Guyana

Guyana’s name is usually traced to an Amerindian word for ‘land of many waters’. Most people live on a narrow coastal strip below the level of high tide, kept dry by seawalls, sluices and canals dug by Dutch planters. Behind it come white-sand hills and then rainforest covering most of the country, with the open Rupununi savannahs in the south-west. The Potaro River drops more than two hundred metres in a single plunge at Kaieteur Falls.

Arawak, Carib and Warao peoples lived along the rivers when the Dutch set up trading posts early in the seventeenth century. Enslaved Africans worked their plantation colonies, and in 1763 a rising in Berbice led by Coffy nearly drove the planters out; Republic Day falls on its anniversary. Britain joined the colonies as British Guiana in 1831. After slavery ended in 1834, planters brought indentured workers from Madeira, China and, from 1838, above all India. Independence came in May 1966, and a republic in 1970.

Phagwah, Diwali, Eid and Mashramani, the republic’s carnival, share the calendar, and on Christmas morning families eat pepperpot, an Amerindian stew darkened with cassareep from cassava. Guyanese play cricket for the West Indies; Clive Lloyd, born here, captained them to the first two World Cups. Demerara sugar is named after the old colony, and sugar, rice, bauxite from Linden and gold from the interior paid the country’s way. Oil found offshore in 2015 has since joined them.