Guyana: tracing roots amid the untouched rainforests and boom towns

Throughout my childhood, Guyana was, at times, romanticised; at other times it was remembered grimly for British colonial rule, race riots, political assassinations and corruption. I knew this far-off land mostly through the cooking of my grandmother, who somehow sourced cassareep in west London to conjure up pepperpot, a braised beef stew heavy with spice and fiery wiri wiri; chicken curry, which I mopped up with roti; and cook-up rice with black-eyed peas.

When her mother, my great-grandmother, joined us in the UK, she would regale me with tales of life in Georgetown, with its pretty whitewashed architecture of wraparound porches and louvred windows. We would hunch over her stamp collection and study the tiny faded illustrations fixed into the pages of her albums, flattened and cornered like she had been by the move to a cold grey otherworld she didn’t call home.

She would not recognise Georgetown now. Guyana discovered oil in 2015 and has since gone from backwater to boom town. It’s not quite Dubai yet, but offshore production is set to surpass that of Qatar, the US and Norway – bringing all the attendant trappings and travails, opportunities and hope. The government is extending runways, constructing gated communities and multilane highways, and pile-driving a deep-water port. I felt like I’d arrived at a juncture in Guyana’s history, the vestiges of a more languorous era dimming but still present: leafy walkable streets; coconut sellers at corners; the clattering of passing donkey carts. Visiting over the years, I’ve felt more like a tourist than the daughter of a son of the soil. With my dad flying back with me, this trip felt different. I felt a sense of belonging.

Instead of our usual wanderings among the landmark colonial buildings of parliament, the cathedral and law courts, we met Eon and Jessica John, the couple behind Singing Chef Adventures, who explain Guyana’s history – of slavery, indentured servitude and white rule – through stories, cooking and music. The premise is simple yet radical, as they tell me this history still isn’t taught in schools. My dad said his education here had focused on the kings and queens of England.

When we met Eon and Jessica at our hotel, they were joking and bickering, interrupting each other mid-flow. I adored them instantly. We drove along the coast, passing villages such as Fear Not and Better Hope, listening to their tales about John Gladstone, a rapacious slave owner and father to the man who became a British prime minister; and a coterie of courageous women, former slaves, who protested against colonial taxes on their newly purchased land by standing in front of a moving train (the train stopped, as did the tax demands). We parked by a wasteland of charred ground, close to the sea. “Site of the old slave market,” said Eon, pointing to brick steps leading nowhere. “Few know about this place. I feel like we’re finding it just in time.” I felt ashamed to think of how much history I must have driven straight past.

Eon was born in Guyana but left as a child, returning 40 years later. Jessica, his ebullient British wife, had long ago adopted Georgetown as her home. They were both a reminder to me that where you belong isn’t just about birthplace or where you choose to live, but how you feel. My bond with Guyana had changed, perhaps also because, since my last visit, I had published a novel, Song, set in late 19th-century British Guiana, the era after slavery was abolished and indentured servitude was introduced. The protagonist, Song, is an indentured labourer, travelling halfway around the world from China to the sugar plantations of South America hoping to find his fortune. Writing my book was a journey of the imagination but also one of sifting through archives, poring over historical documents and old maps. It brought me closer to my father’s homeland, increasingly my homeland.

While Georgetown has transformed since Song’s time, my book is largely set in the interior, which remains remarkably unchanged; Guyana is still covered mostly in virgin rainforest. My dad and I travelled to the Rupununi, a region bordering the Brazilian Amazon, basing ourselves at Iwokrama, a million-acre reserve on the Essequibo River. By boat we spotted giant otters playing in the current and spectacled caiman. From the canopy walkway we heard the deep roar of howler monkeys, before spying their distinctive hunched profile and shaggy russet fur through binoculars. Their territorial call is primal, timeless, and I felt I could have been alive at any point in history.

Iwokrama has a complicated past, though. When the government established the reserve, 25 or so years ago, it also greenlit the construction of a major road straight through it, a shortcut for Brazilians from their hinterlands to the Atlantic. It illustrates Guyana’s age-old conflictions with gold, hardwoods and now oil. Iwokrama has also had an ongoing relationship with Norway, which, controversially, offsets its fossil fuel production by supporting conservation projects. The irony is even more acute now that Guyana is pumping crude.

For me, the heart of Guyana will always be Kaieteur, one of the world’s most powerful single-drop waterfalls, five times the height of Niagara, in the range of the Guiana Shield, an ancient rock formation of flat-topped mountains known as tepuis. Most visitors fly in for a few hours. This time I stayed, not only for the falls but for the forest, where nearly half the plants are endemic. Among the trees, we glimpsed the flame-orange Guianan cock-of-the-rock bird and its courtship ritual: glaring, squawking, tossing leaf litter. I peeled back the fronds of giant tank bromeliads to reveal golden rocket frogs, weighing an ounce and measuring an inch, which live in the trapped water of the plants’ crowns.

But, mostly, my dad and I perched on the cliff edge, legs dangling, mesmerised by the relentless water and the flicker of ephemeral rainbows. One day we hiked down the gorge, and back up the next day. At dusk we watched swifts swooping to roost behind the sheet of waterfall as a full moon rose. In the mornings we waited for the sun to burn off the mist, revealing the Potaro River’s meanderings, and I wondered at Kaieteur’s incremental retreat: its repeated undercut and collapse over the course of millennia. It was there, precarious on the edge of the drop-off, that I suddenly felt most rooted, as if I had come home.

Cazenove+Loyd offers a seven-night journey visiting Georgetown, Kaieteur and Iwokrama, with private experiences and transfers, from £5,200 per person, excluding flights; cazloyd.com