Year: 2017

“…Clients will always come back to you when you treat them with respect…”  For Fidal Bassier of 55 Photography, that means being honest, humble, sincere, dedicated to producing quality work, and always striving for excellence. “You know, basic human qualities” with, he later adds, “a little bit of detachment. Things don’t always go the way you want them to. It’s all about serving the client and the clients’ needs. In the end, it’s what the client wants and trying to meet the client’s needs”. The registered business owner got into…

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Before the fishing rod of today, the indigenous people created ingenious fishing traps to sustain their daily lives. Some of these traps are extremely complex with one-way valves, bait chambers and floats, while others were primitively basic. Nevertheless, all fishing traps had one common trait – all evidently adapted to specific functions and ultimately different species of fish. According to the late Denis Williams in his book “Prehistoric Guyana”, “the second great petroglyph tradition of the Northern Amazonia is represented by the Fish Trap Series…” which show the frequency and…

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Cassava is a primary food source for most indigenous peoples of Guyana. Many indigenous groups eat cassava in the form of cassava bread and farine, as well as regularly manufacture fermented cassava beverages. According to Terry W. Henkel in his study “Parakari, an indigenous fermented beverage using amylolytic Rhizopus in Guyana”, most indigenous cassava fermentations involve prolonged cooking and exposure to salivary enzymes as the method of initially breaking down the starch to sugars (amylolysis), which subsequently are fermented to ethanol. Parakari is a more complex cassava fermentation using an…

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In the eighteenth century, the authorities ordered each plantation owner to build and maintain a public road and bridges to connect to the two adjacent neighbouring plantations. The original width of the roadway was 16 feet, but this was later increased to 36 feet, and rough red bricks, made from burnt clay, were used to surface it. This road was deemed a public right of way, and if the plantation owner refused to build or maintain it, the government authorities would carry out the task and then demand payment from…

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By Petamber Persaud Very often, and too often with immense gratification, I get the urge to put aside the reading of current books in preference to delving into those published a while back, especially reprinted rare and out-of-print material. This browsing is not too difficult for me for I am accustomed to ‘marking up’ my own books, highlighting words, phrases and extracts of interest. For instance, while flicking through “Beacons of Excellence: The Edgar Mittelholzer Memorial Lectures – Volume 3, 1986 – 2013”, I stumbled on the following passage: One…

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