7th UPDATE
Saturday April 10th.
We left Dadanawa at 5 am, heading south. The journey was quite rough because the road was umpier and hillier than usual. However, Lena did not present further problems this time and at about 8 o’ clock in the morning we arrived in Awarawanau
Awarawanau is one of the most beautiful Amerindian villages that we have seen during our stay in the Rupununi. It is a really idyllic village. It sits on the top of a hill and it is more nucleated than the villages up north because it is close to the forest, which can be seen behind lush green fields.
Having got up very early, we arrived in the village craving for coffee and something to eat. Terry and Jason were wonderful and saved us by cooking a solid meal at the village teacher’s house. We tried to visit some of the village farms but it was Saturday: most people were having a rest at home and some of the villagers had already left before we arrived. Therefore, we spent some time filming landscape shots around the village and talking to some of the people in Awarawanau. Ray, Jurgen, Sherwin and Sharla climbed up a small hill, from where they filmed a superb view of the village, the valley and the rain forest at the background. On the hill top there were beautiful flowers and plants, including aloe vera and other cactuses, which you can see in one of the photos.
We then continued our journey, passing even more amazing and interesting savannah landscapes: the terrain became even hillier and there were clusters of huge, black basalt rock formations with trees and plants growing on them. Marurunau is another beautiful village which lies right on the edge of the rain forest. We visited Alma O’Connell, a Wapishana woman with Irish blood, who told us about some of the main problems facing the Amerindian communities of the south savannahs: youth migration to Brazil, lack of transport and accessibility to markets for trading their craft products, inadequate land-titling and the environmental and social threats that logging and mining concessions in the area pose to these communities.
During the interview with Alma, it had been raining heavily. When we came out of the house, the sun was shining again, there was the fresh smell of humid land, and we enjoyed a fabulous view from the top of the hill where her house sits. We ate a few mangoes, drank coconut juice and left to head back to Potarinau, where we had to film the trading of cotton the morning after.
Sunday April 11th .
After spending almost 12 hours travelling through the savannahs the day before, we woke up rather tired and stiff. Initially we had planned to witness the cotton trading in three villages (Meriwau, Shulinab and Potarinau). However, given our physical state, we decided to take the early morning easy, went for a long swim in the river and filmed the trading of cotton only in Potarinau.
The Rupununi Weavers Society rented vehicle arrived in the village at around 11 am. Many of the villagers were waiting at the village hall to see the trading, and the women were specially anxious to sell their spun cotton. The touchau explained to the villagers in Wapishana why we had come to film the trading and told them about the promotional video which we will produce and which hopefully will increase the demand for hammocks. There were a few solemn moments and the trading then started. The women who were selling spun cotton were arranged in line, waiting patiently for their cotton balls to be weighted and graded. The cotton is valued according to its grade and weight. After this process, each woman received payment in cash and a receipt formalising the transaction. In this trading trip, the Rupununi Weavers Society had not had time to collect goods in order to exchange them for cotton, therefore the women were this time paid solely on cash. I chatted to some of the women and very happily they explained to me that they were going to spend the money on clothes for the children, soap and some food-stuffs. One of the women told me jokingly (or perhaps seriously…)that with the money she got from her cotton, she was going to go America!
After the trading, we had a small communal meal at the touchau’s house. As a way to compensate women for the time that they had spent demonstrating the cotton spinning and the cassava processing and also as a way to thank the villagers for their hospitality, we bought a pig which was slaughtered and shared.
We left Potarinau, sad to say good-bye to its friendly inhabitants, but somehow relieved that our work was coming to an end and we were soon going to have a chance to rest! We were back in Lethem at about 8. We found out that there had been a misunderstanding with our flight arrangements and our plane was coming on Tuesday instead of Monday. We were a bit disappointed at first because we had many things to do in Georgetown before leaving for Europe, but we decided to take the day off and go to Brazil.
Monday April 12th.
After breakfast at Elaine’s, we left for Brazil. Jason had decided to take us in his father’s new Land Cruiser instead of Lena: while we felt vaguely guilty about abandoning our faithful vehicle, Jason thought that Lena might be more than the Brazilian authorities could handle.
Lethem lies alongside the Takutu River, which forms the international boundary with Brazil. So crossing to Brazil merely involved driving onto a pontoon and floating over the river. The first Brazilian town, called Bon Fim, is just a few kilometres from the river. While possessing a few more amenities than Lethem (like electricity, running water and some paved roads), Bon Fim is a tiny place. After a cold drink at the bus terminal, we decided that we had exhausted its limited charms. There seemed nothing better to do than head south for Boa Vista, the capital of Roraima State. We thought it would be wise to ask the immigration officials at the border whether this would be OK, so we explained our plans to them—Silke did this in Spanish, which is close enough to Portuguese to allow some mutual comprehension. All was fine until it was revealed that Ray was an American citizen. Alas, he would need a visa for the trip. The immigration officer explained that because Brazilians needed visas to visit the USA, Brazil required visas of Americans. This struck us as a reasonable statement, if a bit inconvenient. We decided to proceed anyway: Ray looked a bit nervous when we agreed that we would have to abandon him to the mercy of the notorious Federal Police if anything happened!
An hour’s fast drive down the paved highway brought us to the Rio Branco, which is spanned by a huge bridge. Boa Vista lay on the other side. We crossed without incident and entered the scruffy outskirts of the city. Things became a bit hairy at this point: Jason was not sure where we should go and we spent half an hour driving in circles looking for his sister’s house. Finally, we decided to park the jeep, find a bank where we could withdraw some money on Ray’s Visa card (ironically the only kind of ‘visa’ he had!) and seek out a churrasquino (the famous Brazilian barbeque restaurants). We parked in the central plaza, near an enormous statue of a garimpeiro (Boa Vista’s fortunes have long been tied to small-scale gold mining in Roraima State) and disembarked from the jeep. We were just walking away when we realised something was wrong: Jason had locked the keys inside the vehicle. This must have been Lena’s revenge for our betrayal. Lena, of course, has no locks, so this could never have happened with her.
Ray, Silke, Jurgen and I (Terry) decided to look for a bank. Considering the way the situation was deteriorating, we’d need money soon enough. We left Jason and Sherwin trying to break into the vehicle. After a couple of attempts, we found a bank with a cash machine. Uncertain of the exchange rate, Ray simply withdrew the maximum permitted amount of 600 Reals. On the way out of the bank, we stopped a man and sheepishly asked him the exchange rate: apparently, this was equivalent to about 300 US dollars. Leaving poor Jason and Sherwin to their problems, we went to get a cold drink.
Things began to improve at this point. Quite by chance, Jason had bumped into a friend of his, who had managed to locate a ‘locksmith’. To me, the ‘locksmith’ looked more like a car thief, but who cared? He jimmied the lock, retrieved the keys and, after we’d paid him 30 Reals, drove away on his motorbike. Now all we needed to do was find some food.
Dreams of barbeque were fast fading in the face of our limited time and lack of local knowledge. We made do with a bizarre restaurant called Mr. Kilo, where you simply filled your plate from a variety of dishes, then took it to be weighed. Price was fixed by the kilogramme! We ate lots of different things, drank a few beers and hit the road back to Lethem. At the Takutu, a final nasty surprise awaited us: the pontoon operators had disappeared. Having dealt with the immigration, the bank, an unknown city and the key situation, we were about to be thwarted by a hundred metres of muddy water. Undeterred and against everyone’s concerns, Jason drove into the river. By sticking to a sandbank, he managed to get us across safely. We spent the rest of the evening packing and recovering.
Tuesday April 13th
Today, we left the Rupununi on a chartered twin-engined plane. We were all a bit silent after our goodbyes, dealing, I suppose, with a range of sometimes conflicting emotions: sadness at leaving, happy anticipation at seeing family again, relief at the thought of creature comforts…
We asked the pilot if it would be possible to fly over Kaieteur Falls. These famous falls, where the Potaro River drops nearly 250 metres straight into a chasm, are the most beautiful falls in the world. Five times as high as Niagara, they are flanked by high, forest-clad cliffs. The Pakaraima Mountains, from where the Potaro flows, are visible to the southwest; in the far distance on a clear day, you can see the famous tepuis rising from the forests. Unfortunately, the weather was not ideal for a fly-over today, so we were only able to catch a few seconds of this breathtaking view. And, of course, because we were in an aircraft, we missed out on the spectacular roaring sound of Kaieteur’s water and the feel of spray on our faces.
Less than an hour later, we landed at Ogle Aerodrome, bringing our Rupununi Journey to an end. I (Terry) do not want to speak for everybody but for myself I will say that the place felt small and confining after the emancipating vastness of the interior savannahs and forests.
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