I had the wonderful experience between Friday 4th of November and Saturday 19th of November 2005 of riding shotgun with Patrick de Groot (on the left) of the Demerara Rotary Club in Guyana as he provided logistical support (and cold beers) to a wonderful team of American volunteers who came to assist the Amerindians living in the interior of Guyana with various medical problems.

The volunteers were part of an amazing organisation called RAM, Remote Area Volunteers, www.ramusa.org founded many years ago by Stan Brock (seen here with some of the medical team), the former manager of the Dadanawa Ranch in the Rupununi in the interior of Guyana, who pledged to bring medical help to the people of the area when he retired.

This is the story of those amazing two weeks. The "Articles" are a series of four which will appear in the Trinidad & Tobago Guardian Newspaper www.guardian.co.tt each Sunday starting 27th November 2005. Click on them to learn about "Porridge".

The pictures are small and low resolution because of space constraints. If you would like a particular picture in higher quality file (free), copy and paste the picture and e-mail to me on pqt@sibis.com. Special thanks to Duane de Freitas for the correct bird names in both Latin and English and to Porridge de Groot for spotting the deliberate mistakes in the text and reveling in pointing them out to this Englishman, one by one.

The section marked "Sounds" is courtesy of that great team Chris & Raeleen who taped school children singing, Amerindians speaking Wapishana and even a discourse on the dissolution of the British parliament!

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