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Stand by your word
There was an important lesson for me to take away; if you win, you will find that you have a lot of supporters. If I had been reprimanded by the Minister and ordered to withdraw the letter, then I do not know how many of my supporters would have stood on the same side of…
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Lure of the bush
In Guyana I never heard the term ‘rain-forest’. People used ‘backdam’ or just ‘bush’. Even ‘forest’ was not used, though we lived in the middle of it. These lands were not truly uncharted because people, mostly Amerindian hunters, and loggers, had long gone along the trails that we drove on.
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Leading from the front
One of my major learnings was that responsibility, variety, challenge, and satisfaction in a job are largely in your hands if you use your head and can influence people. I was not the only person who saw the way the forest was treated or who saw that timber that was being burnt could become an…
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1997 – Guyana revisited
Living thoughtfully is living responsibly. Leaving a legacy is not about showing others. It is about justifying to yourself that you returned something for what you consumed during your life. What was that return? Was it a good return on the investment that all those who encountered you, made in you?
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Guyanese politics – 1979-83
That was an important lesson for me to take away; if you win, you will find that you have a lot of supporters. If I had been reprimanded by the Minister and ordered to withdraw the letter, then I don’t know how many of my supporters would have stood on the same side of the…
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Fridolin, Peter and an Anaconda
It was a beautiful idyllic existence doing all that I loved to do and doing it all for free. I know that you could spend thousands of dollars to take a trip up one of the major rivers in the Amazonian system, camp on a sandbank by a fireside and spend the night in a…
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Kwakwani, live and learn
The language of the Guyanese is called Creolese. It is an English Patois and as distinct with its own flavor as French Patois is from French. Creolese has the taste of Cookup, the sound of the Steel band and the aroma of the rain forest. It is a language of the people and reflects their…
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Lessons from Kwakwani
The lessons I learnt in Guyana had also to do with handling conflict and negotiating. Learnt not from case studies or in workshops, but in real life with real consequences. That makes for immensely powerful learning, because your career and in some cases, even your life depends on learning fast, right, and well. There is…
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Guyana, cross cultural boot camp
The language of the Guyanese is called Creolese. It is an English Patois and as distinct with its own flavor as French Patois is from French. Creolese has the taste of Cookup, the sound of the Steel Band. and the aroma of the rain forest. It is a language of the people and reflects their…
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Guyana – the stuff of dreams
I’ve lived in many places and with many people; but the way Guyana and the Guyanese entered and stayed in my life is different from all else. To this day, I remember those days as if I were there just last week. It has now been thirty years since I left Kwakwani, but I can…