A trip down the Canje Road

I have written a lot on my Peace Corps experience and my changing normalcy. With the arrival to Guyana of my best friend Brittany in a little over a month, and my “little” brother Steve and our friend Saba this summer, I found myself wondering what they would think about as they entered Guyana for the first time; what would stand out to them? Today as I rode in a taxi (also known as a hired cyar), I tried to erase my memory and pretend that I had been taking the trip from New Amsterdam (the major town in the Region known as #6, Berbice) down through Canje for the first time. It was a lot harder than you would think. I had to “see” a lot of things that over my year in Guyana had blurred into the background. I don't seem to remember the exact moment that everything just became “normal”.

So as we drive along in the cyar (not a typo) and I start my little experiment, the first thing that hit me was how green Guyana is; the palm and banana trees, huge bushes and overgrown grasses. Everything seemed very bright and clear. As we crossed the Canje Bridge leaving New Amsterdam, I looked out over the brown river to the opposite bank; dotted between palm trees were brightly colored houses with zinc roofs. I suppose in my initial observation, but now looking back, I missed the obvious... the water was BROWN. In Guyana, all the water is brown or black from soil run-off and tannins - living outside of Boston for so many years near the Charles River, and growing up on Cape Cod with the ocean as my playground for 31 years, it is astounding that I could get used to a brown milk chocolate colored river. As we race further along the road, the driver slams on the brakes of the car. A herd of goats has decided to take that moment to cross the street. I hear the “click-click” as the driver turns on the hazard lights; all Guyanese drivers are excellent with the hazard button, horn and brakes. You may think I am stereotyping... but ask any Guyanese... these taxi drivers know their cars and the road. The goats make their way across the street and no one in the car seems to bat an eye at the “strangeness” of a herd of goats stopping traffic on the only road into New Amsterdam. The driver continues carrying us on our journey to home or wherever the rest of the passengers are going. Yet again as I sit here remembering the car ride and writing this, I have overlooked a major point – I am not alone in the car with the driver. At home in Boston when you request a taxi or call up Uber (or however you do it... I honestly forget whether you call them or press a magic button on your phone, then BAM! a car shows up – this seems foreign to me here), you don't share your taxi with three other strangers. Here, if you are getting a car that follows a route, you either flag down the car along the route, or go to a designated spot. With confidence (because for about 100 reasons you NEVER look like you don't know what you are doing) you look at the drivers standing around and say, “Canje.” They point to a car lined up, you get in and you wait for it to fill. Normally, I take the front seat because besides the driver seat, that is the only spot that has a seat-belt. The seat belts in the backseat tend to conveniently be sliced right out of their safe little homes. Sometimes you get squished between two “aunties” who have just been to the market, lugging bags of fresh vegetables into the back seat with them. On this car ride, I was squished in the middle between an older gentleman carrying a backpack and an old auntie with three bags of groceries...not to forget mentioning, I also had a huge bag of vegetables and groceries- quite comfortable. You get over caring about your personal space very quickly traveling in Guyana.

Let me get back to our journey. Traveling down the road, we pass by some roads that snake off of the main road that are dirt, some are half-dirt-half-tar, and some are jankily paved; all are a hazard to your ankles, particularly in the rainy season which has just fallen upon us here in Guyana. Among the beautiful green trees and grasses, I see dots of colors littering the ground – literally littering; water, beer and soda bottles, plastic bags, styrofoam meal boxes (note that as of January, it is now against the law for a restaurant to serve food in styrofoam containers – go Guyana! However from the looks of the fields, trenches and streets, this wonderful and amazing environmental law does not seem to be enforced quite yet... perhaps just now.). The houses are close together and there is no rhyme or reason to how they are clustered. You have a beautiful, two story, elegantly painted cement house, complete with air conditioning units sticking out of windows, next to a barely standing, rundown wooden shack with an outdoor toilet. There are more churches or places of worship on this one road than I have ever seen in Falmouth (where I am from in Massachusetts). There are Mandir's for Hindus, Mosques for Muslims and every kind of church for Christians you can imagine – Seventh Day Adventist, Jehovah's Witness, Evangelical, Baptist, Methodist, Congregationalist – the list goes on and on – the only “kind” I haven't come across is Catholic.

Ever so often, I see a broken down car, picked apart, abandoned and overrun with grass and wild flowers. There is one red car along the journey, perhaps some relative to a Volkswagen Beetle, in a field that looks like it has been there since the 1970's... I honestly suspect it has been.

The Canje Road is wedged between miles and miles of sugar cane fields on one side, and the Canje River on the other. The houses go about four roads deep on either side, Sometimes if I look in the right places, I can see the cane or river. Sugarcane is quite beautiful blowing in the breeze. Once we have traveled for about fifteen minutes, I see the tall smoke stacks of the sugar factory sticking out over the palm trees. Depending on the wind, the day and the time, sometimes you smell the factory before you see it. I have no explanation as to how sugarcane smells as it is being turned into sugar, other than pungent. Sometimes I want to hold my nose, but I resist – I won't smell this smell after my 27 months is over.

On we drive, dodging cows, dogs, goats, pigs, sheep, horses, roadkill, bicyclists, pedestrians and slower vehicles. As we get closer to my street, I yell out, “Driver, stop at the sign by the purple church up ahead.” The driver asks me if I am enjoying my stay in Guyana and assumes I am a missionary – it is pointed out that no one seemed to have arrived to the church yet so I would probably have to wait. For some reason, perhaps a yearning to distinguish myself from the rest of the “white people” in Guyana, I correct him and I tell him that I am going to the street across from the church, not to the church itself. I want it to be very clear that I am a Peace Corps Volunteer. Not that there is anything wrong with the missionaries... but that is not me. I am constantly correcting people who assume I am a missionary because I am white... “I am not a missionary, I am a volunteer teacher with the Peace Corps. I teach kids how to read and write, and that reading can be fun.” Let it be known that I am a Peace Corps Volunteer.