Bartica!

Last weekend I went to visit my British friend in Bartica.  Here are a few brief observations.

Bartica is a prety laid back town.  It's about an hour up the Essequibo River, and its the last town before you really get into the jungle, so there's a lot of mining influence.  This also means there are a fair amount of Brazilians there.  I think the mining money and Brazilian influence makes it a pretty laid-back party place, moreso than other parts of Guyana.

Drank a lot of beer with some other white guy volunteers.  There are a couple of older British and Australian guys and a couple of Peace Corps volunteers as well.  Most of the Guyanese people I hang out with drink hard liquor because its cheaper, but it was nice to have a change of pace.  The place they normally drink at is called Ease the Stress, which is a pretty fantastic name.  At Ease the Stress I saw a couple small groups of women out at the bar, and even some mixed-gender groups.  This is something I haven't seen in Anna Regina very often, so I think it can be chalked up to Bartica's laid-back mentality.

Lots of beer.

Straightforward enough, I think.

The WorldTeach teachers live about 3 miles up the only road leaving Bartica, at Three Mile Secondary School (a functional name if I ever heard one).  Cabs are pretty expensive, but there's a semi-regular bus service.  Since there's pretty much only one road, sometimes you can get other people to stop and give you a ride, or pay bus fare for a cab.  So in the morning Luke and I are waiting for the bus to go into town, but a guy with a lady passenger stops and gives us a ride.  The lady turns around and stares at me for like a minute or too, and makes an excited noise when I took my sunglasses off.  Then she turns around and proceeds to reach her arm beside the seat and grab my leg.  She didn't say anything.  I sad "hey now!" or something, and that was that.  Then she did it again.  Longer.  I said "Excuse me miss, I don't even know your name!" which she thought was funny.  She repeated it to the driver and then said some other stuff to him that I couldn't really understand (I'm still kind of hit and miss with the Creolese).  Nothing else happened, and the guy let us out along the road at the Australian guys neighborhood.  And that was that.  I don't think I've ever been sexually harassed before.  We watched some Premier League football.  It was nice.

Three Mile Secondary School is about 2 years old.  The teacher quarters where the guys are staying have ceiling fans, 110V electricity and outlets.  Marek has an air-conditioned computer lab basically to himself.  Both apartments have refridgerators.  Basically, I hate them.

Bartica sits at the confluence of three rivers: The Essequibo, Mazaruni and the Cayuni.  I'm not sure about that last one, but I think it starts with a C.  Anyway, Luke took me on this jungle walk just off the main road about halfway between the school and town.  There was a raised wooden path through some swampy areas, I saw some sort of prehistoric palm tree thing, observed some butterflies, typical jungle stuff.  The path lead to a small sand beach along one of the rivers (Mazaruni maybe?).  There were a few kids wandering around, but we pretty much had the place to ourselves.  Apparently the beach is a Sunday thing.  Bartica also has a bigger beach in the town proper.  Anyway, the water was nice, we played frisbee with the kids and had a great time.

Note the kid in the tree.  They were doing flips off the branch into about 4 feet of water.

Bartica has hills!  That might not be surprising or noteworthy to anyone else, but I don't think there's anywhere that's more than about 3 feet above sea level anywhere on the Essequibo Coast or in Georgetown, so I hadn't seen a hill in about 5 months.  So I was excited.  Around Bartica is also pretty jungle-y, which I also thought was pretty fantastic.  Tropical coastal plain is cool and all, but I liked seeing all the trees.

Transport was a bit of an adventure as usual.  To get to Bartica from Anna Regina, I have to go to Parika, across the Essequibo River.  All the boats leave from that side of the river.  So I was running late on Friday, as usual.  The last boat supposedly leaves at 5.  I got off the boat in Parika at 5:15.  I think I caught the last boat up the river.  Unfortunatley I couldn't really enjoy the ride because I was jammed in the front of the boat and it was dark.  However, it was uneventful.  Leaving Bartica was another story.  I got to the stelling (boat dock) around 3pm.  Last boat leaves Parika for the Essequibo Coast at 5.  The boat ride is an hour long, so I had plenty of time.  But I just missed a full boat at 3, and had to wait for the next one to fill.  That took an hour, but I still had some time, plus a little last-boat wiggle room on my side in Parika.  What I didn't account for was engine trouble.  We got about 3 minutes down the river and one of the engines isn't running, and wont' crank. They eventually get it working, but anytime they shut off the engine it takes about 5 mins to get both engines up and running and get up to full speed.  Still ok on time.  Then we randomly have to meet up with some other boat (it has police on the side, but was full of regular looking people) to trade captains or something.  More engine issues.  Then, I think because of the issues, we were burning through fuel at an abnormal rate.  So we had to stop twice to get more gas.  A one hour boat trip instead took about 2 1/2 hours.  I did not make the boat home.  Fortunately, I have some friends (other WorldTeach teachers) who live on the Parika side of the coast, so I was able to stay with them.  I had to get up at 5 or so to catch the bus and boat and cab back to school.  I made it to school around 8:45, late, but not late enough to miss any classes.  It was a bit of a stressful end to an otherwise relaxing and wonderful weekend.  I think I'll be returning to Bartica at least once in the new year, its a really nice place.