Guyana Trip Reports & Photos

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November Newsletter

At last …

Finally the day arrived!! Nearly 3 years after the idea was first talked about, we got on the bus and left Ludlow on a 30 hour journey that would eventually take us to Georgetown, Guyana .

To be honest with you, there were times when it felt like this day would never happen. It has been a real struggle to raise the necessary funds and people came in and then dropped out of the team, and sometimes we had to wonder if we had simply bitten off more than we could chew. Should we simply be satisfied with collecting and shipping the 5 pallet-loads of sports equipment, which in itself would make a massive difference in some of the poorest parts of Guyana?

But God is good, and when the time was right everything came together. So on Monday 2^nd November the five of us got on the bus not quite sure what we had let ourselves in for, but willing to do all we could in order to establish sports diversion programmes for some Guyanese young people, and do what we could to equip and encourage those already working with them.

The team was led by Graeme (who also did a very good impression of a football coach, despite being Scottish!!) with Steve and Jon overseeing the football coaching, and Rich and Dave in charge of the cricket coaching.

[Photo – from left to right: David, Steve, Jon, Graeme and Rich.]

The journey to Heathrow was ok, made that little bit quicker by Rich breaking the speed-limiter on the mini-bus!! It would not be the last thing he broke during our time away …

We arrived in plenty of time, and checked our bags in quickly, so had 3 hours to kill before the flight. Unfortunately one of us (names removed to protect the innocent) forgot about the current security restrictions on the size of containers of liquids that could and couldn’t be carried on in hand-luggage. So having bought sun-cream for the outrageous price of £15 two days earlier, and having placed it in his hand-luggage for ease of access when reaching Guyana , had to hand it over to a stern-looking security guard who “kindly” disposed of it.

Over the next couple of hours Jon reminded everybody that he wasn’t all that keen on flying, and everyone was grateful for that. The other four team members kindly reassured him that he had nothing to worry about …

About 7 hours after leaving Ludlow we boarded the plane for an 8 hour flight to JFK. Jon watched film after film after film, while Dave was the plane’s undisputed quiz champion – all who challenged him were defeated. The man has hidden talents!!

We were grateful to stop over at JFK, if only to stretch our legs and eat some “decent” food. Unfortunately we arrived in the “city that never sleeps” just as the food outlets closed, so all we managed to get were some stale donuts which we ate in front of a live American Football game. As you can see, we were not a particularly happy bunch – a 4 hour wait before our 6 hour flight to Georgetown .

[Photo – it’s 16 hours since we left Ludlow. Admittedly we don’t look our best, but then neither would you!!]

The journey to Guyana was on a smaller and much more crowded plane, and Jon’s choice of films was now much more limited. Dave still reigned in the world of quiz. Graeme had “forgotten” to mention that the Georgetown landing strip was both bumpy and short. We landed, bounced, landed again, then the pilot stamped on the brakes as hard as he could. Welcome to Guyana …

We walked across the runway to the terminal – it was around 8am Guyanese time (mid-day UK time, journey time so far 26 hours, sleep in that time 0 hours) – and already the heat was noticeable. We collected our bags – Dave’s had somehow lost a wheel in transit – and walked out to a crowd of taxi-drivers, all wanting to give us a ride. Fortunately Terry – employed by Hope and a Future and our guide for the next 10 days – soon arrived, and we all jumped onto a minibus (more about them later) and tried to keep our eyes open long enough to take in our first experience of Guyana. 45 minutes later we arrived at our rented house – 2 First Street , Albertown, Georgetown .

We stayed in the top half of the house

Inside the house

The view from the balcony, outside our front door.