Climate Change

View from my front door on a smoky Saturday afternoon.

The lifeblood of Guyana is its rivers. Though the dark brown waters are not bordered by white sand like other parts of the Caribbean, they are, nonetheless, striking. Several waterfalls are located in Guyana, including Kaieteur Falls, the largest single-drop waterfall in the world. More than just for sightseeing, in a country with few well-paved roads, the rivers are highways to the interior. For the Amerindian community, canoeing is a major form of transportation. For the communities on the coast, the rivers are important shipping routes. Being such an important geographical feature, Guyanese are proud of their rivers and love their bridges, especially the new floating toll bridge, which traverses the Berbice River. A couple of weeks ago at an assembly I even heard the Guyanese mention some rivers in a patriotic song. To the tune of This Land is My Land, they sang “From the Rupununi to the Corentyne, this land was made for you and me.”

On Sunday morning, Caroline and I went for a bike ride, traveling north of the Canje, a tributary of the Berbice which bisects New Amsterdam. When we reached the huge arching concrete bridge, like the men who cycled ahead of us while carrying weed-whackers and plastic racks of bottles, we had to dismount for the walk to the top. The exertion from riding up the steep slope in the sun caused me to sweat; my heavy tee-shirt clung between my shoulder blades. I savored the steady wind blowing over the river as I took in the view.

The top of the bridge is possibly the highest elevation I’ve been to since I arrived in Guyana—it provides the best view of New Amsterdam. I was unprepared for my first sight of the Canje, though I’ve crossed it by car several times. The main part of town runs parallel to the Berbice, obscuring any view of the water, so it is easy to forget there are even rivers there at all. For the first time, I got a real sense of how flat this country is. Spread out below were dilapidated wooden houses, palm trees, and fields of rice and sugar cane. Like in Louisiana, much of the country is below sea level and continues to sink as more land is carried out to sea. Though the vegetation along the river was a rich green, the further from the water, the more the grass looked parched and brown. Smoke and dust clouded the air, making everything in the distance look pastel.

Saturday night, Moses, Caroline, and I had gone to a small gathering of volunteers at a VSO’s house. We all got to talking about the market and how to get the best price for your produce: the way to do it is to go to the same vendor every time. To keep your loyalty, the seller will cut you deals. Unfortunately, I found out, because the rainy season never came this year, produce is much more expensive now than it had been even in the recent past. The price of tomatoes has jumped from about $60 a pound to over $300 since our host arrived. I thought about the price of tomatoes as I looked from the top of the bridge at the dusty landscape.

They say global warming is the cause of the new weather patterns in the country. Although this is a country is approximately 80% pristine rainforest, there has been little rain since I’ve lived here. I have heard some say that countries closer to the equator are more vulnerable to changes in global climate. After only being here a month and a half, I am beginning to believe from firsthand experience that this is true. On Monday, I was sitting at my desk in the staffroom at school when I noticed the sky begin to darken in the distance. It was not a rainstorm, but a massive cloud of dust. The wind began to build and kicked up sand from the cricket field, blinding and choking me as I tried to teach my afternoon lessons. Today we finally had rain. It came down in torrents during the mid-morning cricket match, but had mostly dried up by early afternoon. Although the rain helped, this country has a long way to go before it makes up for the recent lack of precipitation.

Though many adults have noticed the changes in the weather, my students are blissfully ignorant of the rapidly occurring changes in their climate. From my perspective things seem ominous. In my human and social biology class, I did an activity in which the students were to pick a social or environmental problem in Guyana, predict what could happen if the problem is not addressed, and explain how we might use our understanding of science to help fix the problem. Many of the students picked global warming as their problem. I quickly learned the children here do not have a good understanding of the causes of global warming. One even asked me: Is global warming because the sun is moving closer to the earth, or because the earth is moving closer to the sun? I was flabbergasted, but tried to calmly explain about greenhouse gases. He did not know what a greenhouse was.

In addition to not understanding the causes of global climate change, the students could think of little wrong with the prospect. I reminded them that Georgetown is currently eight feet below sea level and is only being protected by a seawall. They must feel too at home among rivers, because when I informed them that if global warming continues and the ice caps melt, much of the coast, including Georgetown, will flood, they did not seem terribly concerned.