March 2013. One year. A cycle. Four seasons: one very wet, one very dry, one a bit wet, and one a bit dry, but all very hot.
I managed to stay. In the Amazon Rainforest. It’s beyond my own expectations. Well, maybe I’m just a softy, but I still think it’s tough out here. The tropical extremes, the heat, the humidity, the overly rich natural abundance — it’s wearing me off.
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Maybe it’s because I’m not twenty any more. Maybe my body has just reached its limits. Maybe I crave tranquility. Maybe it’s all that.
The country is something special though. In many ways. It’s still a colony, and it has this typical flavor of no-hurry, no-goals and “mommy takes care”. It’s simultaneously frustrating and relaxing.
To get things done here takes way too much time and energy (and too much money also), but on the other hand it teaches you to “let go,” not to hope for the results you expect, and to be happy with what you didn’t want.
It’s a country where virtually anything is possible. Or impossible for that matter. It hosts two ultramodern space centers (note: European and Russian, the latter currently suspended by France because of the war with Ukraine), and crappy, cracked, water-soaked headache roads at the same time. A country where you lie in your hammock fighting the mosquitoes, and suddenly feel earth and ears tremble as another rocket is launched, cruising into space.
A place where they import stuff out of Europe (mostly from France though), taking a minimum of two weeks to arrive (if you’re lucky) and costing a fortune, instead of getting items out of Suriname or Brazil, taking two days and being a lot cheaper. No, it’s not allowed, because French Guiana is supposed to be Europe with European trade laws and European rules in the European Community.
A country where the national zoo in fact hosts fewer animal species than you would generally see or hear around your own home. Now tell me … what’s the point of having a zoo then?
No road-signs today, but suddenly tomorrow there are literally twenty signs, symbols, and pointers planted on twenty square meters, showing you from all imaginable directions where and how to go, including to non-existing destinations.
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A country where 35% percent of the population is not born in French Guiana, and where the second (in some communities even principal) language in the West is Surinamese, and in the East — Portuguese. Where Cayenne (the capital city) seems rather like a misplaced North-Brazilian village with awkward French road-signs, announcements, posters, and advertisement billboards.
A place with very rich and very poor people. With castles and shacks. With a staggering burglary and (armed) robbery rate in cities and villages, but were you can still live safely in an open-air hut in the forest. Where you can drink water from creeks (except for those where they mine gold), take in healthy air, but as well can breathe your last one having caught malaria, or a poisonous snake bite.
It’s just my little fact-sheet. One year in French Guiana. Do you get the picture? It’s frustrating, it’s funny, a fury, it’s a French frenzy. It’s La Guyane.
