VISITORS to the Mangrove Reserve Tour at Golden Grove/Belfield, East Coast Demerara are now being entertained with drumming, dancing and singing by ‘Joker Is Wild’, a troupe of local masqueraders.  Moreover, the tour includes a visit to the mangrove forest. Tour organizers have often remarked that nature trips in Guyana can take days, but since June 2011, when the Mangrove Visitor Centre & Reserve was commissioned, there is now a half-day tour of several East Coast villages in which visitors encounter Guyanese heritage, a thriving mangrove forest, a wetland teeming with fish and birdlife, and a towering sugar estate house, all in the company of charming village people.

Since June 2011, the tours have been running seven days a week, in the daytime from 7am to 6pm, and have now been enhanced by the recent addition of the masquerade band.

‘Joker is Wild’ placed second in the hotly-contested Best Masquerade Band “flounce off” staged recently at Victoria, East Coast Demerara by the Guyana Cultural Association (GCA) of New York.

Based in Victoria, a village which will celebrate the 175th anniversary of its being in 2013, the band captures the rich history of that village in its folk songs.

Guyana Mangrove Replanting Project (GMRP) Chairperson, Ms Annette Arjoon-Martins, deemed this ‘Joker is Wild’ group a great addition to the activities of the GMRP. She thinks their performance is unique; is 100 per cent Guyanese; and is so vibrant it will entice the most conservative of tourists to ‘shake a leg’.

Arjoon-Martins said the Mangrove Tourism Project is a small example of how Guyanese can use a commercial activity to retain aspects of their culture that may be slipping away.

“Our masquerade bands are essentially a Christmas tradition, but visitors to Guyana will now be seeing that art form year-round at the Mangrove Reserve Tour,” she said.

Golden Grove Mangrove Reserve Tours can be arranged by calling 617-0131, or by emailing carlotta_de_jesus@yahoo.com.