresheners and other unsightly accoutrement hanging inside, drive very fast, like to remain as full of passengers as they possibly can and are highly competitive with each other for your business. Each operates with one driver and then an accomplice conductor/salesmen/doorman who yells to potential passengers on the street and gestures wildly with one cash laden arm to see if you will take his bus. Sometimes more than one bus will stop for you at a time (awkward!) and there are no actual bus stops per se, this is both great and highly inefficient. Walking in to work is much more peaceful and pleasant. I will often see the herd of 200 or so goats that graze by the canal, multiple parrots, horses and herons, and fish jumping in the murky waters amongst the rest of the Georgetown street chaos. I pass many regular locals who all wave, smile, talk and yell at me. Each day I can count on the homeless man who lives under the bridge to wave, the elderly security guard to ask me if the sun is hot enough for me today, (uh…yes, same answer as yesterday) the Rastafarian who invites me to eat at his restaurant for lunch (sometimes I even do to his great delight), and the juice lady who says without fail in Mary Knight style “Gad marning, you look lovely today miss”) Almost everyone else who passes you on the street will offer you a frank “gad marning”, never an informal hello or god forbid a Canadian style “hi”, I have learned to reciprocate this greeting. Then of course there is the incessant cat calls by it seems almost every man I pass…”hey barbie, blondie, baby, whitey, american gayl, white meat…etc.etc…I don’t even hear this anymore and just keep walking. I also will usually get 20 or so offers of a taxi ride and 10 buses or so will stop for me as they can’t really believe you are choosing to walk. I can buy egg balls, (a deep fried chickpea coated boiled egg – kind of good actually) juice in a plastic bag, freshly machete coconuts, flouries (deep fried balls with mysterious spicy filling – also actually good), bananas, pineapples or coconut jam sweet rolls if I’m hungry…but sadly no coffee…sigh.
So once at work what do I actually do? Well there is first the security to pass (natch) as we are behind a double locked gate and then another locked door that has not one but a two buzzer entry system. Hours of work are officially 8:00am – 4:30pm. I made the mistake of getting to work promptly at 8:00am the first few days only to discover that the first half hour involves sitting around in the blazing sun waiting for the one and only staff person with the key to arrive. The staff here all joke around in the morning very loudly and with great humour and when the talk gets that fast and loud I can’t understand a word they say and can truly see how Creole is indeed another language. My co-workers are beginning to open up to the strange white women in their midst who is doing some mysterious work for them they don’t seem to understand and I appreciate their efforts greatly. They now tentatively ask me about my weekend, my life here, my family and tell me of theirs, I was even invited to a cricket match and to “lime” on the seawall last week…this marks social progress folks! The agency I am working for has a policy to hire people with disabilities, so four of my colleagues have a disability and I appreciate their walk the walk policy and the efforts they make for the cause they believe in. Work wise the pace is muuuuch slower than I’m used to and this has been a huge adjustment. I have managed to complete a comprehensive work plan, done surveys, drafted reports, plans and forms, attended meetings, visited three of the national centre’s throughout the country (can you say road trip!) and am now heading up a project with the University of Guyana to work with five computer science students to create a data base (yikes). Overall it has been very interesting and a lot of changed work culture to adapt to. As mentioned the pace is slower so it takes time here to make decisions, to get back to you, to reply to emails, to think about things. I’m also unsure exactly of what if any authority I actually have as a VSO advisor, and if my work will make the impact I hope it can, but I will persevere. There is also the strict hierarchy and the dress code to contend with. The boss’s door stays closed, you always knock and he is always called Mr. The dress code is as follows; shoes should be flat and toes covered, (but you can wear sandals as long as they are leather), skirts and dresses must be below the knee, shoulders are always covered and hair is tied back or up. And like most other employees in the city I must also wear or carry my identification badge. Needless to say there are no mini skirts, fabulous tights, dangling jewelry, long hair and sexy boots allowed at work……or Starbucks. But I’m delighted to be conservative in dress, a racial minority, an apparent social enigma and to try and converse and work with these wonderful people I find myself spending my days with....in my air conditioned office…ahhhh.

"Liming" with the Rats and Lizards

Living and working in a developing country is challenging,exhilarating and sobering in it’s stark contrasts to the infrastructure you are used to. The average wage here is $40 thousand GD(Guyana Dollars)per month,or just a little over $200 CAD.I get a stipend as a VSO volunteer that is slightly more than that to live on, but I also have my rent, gas, electricity, telephone and insurance paid for which the average Guyanese does not. My flat has cold and cold running water, an infuriating propane gas stove that you light with matches,loud humming fluorescent lights, metal gates and bars on every door and window, barbed razor wire fencing, a mostly flushing toilet, a working refrigerator, a landline telephone,two loud fans instead of AC, frequent power outages and a room mate. We share our back porch and the highly appealing hammock hung there with a health practitioner, whose clients use the hammock as a makeshift waiting room. VSO provided us with a personal safety alarm, a water filtering system, a flashlight, a mosquito net, a smoke detector and a bicycle purchase allowance. We pay extra for high speed internet, bottled drinking water and any laundry we do not want to wash ourselves by hand in cold or cold running water. I am keenly aware that this living situation which may appear to be a huge step down for me compared to North American standards is in fact pretty good for the average GTown resident. All around us in our neighborhood of “Kitty” as it is called, residents do what they can to augment their livelihoods from their homes. On my block alone there are two “rum shops” (bars with a strictly gentleman clientele),a furniture repair store, a laundress (thankfully right next door, a hardware retailer, a license plate maker, three “snackettes” which have so much security you can’t even touch any of the bags of chips or strange looking cookies to check expiry dates or read ingredients before buying, a barber shop and “Desiree’s Hangout” which appears to be another lockdown "snackette" except witha few chairs thrown in to sit on out front and maybe some rum shop dealings on the side hence the “hangout” or “liming” potential.("Liming"is what they call hanging out here).That is if you want to “lime” with the pack of wild dogs that live at that end of the block and chase cars and bikes ferociously. The high level of security employed here on all buildings is intimidating, visually unappealing, and a royal pain in the ass to get used to. Try unlocking five padlocked gates, each with a finicky key and three bolts ANYTIME you want to go anywhere, but sadly it is also essential. A fellow VSO who lives next door (gulp) had a break in at 2 am just a few mere months ago. This despite the excessive armoury there for protection. Then there is the ahem, wild life to contend with. I have seen rats directly out front of my flat, big fat wet rats the size of rabbits crawling out and looking right at me. I am terrified of rats and try to remain calm by telling myself that they have so much good food to eat in the ditches that they do not need to come inside. Same with the giant flying cockroaches, I have seen them and they are hideously scary but so far only outside. Inside we do have moths the size of hummingbirds and huge red dragon flies that occasionally commit suicide on the fluorescent lights and of course the nightly choir of crickets and frogs that sing so loudly on the porch it is sometimes hard to talk over them. We have a firmly entrenched resident army of miniature ants, the size of a grain of sand that converge on any crumb, speck, morsel, drip or drop of food you leave behind on the counter, sink or garbage. I have employed a strict “no crumb left behind” policy and keep all food in the fridge and remove garbage as it is created. Sadly "Lenigans Ants" also like toothpaste, shampoo, and body lotion. So they also clamor for any spittle, bristle or jar lid in your bathroom. I probably unknowingly consume thousands of them a day, a protein source if you will. I have a gecko or “house lizard” as they are called here who regularly manages to get INSIDE the mosquito net and scuttle about. After my first few shrieking sessions I have come to embrace him and his presence and have named him “Thin Lizzy”. I hope he at least eats some of the mosquito’s whose guerilla tactics allow them to breach the perimeter of the net each night and sup on my blood. I have become a ruthless killing machine that nightly hunts mosquitoes and other flying biting creatures that are inside the sanctuary of my net before climbing under to sweat myself to sleep. Despite this slick warfare I still wake up each morning with new welts. I average about fifty bites on my body at any given time. I’m clearly not batting 500 yet in this battle. Maybe I should get two lizards.