September is Amerindian Heritage Month all around Guyana. This celebrates Amerindian history, culture and also signifies the time when the first Amerindian was allowed in Parliament. All of the Amerindian villages all over Guyana have a special day, usually a Saturday, where their village celebrates Heritage. This usually consists of traditional dancing, food, and drinking!
Another tradition is going to "burst the worm." The tocuma worm that is! Six weeks before Heritage Amerindians will go out into the bush (the jungle) and chop down some ite palm trees and let them sit. A black beetle will come and the worms will start to grow and spread throughout the trees. Then the day before or the day of Heritage, they go back to those trees and chop them open to find and collect these worms. This is a tradition from long ago when Amerindians needed and used every part of what they could for food.
I am lucky enough to live in one of these villages and so my host sister, her husband, and my niece took me out to burst the worm! Many Guyanese haven't even experienced this so I felt really lucky that I was getting to!
Adventure is out there! You have to be prepared out in the bush! I wore long pants, a long shirt and long boots in order to trudge through. Sometimes the water was higher than my boots....
My niece, Prescilla, getting me all dressed and ready for the bush!
We had to hack our way back to the trees with cutlasses and we only burst two out of the five trees that they cut down because it was getting so dark. There were so many mosquitoes, cow flys, and insects everywhere, I didn't feel like I could rest from slapping some part of my body that was being bit!
My sister's husband chopped open the trees, which was a lot of work, and then we all searched through all the nooks and crannies of the tree to find all of the worms. Some were so fat and big while others were still really small. It was really gross. Prescilla made me try one and it was so weird! You have to rip off the head and then you just eat it raw! Bleh. I ate two and felt pretty accomplished. I've heard now that it's better fried though...
Holding all of our worms!
The government of Guyana picks a village every year to sort of represent the country during Heritage. The nearest volunteer to me, Michaela's village, Pakuri, was chosen! I headed over to her village and to stay with her to experience Heritage! They had booths selling crafts, different foods and drinks. We ate labba, a large rodent type animal found in the bush, cassava bread and pywari which is Amerindian alcohol that has been fermented with cassava.
The people of Pakuri had great traditional dances and skits to showcase the culture and history of Amerindians in Guyana.
The President of Guyana, David Granger even came to speak!
We had a Heritage in Laluni and also a smaller celebration at school. These are a couple of our dancers! It was really cool to learn more about the people I am living with and celebrate with them! I feel extremely lucky to be living in an Amerindian community and getting to experience these rare and random things!
"It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great."
- Tom Hanks in "A League of Their Own"
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