Take me Home - Taking the Red Eye from New York - 14 October 2003
Decisions, decisions
Cash crisis
Boxing clever
Guyana ñ Land of Many Emotions
Oh brave new world that has such queues in it.
Counter measures
Whistle stop tour of NY
What now?
Notes on a Small Island
I donít believe it.
There it was, the options for getting out of Guyana were limited to:
a) Truck back down to Brazil and then thousands of extra kilometres,
b) Take an illegal boat to Venezuela
c) Go back to the UK early and ship Bertha back for some much needed repairs
(we had planned to go back in December for a good friends wedding, anyway, and if we carry on now there will be shippage costs from Columbia to Panama)
Personally, I did not want to go back. I had already had the illness scare and had gone through the dilemmas and stress and had made the decision to continue. I now felt very deflated at the idea of going back.
My choice would have been to take the truck to Lethem and carry on. Although this had been our original plan when we first arrived in Georgetown Pat was not really interested anymore. It is hard for me to argue with him, since it is him who rides the bike and him who must to keep her running. In these circumstances I tend to let Pat make the decision, as it will be his problem if we carry on. So I reluctantly went with the flow.
I guess that although I had given Hippy the choice about carrying on or not after her mini-paralysis, I really wanted her to see another neurologist and get the all clear. Essentially, I knew that sheíd brave it out, but if she were ever to get another bout, Iíd feel incredibly responsible for allowing her to carry on.
Bertha by now has a set of defects as long as your arm. (I emailed the webmaster with that very same list and if your arm is about one and a half pages of A4 long, then I am correct). The paperwork for the bike is up for its annual renewal ñ this was pretty straightforward last year but only because Fi had come back to England and brought stuff back for us.
As Hippy has said, weíd been planning to come back in mid-November for a wedding, anyway and so it seemed that kismet was guiding our hand.
So we set into motion plans to return. Shippage was remarkably cheap, $125 for 1m3 and we thought with careful dismantling we should be able to get it down to 2m3. Certainly tons cheaper than what we had heard it costs from Columbia to Panama. The ship travelling to the UK is called Jane, after my sister, (Come on Hippy, there have been many Janes through history and a considerable number of them are more famous than your sis!) so maybe this is kismet after all.
Flights ñ well thatís another thing. As with many things the obvious route is not necessarily the cheapest. Travelling direct from Guyana to UK was £800 each whereas taking separate flights via New York was only $500 pounds each, with almost a full day in NY (life was never meant to be logical). Only one problem when I asked whether they took plastic and answer was ëNoí.
Now that was a bit of a shock. When we had been here 6 years ago, although there were no cash points, travel centres did take visa. They expected us to pay for the flights, tickets with taxes over £1000 pounds, in cash, when there are no cash points to access our un-hard earned cash in the UK. We had always travelled with a certain amount of hard cash, but this was a lot of money and we would still have a week in Georgetown to try and feed ourselves. We toddled back to the mosque to check our finances, did we have enough?
We searched for every secret little stash of cash, we had just enough to feed ourselves for the week and pay for the flights. Although, we were staying at the mosque for free and I am certain Fazi and Mansoor would have happily fed us for nothing, we are hopeless at blagging. I knew that the family had had the expense of all 3 children starting new schools with new uniforms etc. and the expense of moving, it was the least we could do to contribute a few groceries during our stay.
I was frustrated by the fact that we had money sitting in the UK, and no way of accessing it. Guyana will have to move on if it expects tourists to come and spend vast sums of money on eco-tourism with no use of the flexible friends.
It would have been nice to buy nice souvenirs to take back to our support network back in UK. The webmaster, Will, who spends both his time and money updating the website for readers; my sister, Mary, who has been carefully monitoring our finances while we are away and even getting tax back for us; other friends and family who have cheered us up or just kept us up to date with gossip. But we were now pretty much skint, of accessible cash. We managed to rustle up enough for a couple of bottles of second best rum and some purple heart bowls and that was it. Sorry fellows, we will try make it up to you in England.
Joy of joys the shippage was down to $85 per 1m3 over a single cubic metre, which has to be about the cheapest shippage for the distance in the world. We were pleased as it left us with a little more spare money to play with.
Pat worked methodically to make a crate fit for a Bertha to travel in style to England.
I did my best to acquire timber at knock down prices but only managed the same rate as the locals. Not really a great problem as 1 B.M., which means 1 foot by one foot by one inch, of highest quality tropical hard wood cost 30 pence. Hippy was trying to persuade me to build a really fancy box with planking sides and everything, but getting the nails through this stuff was hard enough just on the frame and so ply was use to make the sides up. Whole lot came to about 25 quid.
There is photographic evidence of my inability to measure correctly. You will notice if the picture gets posted that Bertha is hanging over the end of the crate by a foot and there is a huge gap left at the other. After a bit more design and bodge the thing came together and we hauled ass down to the quay to assemble the crate and disassemble Bertha to fit in. The crate made its way on a horse cart ñ bugger if it wasnít heavy. Good thing we didnít go for a complete hardwood box, although it wouldnít have cost any more to ship as they were not concerned at al about weight, only size.
I was assisted by a bevy of local guys who told me where to put nails in ñ I would have thought it was fairly clear that I knew what I was doing (?). One of the guys did in fact make perfect sense and it turned out that he was the maintenance joiner working on the wharf. Just as all was complete he said that had I simply turned up with the bike he would have done the lot for me including providing the wood. Thanks for telling me! Seems I have a long way to go before I qualify as a blagger of world standard.
We had gone for a trial run to check the old girl would indeed fit into 2 m3. Seeing poor Bertha dismembered on her elbows at the front, she looked very sad. It was not a dignified way to travel. Readers may wonder why I worry about the dignity of a bunch of nuts and bolts. But dear Bertha is more than a bike; she was cared for us and struggled through with us. Although we have overloaded her and expected too much of her, she has always carried us to a place of safety.
Guyana ñ Land of Many Emotions
Guyana had been for us a mixture of emotions.
Good
improvements in infrastructure
seeing some of our ex students doing so well and remembering us so fondly
rekindling our friendship with the Baksh and Furoze families
being in a country that we understood and were familiar with
Bad
it was the only place I had any illness of consequence
there had been a lot of waiting, and frustration
Bertha had been made more ill by getting sand in her seals
although the mosque had made us very welcome I couldnít help feeling that as agnostics we were interlopers in a hallowed domain
going back to England now - I fear this is the end. At the least it is certainly a negative way to leave.
Sadly, still many Guyanese do not see ways forward for their country and the biggest export is probably still people emigrating.
Sadness that some people we knew and respected were no longer with us, especially a lovely little lad who had won a scholarship to Cuba and got drunk and killed himself with a motorbike.
Hanging around in Georgetown did mean that we had a chance to meet up with RenÈ who had been an ex-VSO and now works for UNICEF, and his wife with whom we had a lovely Brazilian lunch with wonderful company. An ex student Richard Narine wandered into the mosque after seeing us on the street, invited us to meet his other half and then did not turn up, in usual Guyanese style. Hey-ho! Mansoor muttered comments about Hindus and arrangements. Point taken. He may be a little biased on the religious front.
Luckily for us, Amna (Maureen) is a Guyanese friend of ours who is now leaving in NY and kindly agreed to host us for our nights stay in NY. Things were beginning to slot into place.
As we were off to England, Mansoor asked us if we would do a little delivering for him, some Islamic literature from another branch of the organisation in the UK. It was the least that we could do for him, after all of his hospitality. We were also quite keen on the possible mileage in wind up factor in New York, with their Islamic paranoia - excellent!
The mini-Bakshs had managed to pick up ëred eyeí at school and had passed it on to Fazi, and so far we were avoiding contamination.
Oh brave new world that has such queues in it.
We arrived at JFK with a huge back log of people going through immigration the queue snaked back and forth for seemingly more miles than a set of hairpins through the Andes. Whether it was that the majority of the clientele from the West Indies is dark in colour or they were just short staffed back the queue was moving painfully slowly. (Come on Hippy, the domestic passport holderís queue was horrendously long, too) I was suddenly hit by huge regret that I had contacted Amna who would be waiting for us the other side of arrivals. If we had gone with plan B and just whiled away the hours at the airport we would have been glad of the opportunity to was up some of the hours queuing as it was I was feeling more and more guilty that we were putting out a dear friend. To try and get the children and elderly through they set up a separate queue and shut it again when they realised that there were too many. There was a shift change at 12 midnight, and the number of officers reduced and the queue moved even more slowly, some staff were told that if they were not working the next they were on compulsory overtime and they were now grumpy officers.
Around 2am, after over 3 hours in the queue, we finally went onto a mini queue in front of an officer. Hey presto progress. Then the supermarket syndrome! It is sodís law that whichever queue you join it is the slowest. Although the queue was short there were half a dozen unaccompanied children at the counter, having complications. Next was a lady who spent 15 minutes arguing and then got led away by the officials.
Finally. Official- ëYou have no visaí
ëNo, we are British we donít need a visa to enter USAí
Official- ëBut you have the wrong arrival form, you must get a green form from over thereí (the form had been given to us, on the flight from Guyana)
At this point the thought of going back to the back of the queue, still snaking its way across immigration, was enough to drive a person insane. He did tell us not to re-queue but to come straight back to him with completed green forms. A little relieved but cursing the staff on the plane we went search of green forms.
CompletedÖ.back to the manÖ..and out. Remarkable!
We gazed around the people anxiously waiting and spotted Amna in the crowds. She looked tired yet relieved that we had finally made it through. Her brother-in-law whisked us away to Queens and the familyís compact apartment where they had generously made room for us in the living room. Despite the fact we were only known to Amna, the family were warm and welcoming despite the fact that we were arriving at an unearthly hour of the day, sorry night. Anyone who knows my aversion to being woken up early will understand that I have incredible respect for those that can function amiably in the early hours. To the Ali family I salute you!
I awoke with ëred eyeí in my left eye. Marvellous! Realising that it is clearly infectious I kept my distance now from my hosts. I feared another SARS situation developing.
Whilst Amna went off to church in the morning, her brother in-law, Shaheed, took on responsibility as tour guide, driving us over to Manhattan to see the sights. American cars on the whole are huge but even they are dwarfed by the size of American buildings. Luckily this was a Sunday so the traffic was bearable but directions were less than helpful. For some reason directions are given after you have taken an exit to tell you what road you are on rather than telling you before you get onto it. (Glad to notice here that my navigator is preparing her knowledge of signing in the states ready for our arrival there. 10 out of 10 for homework.) Hence we were frustrated by realising too late that we were heading down slip roads (err, ramps, surely. Hippy) for the wrong destination.
Shaheed worked hard to give us a good day and was in a dilemma when his security firm informed him that his burglar alarm back in New Jersey was going off. So with a flight to catch early that evening we did a major interstate detour to check on the house. Being a little British and anal about check in times we were getting more than a little stressed by the casual attitude of our checking in time. Having seen an enormous queue of traffic leaving Manhattan on our way in, I was not convinced by Shaheedís confidence that there would be no problems with traffic on the way back to the apartment to collect our stuff before the flight. Guyanese and lax timing go hand in hand. It is in fact ëtraditionalí and there is a song by the same name by a band called Trade Winds.
It seemed rude to get angry with a man who was being otherwise so thoughtful and generous, but our stress about the passage of time, seemed to elicit an inverse response from our host who reassured us that we would have plenty of time and we only needed 3 quarters of an hour for check in anyway. The queue of the previous night was still etched in my memory and the officials had warned us that similar problems may arise that day. There was a problem ñ the Guyanese are not subtle in their speech and they tend to speak their mind and nothing comes between them and a good feed. So our clocked comments that maybe it would be best to skip lunch and head back as time was pressing on, went straight over his head much in the way that irony and sarcasm bypasses the American intellect. We were torn between the British politeness thing to our kindly host who was insisting on feeding us and our concerns about missing our flight.
Thank you! The food incidentally was some of the best Chinese I have ever eaten!
As each minute ticked by it was hard to relax over the beers he was offering. As tension rose, our pointed comments said in increasingly clipped tones were taken seriously and we headed back to Queens from New Jersey.
We hit traffic. His protestations that he hadnít expected a problem, met stony silence from his passengers.
We ground to a halt. We considered contingency plans of someone at the apartment picking up our stuff and meeting at the airport and us heading straight there. I worried; I had visions of something vital like our camera with the flights tickets and passport being left behind. It was clear that Shaheed was now sharing our concern and rang the apartment to pass on contingency plans.
The traffic began to shuffle forward and became a steady flow. We were reprieved. The Gods were with us again.
To save time at the apartment block we were dropped at the front to rush up the stairs to collect our stuff. The lift wasnít working; we nipped through a door to the stairs. Simultaneously the heavy metal security door slammed shut and we realised that we were not in the stairwell but the underground car park. New York security meant that this door could only be opened with a key, of course.
We were running late to catch our flight and trapped in an underground car park.
Banging on the door to try and alert attention met nil response. Either there was no-one in ear shot or NY paranoia about dangerous people meant that our shouts for help were being ignored as those of mad dangerous lunatics who are best avoided.
Eventually a lady answered our calls. We asked her find anyone with a key. She left and did not return.
I wandered into the car park trying to find a window to prise open or some way of opening the roller door from inside. I looked in vain, while the tensions of the afternoon were crystallised in Patrickís frantic shouting through the steel door to anyone anywhere who may be able to hear us. The seconds turned to minutes the minutes to 10 to 12.
ëPatrick is that you?í the dulcet tones of a chuckling Amna rang through the door.
All the frustration of the day, exploded within Pat as he caustically retorted with ëYes, I donít see itís a bloody laughing matter! Get a fÖ..g key! Always calm in a crisis! Turned out that while I was hammering on the door and Hippy was looking around, she had missed the push button that opens the outside door of the garage ñ I guess we were all embarrassed by our performances that afternoon.
She left quickly muttering reassurances that she would get the caretaker. Within minutes we were released and Amna explained that her apparent pÖ taking out of our plight was more to do with awkward surprise than anything else.
We got out, got our bags, made our farewells and hooned to the airport, hardly drawing breath as we did so. The check in staff at the airport seemed totally unconcerned by our arrival 45 minutes before the flight was due to leave and so all was well that ended well.
Poor Hippy was increasingly suffering with her eye infection, though and was justly worried about a) spreading the infection to everyone on the plane and b) her problems being magnified by the dry air in the cabin.
And so it was that we arrived back in England ñ tired, infected and depressed. Thankfully, our good friend Bry was waiting for us and whisked us away to Nottingham in our old Polo. I should point out that she picked us up at the unearthly hour of 6.30, which is above and beyond the call of duty. Thank you Bry you are a star.
We now sit out the wait for Bertha, picking up work where we can, living in other folksí houses. Meanwhile, we have bought Baby Bertha ñ the 800 cc of the same bike but 3 years older. Why? You may ask. Well, quotes for fixing the frame were in the region of £500, a new gearbox another 250 and the forks another 150. In other words, to get just the basic parts for repairing Bertha would be best part of a grand. There was little to hold me back when I came across a low mileage model in squeaky-clean condition. The plan is to graft all the special bits onto the old bike and create a new Bertha. We thought long and hard about what constitutes the heart and soul of the bike and reckoned that any serious changes would invalidate the ìone bike goes around the worldî claim and opted for the more practical approach.
We have had to raid the Watsonís cellar for suitable work clothes. We appear to have lost a big bag of shoes, any suggestions from anyone? Yes you heard us correctly ëworkí! This is more of a culture shock than you might imagine. Being back in the UK means a potential drain on finances unless we do some ëworkí, so temporarily against my better judgement Pat and I have rejoined the rat race. Itís not the actual work that worries me, although teaching teenagers is scary enough, it is the thought that I could be on that slippery slope back to the rut of normality. I can only hold on to the return tickets to New York as a lifeline to save me from sliding.
Currently we are looking into sponsorship deals with various companies although we seem to be getting little response. We have return tickets to New York for mid-January and that is all that is certain about the future. Our choices seem to be to fly into NY and onwards either to Miami or Guyana, meet up with the bike there and carry on. The pros and cons of continuing from Guyana or travelling down from the US to Panama and then back up to Canada are still in the melting pot. We feel that either of these options are in the spirit of the round the world trip as we would have had to ship from Colombia to Panama anyway and weíve already ìdoneî Colombia.
Being back is a little weird we have had to re-acquaint ourselves with all manner of white goods, washing machines, dish washers, etc. etc. The other problem is that now everyone not only has a TV and a video but also a DVD which leads to a whole caravan of remote controls and all manner of confusion for those who have been in the technological dark ages.
Coming back to the UK, makes you see what others donít notice with fresh eyes. The simplest things can impress. You turn on the tap and there is a choice of hot or cold water and when it emerges it is clear and colourless ñ a luxury compared the cold brown stuff that came from the taps in Guyana for some of the day. The street lights work. There are no power cuts. Rubbish is collected and disposed of for you. Even wee little country roads have tarmac on. Above all we are back in the land of dry humour. Even the lady speaking broad Boltonian in the photo shop, had razor sharp wit. These are the things that make Britain good.
Traffic ñ how well people drive in general in the UK. No continual horn use, people indicate before they move and radical things like that. Some new complicated registration system for cars designed to confuse.
People - so many old people! You hardly see grey hair in developing countries people tend to die earlier and donít have the dignity of growing old.
People seem perturbed by our lack of a plan and seem comforted by the fact that we are planning on doing the conventional thing and working. Personally I was shell- shocked by being back and not back at the same time. Tenants are in our houses so it wasnít straightforward about where we would stay. Bry and Micheal have been very tolerant of our indecision and generally blagging a roof over our heads. We thank you.
One would think that in a developed country like this - things would be more efficient ñ wrong. Where in Guyana I found a neurologist and got an appointment that afternoon, here I wait 10 days for an appointment with my GP, 4 weeks to receive an appointment date which then tells me there is a 24 week waiting list and I will be told a date 4 weeks before it. This of course is 2 months after my flight to NY leaves. Excellent ñ not! Everyone tells me to go private. I had wanted to avoid going private on principle rather than on cost (which is odd for me). I know that the more people opt out of the system the less pressure there is on the government to have a system that works for all. Secondly, I know that there will be people in a worse condition than myself that will be waiting the full 24 weeks.
A cheque book that was meant to arrive in 5 days, took 11 and went to the wrong address. For some reason in developing countries I expect things not to work and are pleased when they do, but when the systems donít work here I wonder what the advantage is in being ëdevelopedí ñ or maybe the truth is every country has a long way to go. Or is development regressive?
Iím sure we all agree that Hippy would be delighted to hear if there were a new Victor Meldrew series in the offing. Perhaps she and I might audition for the part!