Most of this is from an entry in a diary I kept when I was 17 – 19 in Guyana.
Sunday 1st Feb. 1981, Moblissa Dairy Farm, Soesdyke – Linden Highway. – I arrived at Moblissa Dairy Farm last Wednesday from Ebini Ranch via Georgetown. The ‘Milk Truck’, a monster tanker lorry that transports the farm’s milk to Georgetown was quite a ride. I’d left my previous training assignment at Ebini Ranch in the Intermediate Savannahs for Moblissa to continue training for management at the Livestock Development Company. My dream job, an entry level management position as a LIDCO Ranch Supervisor (assistant ranch manager).
Most of this is from an entry in a diary I kept when I was 17 – 19 in Guyana.
Sunday 1st Feb. 1981, Moblissa Dairy Farm, Soesdyke – Linden Highway. – I arrived at Moblissa Dairy Farm last Wednesday from Ebini Ranch via Georgetown. The ‘Milk Truck’, a monster tanker lorry that transports the farm’s milk to Georgetown was quite a ride. I’d left my previous training assignment at Ebini Ranch in the Intermediate Savannahs for Moblissa to continue training for management at the Livestock Development Company. My dream job, an entry level management position as a LIDCO Ranch Supervisor (assistant ranch manager).
Henry Fitt flew me out from Ebini on Saturday and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves that day. I enjoy flying, especially with Henry Fitt as pilot and he and I did quite a lot of it that day. First, we flew from Ebini to Kwakwani bauxite mine where we dropped off two passengers. From there it was down to Georgetown for a whistle stop at Henry’s home base, Ogle airstrip. I dropped off my bags and helped him refuel and reload the plane – a single engine Cessna. Soon, he was pointing it into the North-East trade Winds and off we were for Karisparu a settlement in a mountainous area some 25 miles South-West of Kaieteur Falls.
There are jungle covered mountains all round in this part of Guyana, some of them looked towering to me as we descended to land. Karisparu airstrip lies in a valley between what seems impossibly steep slopes for Amazon jungle to be growing on. From Karisparu we flew a further 55 miles South-West and ever deeper and higher up into the Pakaraima Mountain Range to a wonderfully named place, Monkey Mountain. Monkey Mountain is another gold and diamond outpost in the middle of nowhere although, to my delight, there was more savannah to admire than jungle on the surrounding mountains and in the valleys. This is what Africa and the Serengeti must look like I thought. This is how Henry makes his living ferrying miners or porknockers, as they are called from frontier outpost to frontier outpost. Their currency is raw gold or rough diamonds and they pay generously to save days and days of arduous trekking up and down the Amazon carpeted mountains.
On the way back to Karisparu, we landed on a remote airstrip somewhere between the two points in a lovely savannah covered valley. Henry pointed out the faint outline of a long disused airstrip now almost reclaimed by the savannah. My earphones crackled. “Let’s check for a way in between the termite hills.” Down we went, termite mounds taller than trees were everywhere. We seemed to almost graze one as we flashed by over the overgrown runway. I saw it approach and flash by the right wing. Inches from the tip it seemed. Had Henry not spotted it, I wondered? There’s no room for us here. No way was a plane landing between those ‘anthills’ as they are called. Up we went and around we banked and down we came and that same anthill flashed bye the tip of the right wing. This time we were on the ground, braking hard. We retraced the two deep ruts left in the soft and wet sand. It was the rainy season after all. When we got to the termite kingdom I couldn’t help noticing it was taller than the plane, hard as a rock and just feet away! Henry, however, seemed to be more concerned with the depth of the plane’s wheel tracks and the dampness of the sandy runway than the whereabouts of the ant hill. I don’t think he ever looked at it. “Wet sand, longer take off”, he said measuring the strip, then the two porknockers who had appeared out from nowhere with his expert eye. I think more precious minerals than usual exchanged hands as after a heated bit of exchange I couldn’t follow both miners got on, he revved the engine till it howled before releasing the brakes and got that plane into the air with what seemed only inches to spare. He dropped them off at Karisparu on our way back to Ogle. The beauty of the terrain we flew over that day is superlative. Jungle covered mountains giving way to lush savannah valleys as the Amazon rolls back it’s carpet South-West of Karisparu towards Monkey Mountain and the higher Pakaraima Mountain plateau. On route to Karisparu we flew over John Daniels Falls and Ginger Falls and away off in the distance the majestic Kaieteur Falls and its amazing gorge.
A few months later in May 1981 when I was now a full time Ranch Supervisor at Kabawer Ranch on the Abary River, Henry’s plane vanished into the jungle never to be found again (as of March 2013). Four of its five British sightseers who wanted to see Mount Roraima were quantity surveyors with Sir William Halcrow Ltd., a British consulting firm working on the Tapacuma, MMA drainage and irrigation projects that was cutting through Kabawer Ranch. Henry had managed to show me my Guyana. RIP and thank you for letting me tag along that day.
