Cooking Chutney

Ingredients
- Sweat
- Bollywood
- Dancehall
- Bad speakers
- Lousy DJ that talks way too much
- Wining
- Rum

Recipe
Get to the national stadium and put half the population of Georgetown in there. Add some bad speakers, and a DJ that loves to listen to himself. Now it’s time for the most crucial ingredients beware that you make sure that there’s just as much bollywood as dancehall in it. It should be 50/50. Top it up with lots of rum (according to your own taste), wining (local dance style) and lots of sweat.
Than you’ve got a Chutney concert Guyanese style. Bon appétit!

That was without a doubt the highlight of our weekend. Now that I come to think of it most of the weekend had to do with rum, food and dancing. We’ve been clubbing, had excellent roti and drank loads of rum at a local so called rum bar. Apparently the best rum in the world comes from Guyana. But then again every country in this region claims to have the best rum in the world. The Guyanese rum is called: El Dorado after an old legend which is about a hidden city somewhere in the jungle which is supposed to be made out of gold entirely. Hundreds of years ago several adventurers tried to find the city but up until now it has never been found. I’ll keep my eyes open…

We have also experienced ‘upper class Georgetown’ by swimming in the pool of the Pegasus hotel. This is I think a one time event since it is crazy expensive and being development workers and all (and the salary that comes along with it) that doesn’t really go together. The entrance fee was already 11 US dollar, that’s like twice as expensive as a ticket to some huge swim paradise in Holland with numerous slides and everything. I think this pool was only maybe 10 x 5 meters or so. Monopoly monopoly.

In general the prices here are not in line with the general prices in development countries, everything is quite expensive. Being here in Georgetown where there are still luxury items available it is hard to adjust your lifestyle and leave those items in the shelves simply because they are just too expensive now since your salary is maybe only 10% of what it was back home. But those problems will solve itself when I will leave for Annai without probably any of those items and most likely only rice, cassava, piranha and bush meat available.

This week I will probably hear more details about my placement since Timothy (my programme manager) is back. I did find out last week that another volunteer will be going to Annai, probably a guy from Uganda. He’s had visa problems so didn’t arrive yet. Will keep you posted on that one.

After these first couple of days I can say that blending in already starts. I don’t feel claustrophobic anymore when sleeping under my mosquito net, I’m actually enjoying the cold showers, I don’t hear the crickets right under my window anymore at night and I even start to get numb when people call me whitey, blondie (why they say that is a mystery to me, since I always thought I was red), baby or whatever, I found out that rum and coke is not the drink but rum and sprite and I started to get used to the idea that I will sweat every single moment of the day. So yeah I’m doing fine!