Sunday, February 7, 2010

Into the Wild in Lush Guyana

Wearing both hiking boots and nightclothes, blearily rubbing the sleep from our eyes, we jerked and bumped our way by jeep across the Rupununi savannah of southwestern Guyana. As the sun rose over the Kanuku Mountains, we passed sinewy cattle, plump black vultures and giant Jabiru storks hunched like skinny old men.

Suddenly, a cloud of dust and sounds of hollering men: we were nearing our goal. Jolting to a halt, we staggered out onto the scrubby plain to see a large, furry, absurdly proportioned and clearly disgruntled giant anteater lolloping at high speed toward us, followed on horseback by three Amerindian cowboys, or vaqueros, who grinned as we dazedly fumbled to get out our cameras.

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Monday, November 2, 2009

Leona Lewis & Dad Battle Racism in London

Many people have experienced some sort of bigotry or racism in their lives and know those events can be very disgusting.

“X Factor” winner Leona Lewis spoke publicly for the first time to the Daily Mail this week about a London shops-woman throwing her and her dad Joe out of her store several months ago because of Joe’s dark complexion. He is Guyanese-born.

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Sunday, October 04, 2009

Fresh fowl store fills urban need

The sound and smell of 600 caged birds remind Terry Jagiah of boyhood days spent chasing animals and other livestock on the family farm in his native Guyana.

"We were born and raised with it," said Jagiah, noting that generations of his family also tended to sheep, horses and goats on the South American homestead. Jagiah, 45, was reminiscing as he stood proudly inside the Broadway Live Poultry Market. The business, located at 714 Broadway, officially opened to the public Thursday, and represents his dream of owning Schenectady's first of its kind live poultry shop.

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Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Guyana: A journey into the Jurassic

The village of Surama is the wrong side of a forest several hundred miles wide.

Even by South American standards, this forest is overwhelming. It’s so dense that flying over it feels like a journey through a long, green night. New creatures are always turning up here, and, if trucks and planes get lost, they often vanish forever. The rivers are either huge and spectacularly violent – like the Essequibo – or dark and carnivorous. There’s only one road through and one place to stay, at Iwokrama. It’s a moment of riverside gentility before you plunge back into the forest.

Of course, Surama is only the wrong side of the forest to those who need the outside world. The villagers don’t. Here, spreading southwards, they have their own world – a great, golden grassland the size of Scotland. Walled in at the far end by some of the oldest mountains on Earth, there’s nowhere quite like it. The lilies are five feet wide and sandpaper grows on trees. Even the animals feel curiously Jurassic. Here are the world’s largest ants, otters and anteaters, and its biggest fish – the arapaima (a bearded monster as big as a horse).

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Sunday August 2, 2009

Finches Apprehended in Smuggling, Fighting Charges

That men mostly of Guyanese descent brought caged finches to Queens parks and made bets on which one would tweet fifty times first was news to us.

Now we find U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service authorities have become involved because the finches are suspected of having been smuggled into the United States. The finches are a big deal in the community, and are trained with recordings to sing faster. But appropriate birds are hard to come by locally. Unwilling to pay quarantine charges, some unscrupulous suppliers are said to hide the birds on passenger flights from Guyana; one was found in a hair curler bag "with about 50 pounds of grass seed." The smuggler was fined $250 in a split decision.

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'Bird racing' at NYC park under federal scrutiny

For years, bird racing, as the sport is known, has been held in a park in the Richmond Hill neighborhood of Queens on warm Sunday afternoons with scant attention from outsiders.

Yet the races have drawn increased scrutiny recently from law enforcement, as federal officials target illegal smuggling of finches from Guyana. Authorities also suspect the men place illegal bets on the birds.

The people who flock to the races, mostly Guyanese immigrant men, argue that it is simply a harmless cultural pastime.

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Saturday, July 18, 2009

How Peaceful Is Your Country?

The Global Peace Index measures 144 countries by how peaceful each is, internally and externally.

The final list, intended to reflect the state of peace for each nation in the past year (as opposed to historically), includes 144 countries in 2009 and covers almost 99% of the world population and 87% of the planet geographically. Five countries were added this year: Burundi (No. 127), Georgia (No. 134), Guyana (No. 97), Montenegro (No. 91), and Nepal (No. 77). Hong Kong, No. 23 in 2008, was dropped from the list due to its close relationship with China.

See the rest of the above article here, and the Global Peace Index here.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

While soldier fights for his country, his wife struggles to stay in the U.S.

WASHINGTON - Spc. Moonsammy Narinesammy isn’t worried about dying in Iraq.

He’s worried about spending the rest of his life in Guyana.

Narinesammy, 31, who has months left on his deployment, spends all of his free time between missions trying to solve his wife’s citizenship problems. Immigration and Naturalization Services officials are finalizing deportation paperwork for Ratashwarie, while she waits nervously in New York.

"I don’t know if somebody is going to knock on the door one day and haul me away while my daughter is out at school," she said.

She faces a possible lifetime banishment from the United States for entering the country on a forged passport in 2000. Moonsammy said the only relatives she has in Guyana live in poor, dangerous slums, in an area where neither wants to raise their two young daughters.

"All I want to do is come back home to my family, but I don’t know what’s going to happen," said Moonsammy, himself a naturalized U.S. citizen. "I have a wonderful family, but it’s getting ripped apart."

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Saturday, June 19, 2009

NEVERTHELESS: Guyanese song stirring up real trouble in Barbados

Man yes, it is me who write it and yes the girl who singing it is a real Guyanese. Well that is the typical answer I does be giving people daily who come up to me asking ’bout the GT Advice song or the Guyanese Song as some people like to call it, which got the place in a uproar. As usual with some of them kinda songs I does get mix responses. For the better part I would say most people like, if not love, the song. But from time to time I would meet somebody who feel that it is a indictment on Bajan women and suggests that even if parts o’ the song are true, they should be whispered and not sang.

But the truth is the truth. The truth is that them got some Bajan women who believe that Guyanese women thiefing them boyfriends. Them also got many Bajan men ’bout here who say openly that as long as them live them aint want another Bajan woman, them dealing with strictly Guyanese ’cause the Guyanese more loving and does make them feel wanted.

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Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Americas on alert for sea level rise

Climate change experts in North and South America are increasingly worried by the potentially devastating implications of higher estimates for possible sea level rises.

The Americas have until now been seen as less vulnerable than other parts of the world like low-lying Pacific islands, Vietnam or Bangladesh.

But the increase in the ranges for anticipated sea level rises presented at a meeting of scientists in Copenhagen in March has alarmed observers in the region.

Parts of the Caribbean, Mexico and Ecuador are seen as most at risk. New York City and southern parts of Florida are also thought to be particularly vulnerable.

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Friday, May 2, 2008

Guardian of gators in Guyana: Native works to save caiman

Nine-foot crocodilians don’t scare him. Neither do king cobras, mambas, or trudging ankle deep through a Venezuelan river trying to catch anacondas.

View a photo slideshow of Guyana's wildlife

“Getting down into all that muck and mire and heat catching these big snakes ... that was brilliant,” Peter Taylor recently told the Advertiser, speaking with the excitement of a child and the reflection of a man who survived the trenches.

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Guyana's otter woman

On the banks of Guyana’s Rupununi River is a nature reserve with a difference, says Lindsay Hawdon

Ouch, you little bastard,” Diane McTurk shouts, as Flood the otter bolts out of the barn door and runs across the ranch yard, which basks in dusky sunlight. “He bit my foot,” she shrieks, sprinting after him, agile despite her 75 years. She speaks the clipped colonial English of another era. “Come, my heart, my love, my life,” she coos, “you’re not supposed to chew me.”

Flood is the 37th giant river otter that Diane has adopted here at her ranch, Karanambu, on the edge of the Rupununi River. He was abandoned by his mother at six weeks old; Diane found him growling beneath a cupboard in a nearby Amerindian village and brought him home in a red handbag. Eventually, he will be rehabilitated back into the wild. Diane has no children. “These otters are my children,” she had told me earlier.

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Friday June 9, 2007

JFK plot: Is Washington trying to open a Caribbean front in war on terror?

Last weekend's scare headlines and breathless broadcast reports about the unspeakable horrors that were supposedly foiled with the uncovering of the JFK plot have largely faded from view as evidence mounts that the alleged threat was grossly hyped, if not totally invented, by US authorities.

The purported plan to ignite a massive chain reaction of explosions by planting a bomb beside one of the jet fuel tanks at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport, or at a section of the pipelines leading into the facility was, experts noted, a physical impossibility.

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Saturday, April 28, 2007

New resident trooper is ready to serve

HARWINTON - A new evening resident state trooper brings international experience and his enthusiastic attitude to the job.

"As a child, I've always liked protecting people who can't protect themselves," Resident Trooper Ian Nicholson, 39, said Friday. "What I'd like to do here is to provide a service to the community that is obvious. This is a get-it-done kind of job."

Nicholson made his way to Harwinton from Georgetown, Guyana - the only South American Country whose official language is English, he said. He served as a military officer in the Special Forces for the Guyanese Army for four years before moving to New York in 1990 where he worked in the business world for several years, he said.

"Working for corporate America is what forced me to get back into public safety," Nicholson said. "I just love public service, and working for the state police is the greatest job in the world."

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Friday, March 2, 2007

Penn State Researcher Humbled by Guyana Visit

Frank Higdon recently returned from Guyana after a two-week trek in the South American paradise. He can officially say he has grown a greater appreciation for farming in the U.S.

He traveled with four others to Guyana in January, where he not only learned a lot about the struggles of farmers in the small South American country, he learned just how fortunate farmers in the U.S. are.

Read more from the Lancaster Farming website

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Biofuels, logging may spur deforestation in Guyana

Growing timber exports and rising interest in biofuels are raising concerns that deforestation could accelerate in the South American country of Guyana.

Guyana is a small, lightly populated country on the north coast of South America. About three-quarters of Guyana is forested, roughly 60 percent of which is classified as primary forest. Guyana's forests are highly diverse: the country has some 1,263 known species of amphibians, birds, mammals, and reptiles, and 6,409 species of plants. According to an assessment by the ITTO, forests in Guyana can be broken down as follows: mixed forest (36 percent), montane forest (35 percent). swamp and marsh (15 percent), dry evergreen (7 percent), seasonal forest (6 percent), and mangrove forest (1 percent).

Read more from Mongabay.com

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Looking south

Bridging a divide of language and history

A pontoon ferry putters on demand across the Takutu river not far from the small border towns of Lethem in Guyana and Bomfim in Brazil. It is the only surface link between two countries that have traditionally ignored each other. Guyana, though geographically part of South America, has colonial and linguistic links with the English-speaking Caribbean. Most of its 750,000 people live within a few miles of the Atlantic coast. Portuguese-speaking Brazil has looked to its Spanish-speaking neighbours.

Read more from The Economist

Saturday, January 6, 2007

Read the Press Release from the GACACF

Saturday, October 28th 2006

DDL's rum, cream liqueur win gold at international contest

The El Dorado Special Reserve 15-year-old rum and the El Dorado Golden Rum Cream Liqueur have again outshone the competition by winning gold medals at the 2006 International Wine and Spirits Competition.

A press release from Demerara Distillers Limited (DDL) said both products won the 'Best in its class' distinction at the London competition. The judges described the rum as "lush" with "coffee and vanilla bean, dried stone fruits, caramel, chocolate and toasty oak aromas" wafting from the glass. They call it "absolutely outstanding".

DDL said the 15-year-old rum is the company's flagship brand. It boasts the distinction of being the only rum to have won the title 'Best Rum in the world' for four consecutive years: 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001. The rum has also won the gold medal for seven consecutive years. It was also judged 'Best Spirit of the Caribbean' at the Caribbean Rum Fest for seven of the last 10 years and was recognised as the 'Best Spirit of 2001'. The rum was also given the platinum medal in 2001 by the Chicago Beverage Testing Institute. Additionally, at the 2003 Rum Fest held in Newfoundland, the rum was awarded the gold medal.

The liqueur, the judges say, has "flavours of spice, toffee and rum (which) fill the mouth with fine spirity lift highlighting everything" it is an "absolute delight". DDL said the liqueur was also awarded gold medals at the 2003 International Rum Festival and at the Chicago Beverage Testing Institute's competition.

DDL said the fact that its rums have gained and sustained international acclaim is testimony to the company's commitment to quality and excellence.

Saturday, April 1st 2006

Man builds motor vehicle by hand

Shelton Collins may strike you as odd if you happen to see him cruising through Georgetown in his unusual-looking motor vehicle but it moves him around quite comfortably and nothing holds him back but the rain.

For about three weeks now, Collins has been getting around in his four-wheel, open vehicle, which has features such as trafficator lights, headlamp, steering wheel, gear-changing switches, foot pedals, brakes and a music system among other things.

Collins, 34, is a Jack of all trades, but is a trained mechanic as well. He said that since he first became a mechanic, he has owned 24 motorcycles and 12 motorcars - all secondhand.

Sunday, October 30, 2005

Endangered red siskins live in their hundreds in South Rupununi

Red siskins, thought to be on the brink of extinction, number anything between a few hundred to a few thousand in the South Rupununi. However, there is need to study and manage the species there owing to continuing threats to their existence, ornithologist Dr Michael Braun of the Smithsonian Institute said.

Braun spent three-and-a-half weeks in the South Rupununi recently. At a talk he gave in the auditorium of the US Embassy in Georgetown early last week, he said the world's endangered red siskins are threatened owing to a number of factors, including environmental degradation caused by human impact and trapping. Nevertheless, he said, there was hope for the species because of conservation activities in the region. [Read more ...]