Wake with the dread of a well-rested person that you've missed something. You venture out into the unusually large living room/kitchen area that you later realize has at least six full-size couches, three coffee tables, and space enough for a personal gym, though you are too stunned at the time to notice. The place appears packed, (white) people rushing too and fro. You retreat to your room and wait out the hullaballoo.
Venture out again when you get hungry. The rooms are all empty--you can see inside as you walk down the hallway the mess people have left behind. The kind of messy people get when they know they are never coming back.
Someone comes to take you out and about. Realize you are completely at this person's mercy and feel a deep gratitude within your bones when she holds doors open for you and helps you carry grocery bags and tolerates personal-bordering-on-rude questions you ask her about her life.
Pick up little tidbits. How she'd gone to church that morning. How the men in her life have mod'd out her car. She takes the long way around to let the speed bumps have mercy on her car. She plays Akon and Destiny's Child and Ashanti and Bruno Mars and sings along beautifully. How she needs to take a bus and two boats to go home. The nostalgia she has in her voice when she describes drinking milk straight from a cow's teat and the ruefulness when she talks about how she's become lactose intolerant and has to resort to almond or oat milk these days.
She is a nonplussed tour guide, answering our questions about her country's history the same way I might answer someone who visits New York and points to a random building to ask me what that building is. We read many plaques. She takes us to places she used to go to as a child, on a field trip. The Botanical Gardens, monuments and statues. Read the plaques but listen to her explanations too because her experience is a lived one. Could you answer questions about the political climate at the founding of your nation?
Less than a few minutes apart, look at monuments that honor the Indigenous peoples, the first Guyanese president who also happens to be ethnically Chinese, Cheddi Jagan (whom the airport is also named after), a Hindi/Indian man known as "Father of the Nation." See a true visual representation of diversity, colonization, enforced immigration.
Realize Guyana is beautiful, the shape of it. Statuesque Greco torso: Georgetown sits on her right shoulder as she turns to look at you coyly. Recognize bougainvillea and hibiscus. Google water lilies, lantanas. Learn about the flamboyant tree aka the flame of the forest aka the phoenix tree. Notice the cracks in the dusty ground, the dry fountains, the brown grass and really feel what it means for a tropical country to experience a drought.
Go to the grocery store. See the sun-bleached Transformers poster outside that is a relic from when the movie theater across the way was built. Feel yourself expand the way you do in the suburbs--no more shoulder-to-shoulder at the grocery store, no more squeezing your way past people to get in line to pay, no more looking over people's shoulders to see what they might be buying out of stock. Pause with joy and maybe even sadness when you recognize plants you have been trying to grow in the confines of a New York City apartment and realize what it truly means that they are "tropical." Buy local hot sauce, buy local beer, buy local candy.
Eat your first Guyanese meal. Of course get over-zealous and order way too much food. Papaya smoothie. Mutton curry. Soup from a Guyanese chain restaurant. Perhaps too confidently pour hot sauce on almost all of it. Suffer the consequences later. Watch sweat beads form on your travel companion's face and the amusement break out on the face of your local guide for the day.
Let her off the hook--she's played chauffeur and tour guide enough for the day. Let her go home to her family and relax on a Sunday. Take a nap and drink water--the brutality of the sun is a slow one, creeping up on you to sap away your vitality. Regroup before sunset. You've been told to go to the Sea Wall. The security guard is a stout middle-aged woman who tells us to be wary of the Sea Wall and not go out at night. Her warning has the feel of ominous foretelling, so take a car to the Marriott instead.
The Marriott is another world, air-conditioned and glowing. This is where (white) people come to vacation. The pool is teal. The cocktails are watered down. There is a wedding photoshoot happening in the background. No one stops you from going out on the terrace. Find a wine store (of course). Buy local wine made from a purple plant called jamoon that is known in Hindu tradition as sustenance for Rama during his exile. Watch cricket at the hotel bar. Walk to the edge of the Sea Wall and realize stupidly that it is in fact a wall from the Sea and not a beach where you can touch the water (suspect that the Dutch have been here before you). Go to dinner instead.
Eat a type of roti you've never had before. Learn how to pronounce rogan josh. Over-order, again. Over-eat, again. Wax poetic on how this type of fusion cuisine is your favorite. Vow to eat something other than curry tomorrow. Vow to eat something green tomorrow. Sleep like the dead.
