It has been rainy here and I have been doing photographs for a couple business to help them out .Exciting. I am going to Linden with Eugene Saturday .. We are going to talk about doing documentaries. He is the Guyana tv news reporter and very capable.. Wish us luck ..


Yesterday evening I was watching the children play cricket in the street. An old man very slowly walking down the street passed by me . I thought maybe he was a beggar. As he got close he looked up and said in English Caribbean accent , do I know you ? I looked at him and said no , I do not think I know you . He repeated again, glad to know you ., smiled and hobbled on .
One of my goals here was to research my book. I wanted to know if people dreamed differently . I still feel sure if I went into the country in Guyana where life was very simple and controls were minimal I would probably find they do not have dreams of being lost , fearful or threatened to the degree we in the usa have them . I am staying in the center of the city instead. Here the Guyanese have every problem we have and desperate poverty on top of it . They are happier and far more polite and considerate.
A new friend told me something last night . He said he had tried drugs but would never do cocaine because what it did to you in the long run would have shamed his mother. It is almost impossible for a man to make a living here . There is an unbelievable amount of single mothers . It is obvious the family unit is the alpha, a bond which give strength.
There are fewer controls here. There are few police, a person probably has fewer bills and few if any have debt. In the usa we schedule our day by the minute and here is give or take .. Ask when a restaurant will open and it is always somewhere between a half hour or hour of a given time.
I feel people here live more in the moment. They do not have a lot so planning is not as necessary . When I visit in the states a very high percentage of the conversation is what we are going to do , what we are going to fix and what we need to do to have more control in the future. That is a small percentage of the conversation here .
I feel the biggest thing is they still have the social creature in them . They know their neighbors and everyone knows everyone in some way . When I lived on the white side of Galveston there was a drive to clean up the town by fining and arresting the people who broke the law. Most of them who were incarcerated were in the ghetto so in the controlling side of town it felt like the process of law had meaning and direction . When I moved to the ghetto I realized there was a different flow. Everyone had family and friends in prison . It broke the bond and completeness of the whole.. They did not want their kids on drugs and in crime at all. They are good people…
Here people warn me constantly to be careful.. They care.. The bum can sleep in front of a store and possibly even get food from the owner when he wakes.
The social creature in them drives them to accept rather than to control.
I feel I can say family structure, less control, living in the moment and acceptance is visible here and I suspect it is why they are still happier under harder conditions .
In the States the book I have written on life is getting rather cold response. To realize we are not the happiest , godliest , most universally center people on earth is beyond our comprehension . When the old man walked by me on the street and said “ good to know you “ I was not totally surprised. It is Guyana . I am almost surprised it is not a line in the bible that is printed in red. It should be.
I love that greeting . . Alpha is very important in each person .. To scream “ do this “ is very brain alpha . To greet a total stranger passing with “ good to know you “ Is alpha of the soul.