Aberdeen and Guyana have more in common than first might be expected for such distant lands, the first odd similarity is the

 

Aberdeen, is known in the UK as the City of Granite. Presumed to be cold grey and grim, battered by the North Sea and populated by tough highlanders. What few people know, is that Aberdeen has won the ‘Britain in Bloom’ flower competition so often that it has been barred from competing, it is in fact, the driest city in Scotland and its name ‘Aberdeen’ means ‘Under the confluence of the rivers Don and Dee’.

 

Guyana, similarly is christened after the water, meaning  ‘Land of many rivers’ , and also like Aberdeen, it is not a popular traveller’s destination. To the outsider it seems a strangely elusive country, somewhat like its treasured Jaguars, few have seen it, but those who have talk of it with enthuisiasm. There are a couple of guidebooks and a few manuals for ecologists, and even in the age of prolific internet publication only a smattering of websites can be found.

 Hence here in the UK, Guyana is not well known, most Aberdonians with their excellent education in Geography, presume it is somewhere in Africa, Ghana perhaps?

 

It is not, it lies on the northern coast of South America, sandwiched between Venezuala and Suriname. Much like Aberdeen, Guyana has had a turbulent history and has been shaped by rule from London. Guyana, was once a British colony, exploited for its fertile land it became the world’s source of sugar. Demerera, is, a river along which plantations for the sweet crop were once tended by thousands of slaves shipped across from Africa. Hence its population is a mismatch of African-Guyanese, Indian Guyanese, a few Spanish settlers and of course the indigenous Amerindians.