Here are a few things that not even the Guyanese know about Guyana:
1. Georgetown (see picture) sits at around the same latitude as Sri Lanka. Both places were former Dutch colonies, and both became British possessions after the Napoleonic War.
2. Guyana (then British Guiana) played an important role in the development of modern anaesthesia. The woorali arrow poison that Charles Waterton acquired from the Macushi tribe was recognised as an important agent for the paralysis of patients during their anaesthesia. Today, curare (as its known) is synthesised artificially but you can still see Waterton’s original pouch of the poison in the Wakefield City Museum, West Yorkshire, UK.
3. At least one Guyanese attended the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh. On 29 October 1618, Raleigh was brought before an audience in the Old Palace Yard, Westminster. Amongst the onlookers were a group of ‘Guianians,’ he’d brought home with him. To them, the ways of their much-bejewelled captors must have been very mysterious. After a flurry of feathers and taffeta, Raleigh made a great speech, and then knelt before an axeman, and was trimmed of his head. With that swipe came to an end English hopes of finding El Dorado in the Guianas.
(Read more about Guyana in ‘Wild Coast: Travels on South America’s Untamed Edge’
