An array of local crafts showcases one of Guyana’s call names: The Land of Many Waters. But water isn’t always plentiful.
In Guyana, just as in the U.S., small talk often centers around the weather.
“Me nah able wi dis sun.”
“Place hot bad, bai.”
“When de rain gon stop?”
In the U.S., this talk often feels safe – everyone experiences weather, but no one gets too fired up about it. But here in Guyana, the weather influences our day to day lives far more than it ever did back home. Talk of climate change becomes a lot more pertinent when you are so dependent on the rain and sun.
Farmers, no matter where they are in the world, are attuned to the weather – Guyana is no different. But, with most farming out here meaning small hand-tended local plots, there is no real recourse in cases of flooding or drought. Irrigation and drainage systems are what they were hundreds of years ago: ditches and pails. Big farms in developed countries can afford interventions like importing water, pumping out floods, seeding clouds. Guyana cannot. So when things go bad, the food supply goes bad too. One reason cassava is a staple crop in my village? It happily grows in bad soil, and tolerates changes in weather well.
Turn on the news during the American winters and no doubt you’ll see evidence of how snowstorms have shut down one place or another – halting vehicles in their tracks, closing airports. In Guyana, rain has the power to shut things down too – whether it’s from too much, or too little. When the water is too low for boats to come into the village, expect shortages of food, goods, gas. When the water is so high that the roads flood and become pits of mud, expect the same, if not worse.
Georgetown, the capital, was built below sea level – and regular floods mean breakdowns in businesses and government offices. At my village school, our “catchment area” (or zoned district) is rather large. Children travel to school daily by bus, canoe, speedboat, and on foot (sometimes walking several miles each way). When it rains heavily, school attendance drops dramatically – and this is due to both the difficulties of getting to school, and also the uptick in sickness that comes with flooding. (You see, bad things can happen when latrines and sprayed farmland flood and contaminate the larger water supply.) When it’s blazingly hot, children come to school, but with headaches, faintness, and nausea: symptoms of dehydration and heat exhaustion. Teachers, too, struggle to keep focus in stiflingly hot classrooms, with no power for A/C units or fans.
Subsidized solar power has made big changes in Guyana: most everyone I know has some kind of solar unit, and many (including myself) use it as their only source of electricity. Solar runs the water pump at the school, and used to run the hospital. This is all wonderful until the rainy season hits, and we get overcast skies for weeks at a time. Depending on whether we see the sun or not, we have to ration our electricity carefully, because there is no backup – or if there is, it’s a generator that runs on pricey gasoline. Also, endless rain and drizzle leaves you with no way to dry out laundry. The trash piles are too damp to burn. Everything and everyone begins to smell sour.
Here’s what astonished me when I visited the U.S. last year: how absolutely magical running water is. When we need water, we have it pretty much without fail – and it emerges drinkable and hot or cold, depending on our preference. In my village, running water is a rarity, and I am lucky to have it – in two sinks, my toilet, and my bath area. When it comes, it’s not from some kind of reservoir getting pumped through pipes, but from gravity-fed rain tanks. It’s not potable, and it’s always cold (or lukewarm, on sunny days), but at least it’s there. Well, until the dry season hits.
Over the past week I have watched as both sinks slowed to a trickle, and finally stopped flowing. Last night I tried to flush my toilet only to find the back tank empty. I’m down to one working faucet and a system of bowls and buckets to wash dishes, fill my water filter, and clear out the toilet. Once that faucet stops, I’ll try going downstairs to a spigot low enough that gravity still should work. I’ll fill five-gallon buckets and carry them up the stairs. Even with all that, I am more fortunate than most. Many of my friends and neighbors have to support large families on the water supply that I have as a single person – so they run out regularly. Many buy bottles of water for drinking and get the rest, after their rain tanks finish, from backyard ponds or nearby creeks and rivers. Fetching water is a chore most Guyanese children take part in from a young age. Second nature to them, unprecedented to me.
Living in Guyana has made me think about weather and the environment in a very different way. In most developed countries, we are somewhat isolated from its effects. We have air conditioning and heating: climate controls that help us forget the climate outside. We have infrastructure that can handle baking sun as well as heavy rains. We have electricity sources, and backup electricity sources. We have systems that deliver clean water to our doorsteps and beyond. We take so much for granted. Meanwhile, I have cried tears of joy when it rained because it means I will have enough water.
It has become second nature for me to turn off anything I’m not using, to really think about how I can bathe with less water, use just a few sips to brush my teeth, only flush when necessary, and reuse when I can (laundry rinsewater to mop floors, for example). You may not be living in a place where the realities of our water and power consumption are so apparent, but that doesn’t mean a little awareness can’t go a long way.
Letters from Guyana 