Christmas In A Georgetown Minute

A GT Minute from ieishah clelland on Vimeo.

Georgetown is smelly, dirty, and congested. It's also chaotic, energetic, and totally charming. By Christmas Eve, my family and I had been in Guyana for 4 full days. And I found myself not noticing the smell or the dirt. I found myself ignoring the few sidewalks the city does have in favor of risking death by crazy dollar van, walking in the road with the nonchalance of a true Caribbean. And also today, no one called us yankees. Did I mention we're driving on the left side of the road? On Christmas Eve Eve we took a plane ride to the interior, traipsed through the rain forest, and actually touched Kaietur Falls, 5 times taller than Niagara, and about 2 times taller than Zambia/Zimbabwe's Victoria Falls. I flew over only a few thousand of Guyana's millions of acres of rain forest in the co-pilot's chair of a 10-seater aircraft. With each minute that passed, each mile of plush green carpeting the earth below, like so much broccoli over-stocked in a massive supermarket, I became more certain that Guyana's been minimized on world maps. If not on maps, certainly in the global imagination. So in the spirit of full warts and all disclosure (and, you know, the season) I'm gonna give you ONE bustling Georgetown minute. Merry Christmas, everyone!