Content

Essequibo Coast .................................................2-8 pg

Stabroek Market Trip with Grandma Mazel ......9-14 pg

 Four  River and An Ocean Adventure...............15- 23 pg

The house in Linden.....................................24-29 pg

Essequibo Coast

My mother and I were at her preschool, Little Blessings it was the day before Emancipation day 2024; her school was having a cookout. There was fish, cook-up and  cut-up beef. 

My mom remembered that our cousins were making conki, pone and doing libation in Essequibo. Libation is a celebration where you dance around the Damon statue and hold a candle in your hand. 

I wanted to go to see my cousins and to play with them, so my mother decided that we would go to Essequibo to see them. 

We packed, placed the bags in the car and we were off. I was reading all the time so I didn’t see anything much along the way. When we were close to the ferry, mom  told me to put away my book. We parked our car at the overnight car park and walked the short way to the ferry. 

As we arrived, people were already on the ferry. We used the steep stairs and went upstairs and found a seat at the back of the boat. The boat was delayed because some passengers were taking their own time to come on board. After all of the passengers were on board I watched the bridge close painfully slowly. 

 I was peckish, so I ate fries and a little of the burger that my mother bought at KFC. When I looked around, I saw many adults drinking alcohol. I looked outside and I saw many islands as we sailed along the Essequibo river and wonder if people live there*. 

When we arrived at the port in Supernaam there were no taxis, only buses, so we got on a bus that went to Anna Regina Park. A lot of passengers came on after us and what bothered my mom most is that the driver was driving in all the holes. It was my first time on a bus, and I loved it.

We arrived at Anna Regina park. My mom called my cousin, two of them came walking and the rest came by car.

*People do live there!

 My cousins' names are Malacai, Amya, Shamaya and Alysa We took the car to their home to drop our bags off. Then we all came out back to the park where the activities were taking place. As we arrived at the park I saw my cousin perform a dance and I also danced to the music. We had a great night at the libation dancing with candles and learning different foot movements. At the end of the night we were all happy and tired.

The next day  when I woke up, I changed my clothes, brush my teeth and waited for my cousins. When they came we polished our nails, built  sand volcanoes and beautiful sand cakes with flowers that we picked from cousin Ivy’s garden. 

After playing for a while sadly I had to leave, I showered had 5 minutes remaining to play.  We waited for the taxi to pick us up and then I was on the way home.

I really liked being with my cousins and I can’t wait to go back again.

Stabroek Market Trip with Grandma Mazel 

The cool breeze blew while the sun was wrapped in its blue and white jacket. Grandma Mazel and I were going to the dutch named market, Stabroek in Georgetown, Guyana.

Peacefully, we walked out of Unity Place to National Avenue. While we were walking I kept reminding her that we were supposed to walk on the right hand side of the road. She kept saying “Yes,yes my dear” but not doing it. We boarded a  public bus at the corner of National Avenue and Aubrey Barker Road. It was a gorgeous silver bus . Inside there was loud music playing and I could barely breathe because there weren't many windows so it felt like everyone was sucking all the oxygen .

The bus drove slowly on to Mandela avenue. As I sat there I just wanted to pop out my kindle and read but sadly, there was no internet. A little while later we entered onto Croal street where the bus park is and we got off. Along the way there were many people wanting to get on a bus but our bus was filled. I was squished throughout the drive.

We went straight to Demico, my mum had told me this is the first and oldest local fry chicken place in Georgetown. We ordered two, two piece combos, ate and then left satisfied. The chicken didn’t taste like KFC chicken but I guess it was alright. 

We then went to the lady that sells tambourine balls for my grandmother. She has a little snackette where she sells other snacks too. 

I bought nine snow mints and a happy cup, the total bill was $420.00. My Grandma said that it was nice to patternize* the lady. We went into the market . I was curious to see what it was like. I recalled that this was where my ancestors were auctioned during the slave trade. Suddenly, I felt a surge of excitement . Quickly, I rushed in but then there was a problem, the stench was intolerable. I took out one of my mints and sucked it slowly. After looking around, I started to imagine what my ancestors being auctioned would look like.

As we walked farther into the market, people were saying ‘ Teacher Mazel, or hi Mazel. 

*patternize is a creole word meaning buy

I thought that my grandma knew a lot of people. They all asked her “Is this your grand-daughter?”. We passed the food section and even there the smell was intolerable. Finally we were walking along the port . There, we bought some coconuts. When we came out we were on the complete opposite side. I helped grandma with the fabric bags. Quickly, we walked back to the bus park . We asked the conductor of a pink bus if he was going to Unity Place and he said no. 

Five buses came and went and neither was going to  Unity Place. Finally we caught a bus that was going to Unity place where my grandma lives.

We went through the same process to get home but backwards. It was fun to go to the market  but I ‘m not going again because of the stench.  So this is……..  

                                         THE END

   Four  River and An Ocean Adventure

Let me share with you an adventure you have never been on and  never heard of before. An adventure of four great rivers and the mighty Atlantic Ocean in our beautiful Guyana. My mother told me that we were going on a four river and one ocean trip with Aunt Lisa and her niece, nephews, son and coworkers. She also told me that we were going to Essequibo to visit my cousins along the way. I was as happy as a lark. 

My mother packed two huge bags for us the day we were leaving, our final destination was Vincintia's hotel in Santa Rosa.

Let me tell you about each river. Demerara is the river between regions 3 and 4. 

We drove over the Demerara Harbour Bridge for the first part of the journey to cross this river. The river was a murky brown and there was some vegetation. This is the widest river in Guyana and there was another bridge building beside the Demerara Harbour Bridge.

Essequibo is the river between regions 2 and 3. We took a ferry called Sebanto to cross this river for the second part of this journey. The river was also a murky brown and there are 365 islands in the Essequibo river. Some islands that I saw are Wakenaam, Leguan and Hogg Island. I could see colorful houses on the different islands. I remembered from my studies that this is the longest river in Guyana.

The Pomeroon river is the deepest river in Guyana. There was trash floating about and lots of coconut. The water was almost black.  We crossed this river by a speedboat. 

The Atlantic ocean was grayish to me. There  was still a lot of trash floating about and an occasional coconut shell. The sea was calm at that time. We passed some other boats and what looked like an oil rig. I thought that they ought to take care of the river better. We continued the journey with a speedboat.