Richmond Housing Scheme on the Essequibo Coast has been in existence for more than 30 years and a haven to the 1,000+ people who made it their home over the years. Built on rice fields, the housing scheme is bordered by Henrietta and La Belle Alliance.
Seulall (only name given) was inside his house with his four boys. He enthusiastically nominated his neighbour Bibi Husman as the best person for me to speak to before calling his sons outside to pose for a photo on a tyre swing they had made themselves.
“I came here in 1988, so almost 31 years since I’ve come here and the community was very, very poor,” Husman told me. “It didn’t have streets, just tracks. In 1992 after Dr Cheddi Jagan take over, he establish the new housing scheme here, before it was the old housing scheme. We had light but we never had water. We used to go till to Anna Regina, it had a pump station right where the car park at and that’s where we used to get our water from; or we depend on the rain.
