Street Food – Dog variety

‘Ear wuh. I write bout dis before and yall know is true. Guyana gah de best food, period, hands down and anybody who think different, guh cook you own damn food. Hehehe. A set a man buse me and tell me my opinion is subjective. Hear story hay. Of  course  it  subjective  Budday, everything is subjective based on your perspective. Duh ent mean dat it ent true though. But hear wuh I talkin bout today – Street Food fuh dog specifically.

I remember the dog food explosion in Guyana when every two corner yuh pass, somebody gat a lil stand wid a set a red or blue $10 plastic bag full a dog food. Dem selling de bag a food fuh $100. True to Gawd, dem had mo dag food dan dog fuh feed Budday. Every corner had at least two dag food salesman. Every corner Budday. Dem stray dawg did walkin round suckin dem teeth cus yuh had dag food fuh pelt dag wid and dem deh suckin salt and dem cyant geh none ah dem own food dat deh selling at every street corner. Imagine dat? Insult to injury Buddy.

Some people seh was a Chiney Restaurant man pon Mandela Avenue who fuss come up wid de idea fuh get rid of all of dem left over food. But me ent sure is who fuss come up wid de idea fuh mek and sell dag food pon de street corner but yuh know how Guyanese dem fass and like copycat right? From de time dem see de fuss dog food man set up ‘e stand by de street corner and start sell dag food, an how dem cheap dag owners start flock de man fuh buy de dag food, everybody and dem grand mudda turn dag food salesman and start a lil business buying de bruk up dutty rice dat nobody din wan buy from dem grocery store man wid some lil beef scraps and start a dag food business.

Nex ting yuh know, dem same beef scraps and pork scraps dat the butcher man dem used fuh can’t gi way fuh free, dem same scraps start selling fuh a million dollars a pound Budday, me ent lying. In fact yuh know wuh happen? Dem same beef scraps and bone scraps and all dem other dutty meat scraps dat dem butcher man used to sneak out and dump in yuh alley drain behind yuh house, dem same scraps start sell mo expensive than regular beef. Me ent lying, is true.

‘Ear wuh does kill me out bout dis dag food business Budday… de ingredients dem. Now tell me why in heavens name, yuh gun put seasonings like garlic and onion and cassareep in dag food Budday? Dem  dag  doan  care  bout  dat! Some a dem man does even put Chiney spice, salt and cube and suh. Fuh wuh Budday, fuh wuh? Usually de food is got a set a rice, wid lil beef, chicken and pork scraps and bone in um. Because dem dag food cook want um look good and smell nice fuh de dag owner dem, dem does color de rice wid cassareep and Chiney spice. Dem does mek a kind a cookup ting widout coconut milk. Dat is nah shine rice right? Wait man, shine rice does doan gat coconut milk or um does doan gat peas? Is which one? Shoots. Hehehe.

Remember when we did lil we used to call dem road dag, rice eater right? Well is pure rice eater dem gah now budday.  Bout 95% of de food is rice and de res is some kind a mystery meat and some seasonings. Dem dag dis need a balanced meal tuh. Plus all dag food cook nah created equal. Yuh might find one or two dat might add in lil greens, one-foot-fowl and scrap vegetables from de market. Nah jus rice budday nah jus rice. If all dem dag getting is carbohydrates and bone wuh you tink gun happen? Is a set a fat dag waddling round de place. Now dem dag gun turn pig. Nah suh? Hehehe.

Plus as bad as it is fuh dem stray and road dag, fuh add insult to injury, dem does get a set a competition from de junkies on de road tuh. So in addition to de stray dag sucking dem teeth and crossing up dem eye when dem see a set a dog food sellin and dem cyant get none, dem also gat a set a competition from humans. Look on de bright side though, at least de Junkies mo picky dat dem road dag. Dem does want a portion a food wid nuff bone in um. Meh know dis part is nah laugh story but ah mean if dem Junkie gun pay dem $100 fuh a bag a food, gi dem man something fuh suck an chew nah man. Put nuff bone in de bag mistuh cook, put nuff bone in de bag. Hehehe.

We gun gaff latuh.

–AJ Massay

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An Expat in my own country. Oxymoron? Not really. How could I, being born and raised in Guyana, be an Expat in my own country you ask? Well stranger things have happened I’ll wager. Let’s dive into how this conundrum came to be.

Almost thirty years ago I departed these hallowed shores, hotly accompanied by a not insignificant measure of trepidation, counter balanced with an earnestness to explore new places, new cultures and new peoples. The weird juxtaposition of these two competing emotions, a strange thing in my breast. Usually I am gung-ho for new adventures and new experiences, figuratively chomping at the proverbial bit to conquer new places. I usually relished camping and going into unfamiliar circumstances coupled with the unfamiliarity of alien surroundings. However this time, worry gnawed doggedly at the pit of my stomach, at my foraging proclivities which were tempered with a mildly unsettling feeling of, possibly biting of a bit more than I could comfortably fit into my oral cavity, so to speak. Yuh know wuh meh a seh?.

I lived in the USA for about 20 years before I returned to Guyana the first time. I got a culture shock that left me aghast and knocked me slightly off kilter. Once familiar places were not so familiar anymore. The people were the same. They spoke with the same tilting Caribbean-esque manner that was so familiar to me. The vocalizations still had the same syntax and sentence construction that I had learnt early as a child and miss sorely when I converse with non-Guyanese. Native Guyanese speakers, minimize ‘th’ words to the point of non-existence, replacing th’s with ‘d’s’. For example, that is pronounced ‘dat’, those is pronounced ‘dose’ and there is pronounced ‘dere’. They also refer to the first person as ‘me’ instead of ‘I’ as in, “Me ent tink suh” meaning, “I do not think so”. There was still that informal approach to the language, tinged with a uniquely Guyanese flavor, that seemed to roll smoothly of the tongues of the denizens of the lush green land of my birth. It felt like music to my ear and I experienced a sharp, poignant feeling of being somewhere, intimately familiar and surprisingly calming at the same time. The familiar accents notwithstanding, there was a strange dissonance of ‘new cars’ and fancy buildings and familiar accents that jarred with the youthful perception of my homeland. Dis ting nah mek sense.

After my plane touched down and that initial prayer of thanks for safe travels went up, I remembered how before I had left Guyana all those years ago, it was not an uncommon sight to see cows and or horses nonchalantly crossing any street they felt like crossing.

They paid scant attention to irate drivers who urged them out of the roadway with such vehement cursing delivered with such aplomb and expertise that would make a shy sailor blush. For their efforts, the cows would momentarily halt their saunter and glance dispassionately at the irate driver, then casually continue his saunter across the road. In addition to the casually sauntering cows, drivers and other road users were also faced with small flocks of goats and sheep also sharing the roadway and also precariously darting across the road in the case of goats and blindly dashing across the road in the case of the sheep. Dem seh sheep dem stupidee.

Driving the East Coast road was particularly notorious for cows and horses either crossing at the most inopportune time or more dangerously lying on the warm roadway chewing their cud. Nighttime cud chewing and lying on the warm roadway by cows often precipitated horrendous vehicular accidents and tragedies. I remembered donkey carts and horse drawn carts (dray carts)

sharing the road with frolicking school children, darting and being on the lookout for mixed breed dogs which Guyanese lovingly referred to as ‘Rice Eaters’. All of these potential road hazards came tumbling back to my memory in cascading waves provoking an involuntary smile which crept hesitantly across my lips. All of these things used to happen over twenty years ago before I migrated. Wait for it, wait for it… didn’t I tell you to wait for it? Well all these things still happen today in Guyana. Yuh tink it easy? Well um nah easy.

One of the first things that struck me about present day Guyana after I left the airport, was the preponderance of ‘new cars’ that I saw on the roadway. One thing that any self-respecting Guyanese take a lot of pride in, I mean like a whole lot of pride in, is their cars. In the USA for the most part a car is a thing that pretty much got you from point A to point B. Other than ‘chest thumpingly’ displaying the coiffured and pedigreed brand name and model of your automobile, read that as car, there was not a lot of decorative ‘frills’ that Americans deck out their cars with. Not so with my fellow Guyanese, not so at all. A car was a thing to be celebrated, a status symbol par excellence, a four wheeled trophy to be rolled out, decked out, decorated and spruced up. Any Guyanese car worth its salt, must be decked out with a thumping sound system, with a graphic equalizer and heavy pounding bass speakers and tweeters. It must have a fancy lighting scheme, either inside or outside or, yep you guessed it, both inside and outside of the vehicle, It must have a loud musical horn, and fancy number plate, please for heaven’s sake, do not forget the fancy number plate trimmings, to do such would be sacrilege of the highest order. This description of automobile splendor is most rigidly adhered to, almost to religious fanaticism and fervor, by mini-bus drivers, who then turn around and take it to the ‘nth’ degree. Yep, ah we people dis.

When I got to Georgetown

and saw the splendor of the young skyscraper buildings and other lesser aspirants, I almost did not recognize it. If I had been instantly transplanted into the very heart of Georgetown without being made aware of where I was going to, I wager that I would have felt as if I had been transplanted into an unknown country in which the citizens of said country, spoke with a distinctly Guyanese accent and vernacular, complete with celebrated colorful Guyanese-esque expletives and other multi-hued, read that as colorful, accoutrements. There was a certain colorful life and a hustle and bustle which I experienced there that was unlike anything that I had experienced while living in Guyana before. Me did cyant believe um.

The women seemed prettier too and more saucily decked out than I remembered. They displayed a chic, self-possessed and well made up exterior. There was also a certain distinct awareness of themselves and their worth, which is typically emblematic of Guyanese women. The guys were all in close fitting jeans and slacks, designer tees and the ubiquitous ‘slippers’ (flip flops). Rubber slippers, leather slippers, designer slippers and handmade slippers. I scratched my head trying to remember if I had even seen so many men wearing slippers in other parts of the world that I had been. Seemed to me that there should have been a quota of some sort with regards Guyanese men and boys wearing these floppy accoutrements on their feet at one time. I am thinking that a ratio of 30/70 would have nicely sufficed, instead of the 80/20 that ruled the land. Well this is my Guyana, the ‘slipper’ capital of the world! Wuh we gun do eh?

I was not sure where to go to change my US dollars into Guyanese dollars. I racked my brain trying to remember which were the the popular cambios and money exchangers. Not coming up with anything worthwhile at that moment, I asked my driver and he took me to a cambio on Water Street, which was instantly familiar, and I got some money changed. I speak Creolese and Standard English. I nimbly put away my Standard English, eagerly dusted off my Creolese and prepared it for use like a bright shiny new object. I might well have spared myself the trouble. Unbeknownst to me, my appearance screamed AMERICAN and telescoped this message ahead of me like strong perfume wafting off of a proverbial ‘French lady of the night’. I valiantly tried to muster the idioms, vernacular, ruddy accent and cadence of a typical home grown Guyanese in speech. Honestly, to me I sounded perfect but I could see from the way heads were turned in my direction upon hearing my voice, that I was not as successful as I had initially thought. “Oh shoots! I thought, prices are going to jump up for this ‘American’. I am going to be given the ‘special’ rate that is reserved for Americans and other foreigners. See? Like I said, Expat in my own country! See wuh meh a tell yuh?

So then here are ten reasons that I felt like an Expat in my own country:

• Unfamiliar surroundings at the Airport such as baggage carousel, air condition and a bunch of other fancy stuff all over the place.
• A lot of fancy cars in Guyana and not nearly as much ‘ole cars’ chugging and smoking down the road and genuinely being a polluting nuisance.
• New buildings along the East Bank such as the Princess hotel and the National Stadium and a bunch of pedestrian over-walks across the East Bank highway.
• A totally transformed downtown Georgetown with large multi-storied modern looking buildings and facilities.
• Unfamiliar driving routes in and around Georgetown; lots of one-way streets and streets with unfamiliar names.
• Boys and girls decked out in American styles and fashion. (Notable exception – preponderance of men and boys wearing slippers)
• Budding international malls with escalators which reminds me of buildings I saw in Trinidad and Barbados and other Caribbean countries.
• Fancy movie theaters with an international presentation. Totally unlike the movie theaters of like Metropole, Globe and Liberty that I had been familiar with.
• Elegant formal dining restaurants like Aagman Restaurant, New Thriving and  Maharaja Palace.
• International hotels popping up all over the place adding style and distinction and a type of first-world-like flair on the the Georgetown skyline.

All these new business places, new fine dining restaurants, unfamiliar vehicles in guyana, vendors treating me like I was a born American as evidenced by sudden price hikes on their merchandise, and the rubbernecking upon hearing my accent that I swear vehemently to you, I did not have, unfamiliarity with the pricing scheme for taxis, mini buses, ferry crossings and water taxi prices all combine to make me feel like an Expat in my own country. Well eh eh, me a wan Expat in me own country now!

I got a job while in Texas with Keller Brown and Root (KBR) for job located in Georgetown Guyana. Was not too interested initially in going to Guyana a country which up to that point I knew nothing about. I had previously worked for a number as a Contractor for KBR in Iraq and then in Afghanistan. These were war zone jobs so I was thinking that working in a third world country would be much easier and so I decided to take the plunge.

Initially I expected Guyana to be like the other Caribbean countries as it is regarded as being a part of the Caribbean. I had travelled to Jamaica and Belize and Barbados and so I figured it would be pretty much the same thing. I was both right and wrong.

The cadence of the country does resemble that of Caribbean countries however if you come here expecting white powdery sand beaches and azure waters with modulating steel pan music wafting in the background you are going to be sorely disappointed. You will get the same type of delicious well seasoned foods and tasty beverages but forget about the idyllic carefree beaches as there are none here.

Because of the confluence of the mighty Amazon river in Brazil augmented by the impressive Essequibo river both emptying into the Atlantic ocean, the waters at most of the beaches along the coastland adopts a khaki colored appearance which gets a bit muddy during the dry season. I have been to a beautiful blue water lake at Linden which does fit the bill of sumptuously blue water and powdery sand. This beautiful lake is ensconced in a defunct bauxite extraction excavation crater and is about seventy miles from the capital city of Georgetown aback the interior town of Linden.

Even though this country is the only English speaking country on the South American continent, the ordinary Guyanese man in the street speaks English or a variation of the language with a certain cadence and with smattering of African and Hindi words with an accent that may make make it a bit difficult to understand or follow. One of the main problems is that certain words are pronounced with a tilt that may make common words unrecognizable. However with time, the Expat will come to get the hang of the manner in which English is spoken. The further one gets away from the capital city the more difficult it may be to understand and possibly be understood without practice

The Expat will need to become acquainted with various Cambio’s around the city and other main hubs. These Cambio’s and banks are the facilities for exchanging US dollars into Guyanese dollars. Cambio’s are less safe than banks but carry the dual benefit of being more convenient and speedy to transact your money exchange. You may want to juxtapose speed and convenience with value. It helps if you develop a ‘contact’ with whom you may safely transact your money exchange needs. I tend to use Cambios along Regent Street which is one on the main thoroughfares in Georgetown or along Water street another main thoroughfare. There are also numerous unregulated money exchangers along America Street but this is not for the faint hearted.

If you are on a budget, Airbnb is a good resource for a place to stay in Guyana. You would need to be careful about the location of the property and it is a good idea to use a property that has security bars on the windows and doors. Personally I like houses in South Georgetown commonly referred to as ‘South’, Queenstown, parts of Campbellsville and Kitty. These locations have the added benefit of being within ten to fifteen minutes of downtown Georgetown.

It goes without saying that one should be particularly careful about walking on the roads at night especially if you are alone. Even if you are with others you should still be careful. The streets of Guyana could be a bit confusing to drive on. It is a good idea to travel around by taxi until you become familiar with the style of driving on the roadways. Taxis are plentiful and should be utilized as much as possible for transportation.