This past week our Media and Communications representative, Amanda Wilson – a journalist and filmmaker – put out an open call to artists around to globe to be a part of “The Maroon Sculpture Walk, Yukuriba Heights, Guyana” in which artists of all ages and nationalities are invited to be a part of the Caribbean’s first Sculpture Trail dedicated to the maroons of the Americas in this United Nations designated Decade for People of African Descent. Every sculpture along the trail will reflect maroon life.

The Maroon Sculpture Walk is dedicated to the memory of Philip Moore, the celebrated self-taught Guyanese artist who created our 1763 National Monument; Philip Moore used modern and traditional techniques to produce sophisticated, bold pieces that captured West African spirituality. The Sculpture Walk will bring together a unique collection of original permanent artwork that marries art, history and conservation. It’s the initial project of The Philip Moore Artists’ Retreat a new creativity community in the Guyana, South American rainforest, the last of the tropical wilderness still considered pristine.

Now after all these years, that the time has come that Yukuriba is finally being launched, my reflection on all the attrition of these past decades has led me to wonder, ask the question, WHAT IF? What if I hadn’t screamed that day in the incident described in my first column, Letter From Yukuriba; Before The Road To Brazil (Reflections From My Rain Forest Journals).

I’ve often pondered: What if I hadn’t decided that those intrepid Trails to Rupununi pioneers were just a bunch of New Columbuses? What if I hadn’t screamed, been more facilitating? Also, what was it at the time that informed my opinion of Terry Fletcher and his entire team? I’ve since concluded that it was mainly the attitude of Harban Singh (that was his name) who came charging through with the advance guard of Trail to Rupununi pioneers, symbolizing the very idea of “Capitalism Gone Mad.”
Here again is an excerpt of the original story of my encounter with Harban Singh, first recorded almost thirty years ago, near the turn of the century.
March 16, 1987: A Red Letter Day; not just because it’s Phagwah Day

The man sat in my cabin right here at the kitchen counter and said it: “Me going put down one long building from here to down there.”

Where?

“Here, right here,” he said.

I didn’t mean to scream. But I had fried the fresh himmorah Brown had caught in a creek three miles away. I’d steamed some in cassareep and there was fresh cassava bread. Brown and I and Capt. Roy were going to sit down to a meal and some history. The man was down the hill in the logie with his crew of Road to Brazil builders, they had come in the afternoon with a tractor, a truck with food, and an idea that he would get to Lethem in ten days.

Capt. Roy Bowen (who grew in the area, who will talk endlessly when asked, and has talked to me on tape about the Kurupukari cattle trail and all the present-day Rupununi business men, ranchers, who had no other recourse but to walk their load on bull cows for miles…the old Kurupukari cattle-trail; about Art Williams and his transportation; great balata boat captains such as Captain Fanfare under whom he grew from small-boy boat-hand to become a certified river Captain himself; about the old order that’s changing, changing, and will irrevocably to transformed by this Road to Brazil), looked at the man and asked:

“To Lethem in how much time?”

“Ten days!”

“Me brother, they have a thing name swamp. They have 52 miles…”

“Ten days!” The man snaps, stubborn as a mule.

“You alone or what?”

“Me and everybody.”

“Trucks too?”

“Truck…all”

“You going to widen the bridges that too narrow, from Camoudi Creek, so the truck can pass over?”

“I going to widen them.”

“You going cross over the truck, the tractor, to Kurupukari? You going to float the pontoon?”

“Yes, straight to Surama and through to Lethem. Ten days. The boys at Surama cutting, coming through to meet me. They meet halfway already. . . .”

“You know …you see that man?”

“I fly over –”

“Yes, you a man dealing with technology, I forget”.

At this point, I butt in to beg the man to listen to the people who lived there all their life. Look you have Capt. Bowen, Brown…listen, talk to them…you may learn something.

“I ain got to ask nobody nothing. No, ten days to Lethem. I gotta get there. I going”.

“Not even if they got ten Christ you ain gon mek dat, mih brother. It have a thing they call rainy season – it going to catch up with you – Anytime bush cut and grow back in this bush it have a thing name hold-me-back-plimpla – guana tail; hirihiri bali…whatever you want to call it – thick, thick, thick…you going stall-up. Then you gon start again next year to clear again, and you have the swamp to divert and . . .”

…Capt. Roy, still trying to convince the man.

“Ten days. . . I gotta get there, I going”.

But why, why such unhealthy haste? I wondered, I asked.

“Brazil need port” the man said and then –

“Me go put down one abattoir at Kurupukari”.

But what about the people who are already at Kurupukari? What about Capt. David Andries and his family? A dynastic family, at Kurupukari since 1933?

“They going to work for me –

“One saw mill at. . .

“One paper mill at. . .

“One peanut factory at. . .

“One long building from down there to down here!”

…there we were ready for a quiet evening, good food, good talk; cassette recorder all set and ready for an after-meal session of oral history when –

A rumbling sound coming through the forest.

“Vehicle!” Brown said sitting up.

After a while there it was – a faint rumbling that grew and grew to a rush, then a roar coming through the forest.

“Big one,” Brown said. “More than one big one,” he added.

I ran to the front of the cabin, alarmed. Whatever it was sounded like the advent of doom, as if it would huff and puff right through the bush, up the hill, and blow my cabin clear into the river. I saw a land rover first, then a bulldozer, then a skidder; in that order. I saw the man standing triumphantly waiting, welcoming the confusion in my life. Then, smiling up at me –

“We going to make a movie, Joan”.

I put on the siren in my throat, opened my lungs and screamed that day, but what if I hadn’t screamed? What if I did not concluded that the Road To Brazil crew’s raison d’etre was only about pelf and self and not at all about the inspiration, the challenges of discovery associated with conquering new frontiers to the future, as their vanguard member Harban Singh communicated?

Harban Singh was a significant part of that phase in which The Trail to Rupununi team was preparing to move along, launching the pontoon that sat abandoned beside The Old Kurupukari Cattle Trail. They winched the pontoon from the left bank across the river and eventually moored it safely on the right bank where it could be utilized to ferry the tractor back across to the left bank; the cattle trail, and the Fair View Village community location. The tractor however, had had enough of that; it broke down the moment it got onto firm ground on a slope above the river bank. Now the team had to put their heads together once again…come up with a strategy to move the tractor to a safer level up the slope.
They devised a “Spanish Winch” with “round wood” and rope; their sights were now fixed on their destination…the Brazilian border town, Lethem.