EVER HEARD of a town asleep on a Friday night? Well Georgetown, Guyana is. The only night you can find any party in full swing, would be on a Saturday night, (so I'm told). And all you want when you're tired on a Friday night is a hot spot to ease the tension.
It's Friday. The perfect time to party, right? Most persons don't have work or school on Saturday so if you get wasted, no problem, you can sleep the next day. At least that's how it is in Jamaica. Obviously, these people do something on Thursday nights that I don't know about, because everyone seems asleep tonight!
Of the twenty-five or so young women from nine different Caribbean countries who were attending a training seminar in Guyana, only one Jamaican and four Trinidadians were brave enough to leave the confines of the dreary hotel and venture into the strange town.
After hopping around a bit with nothing happening, we bump into some Guyanese from the conference who promised to show us a good time (partying that is). So we head to the street that never sleeps, Sheriff Street.
Sex to salvation
The street is narrow, there is no sidewalk, cars park on either side, the buildings are close together and colourful lights glimmer in the night. This is where you can buy from sex to salvation and everything in between. We were neither buying nor selling so we move along, not before noticing some chicks who would make it in the Hottie Hottie section of the Star. Yuh waan si di hottie hottie dem pon Sherrif Street!
Every city must have a hot spot and I was yet to see one. They neither had 'Asylum' nor a version of it. But they had 'Trump Card'. Is it me or is it that Guyanese don't dance much? The club is much bigger than Asylum but it is covered with so many tables and chairs, the dance floor couldn't be more than 15 by 15. And guess what is playing as we walk in? Britney Spears! Imagine that in Asylum!
Somehow the DJ gets word that there are 'Jamaicans and Trinis' in the house, he immediately unloads all the soca and reggae (not dancehall) in his arsenal. On my request for Elephant Man, he says those kinds of music are for Saturday nights so the records weren't available. To compensate, he plays Shaggy and some good old Bob Marley. What would they do without him?
By 1:30 a.m I had had my fill of 'Trump Card' so one of the Trinis and I decide to leave. Outside the club there are three cars on the road (no parking problems there!) and one unidentified walking object approaching our direction. As we contempla-ted what to do next, we saw what appeared to be a police officer walking up the street, so we stop him and ask where we could get a cab. He said he would walk us to the park where we could find one. He seemed quite concerned about young ladies walking alone at nights. We hop into a cab that he stopped and head home.
Locked out
Lo and behold, we get back to the hotel at around 2 a.m. to find it locked! Locked! Grilled and all. So we sit in the cab tooting until the front desk clerk comes out and lets us in.
I always wanted to go to Guyana to see their rain forest and wildlife. Little did I know that that was what they were known for wildlife, not wild nights.
Nashauna Drummond
