My wife Annette is very big on Guyana. Soon after I met her, some 10 years ago, showing pictures of the Guyana interior at a THAG function where I was appearing, that came across loud and clear to me. Indeed, when a relationship between us started and marriage was in the air, she let me know, quietly but firmly, that she wasn’t living anywhere else but here, which was a factor in my returning to Guyana permanently.
That’s the background. Last week, some 11 years later, on a Sunday visit to Canal Number One, I was standing by the Boeraserie waterway, and before I knew what was happening, Annette whips out her cell phone and starts interviewing me about my memories from that area. In case you haven’t seen the video on Facebook, she asked me if I had any memories of the Conservancy, and I related a particular incident which happened when I was living in Vreed-en-Hoop.
As many people know, the Boeraserie Conservancy waterway runs behind the sugar estates along West Demerara and is easily reached aback of Vreed-en-Hoop, Windsor Forest, Leonora, etc. My Vreed-en-Hoop friend Neville deRamos, a real outdoors man, took me once on an outing in the Conservancy starting from aback of Plantain Walk on the West Bank. It was about 6 or so of us, both sexes, and we were up and down the area, went over into Essequibo, did some serious fishing on Saturday, slept under a thatched roof shed that night, and set out to fish again the next day, trolling for lukunani, with one guy throwing cast net from the pegasse, pulling in scores of patwa, houri and sunfish. The area was teeming with fish, so much so that sunfish in the water, scared by the engine, would leap high in the air and several actually landed right in the boat – true story.
