Month: May 2013

Deven Dindyal was born in Georgetown, Guyana, and currently resides in New York. Deven pursued his undergraduate studies at St. Johns University in Queens, New York, and he later did his Master’s Degree at the prestigious Columbia University in New York. Deven has been working in the finance and information technology field for over a decade. He started out in the corporate world and then ventured out into the field of Higher Education Administration. He is currently employed as a Senior Associate Director of Student Financial Services at Nassau Community…

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In colonies such as British Guiana, which were established to produce crops and minerals for the metro pole, the arms of the state – especially the civil service – represented the acme of aspirations for the inhabitants who had been dragged from across the continents to provide their labour. The entire system of stratification and status was based on how closely one could imitate the ruling colonials who were white and occupied jobs that automatically conferred status on its holders. The entry of the Indians after the abolition of slavery…

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From the moment the Indians were brought into then British Guiana on May 5th 1838, they were subjected to racist discrimination and oppression. The racist assumptions that undergirded such actions were in place even before they landed. In fact, they determined their selection to replace the newly freed slaves. The initiator of the scheme to import Indians was John Gladstone, owner of Vreed-en-hoop and several other plantations. He wrote to Gillanders, Arbuthnot & Co. in India about the possibility of supplying him with “Bengalees”; he had heard they were shipping…

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Under the theme ‘Nurturing Community Research to Protect our Environment’, the premiere turtle festival held in Yupukari, Rupununi, saw the release of 57 turtles to their native habitat after a year of “headstarting”- a kind of re-introduction program. At the festival, there were eight educational booths on turtles set up around the village market and in the Rupununi Learners’ Caiman House compound. Wildlife members, adults and other children took turns through the morning to each booth for educational activities, games or craft. In the ‘Crochet Turtles’ booth, participants, using yarn…

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Launched in 2005, the Aranaputa peanut butter factory is a locally-run cooperative, supplying its product to families, schools and lodges across the Rupununi, while providing employment for workers from the surrounding villages. Around 700 acres of Rupununi farmlands are dedicated to peanut cultivation, much of which is channelled to the Aranaputa cooperative. The peanut butter cooperative serves an important role in local economic development by giving farmers a local outlet for their produce, while providing affordable, hygienic, nutritional, locally-produced food to community residents. It was only a few years ago…

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