Rohin Abroad

Things Guyana does well 1.       Greetings (& slang). You will never be as cool as some of the Guyanese here. They’re effortlessly cool in a way most people can only observe from a distance. From handshakes to greetings to gait most people have a swagger and coolness unmatched by the Western World. My new favourite greeting is now ‘wamdeh’ literally short for ‘What happened there’ or as is in my current phrasebook ‘wot u saying’. 2.       Drinking in the evenings. I don’t think it is particularly farfetched to assume that in the UK, if you opened a bar at a workplace where beers were £1.50 and men were at said bar for 2 weeks at a time, many a night would be a drunken one, brawls included. Here however, drinks are imbibed (I learnt a new word this week) in the evening in a civilised manner (as civilised as you can be drinking beer). Furthermore, the canteen will be filled at 05:15 with men breaking fast regardless of the pre...

A gin and tonic (G&T), as far as I’m concerned, has 3 key ingredients: Gin, tonic and ice. G&Ts are on the podium of my favourite drinks, likely finishing a humble third after a Guinness and an Espresso Martini. Guinness is great - my go to drink when you’re at the pub and you’d like a hug. If you’re a regular Guinness drinker you’ll know it isn’t heavy, bitter or highly calorific. It is in fact the opposite of these. BUT there are times when Guinness isn’t the right drink, maybe I need some spice in my life or maybe, heaven forbid, there isn’t Guinness on tap. Often, I deflect to a G&T. To make a G&T you actually just put the three aforementioned ingredients in a glass and drink. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you need a mixologist in your life. G&Ts can be directly compared with Mining Engineering at Karouni Project in Guyana when considering proportions. This is the conclusion I have drawn after helping and shadowing the current mining engineer (Peter) for ...

Hi everyone, I thought I’d elaborate a little on what I’ve done so far in terms of actual “work”. Since writing the last entry, both mining engineers have been on their turnaround (their break after working for 6 weeks). I’ve instead been working with the survey department (not like questions, survey like mapping the area very accurately using various instruments) and the geologists. Coincidently I had messaged my mate Ollie about drones as we are both photography/tech geeks. I mentioned to him how I thought drones would help the mine out in a variety of ways. Ollie and I had spent much of this past year pining after a drone, both agreed on buying one the moment we had any disposable income (not soon). Two days later, I had just got back from the pit and I walked into the office to see a man showing Eric, the General Manager and Ken, the CEO a DJI Mavic Pro . I legitimately stopped for 10 seconds - Eric had seen my face. The Mavic Pro is the drone Ollie and I have probably c...

Hi everyone, I’m writing this as lots of people have so many questions about what I’m doing and what it is like so I thought I’d try and collect my thoughts in one place instead of sending sporadic and rushed WhatsApps. How are you? Yeh, alright. Nah, yeah I’m good! Hot and sweaty but good. So what is it like ? a) Camp Where to start? So I flew in from the coastal capital, Georgetown, in a small propeller plane with about 15 other people. We flew through the clouds and over the rainforest to the mine in about 40 minutes. The rainforest is incredibly humbling. Green, expansive and beautiful. From the dirt airstrip I was driven to camp where I’m going to stay for the next 8 weeks. I was given a small room following security searching my bags for drugs and/or hard liquor. My room has a single bed and an air-conditioning unit and that’s about it really. Frustratingly I’m going to have to move room a lot as I’m staying for a longer period than most people stay...

One of the first things that really struck me in Ghana were the roads although I'm yet to mention these. In the car I got physically struck by the horrendous bumps however the thing that caught my attention were the fumes. In the EU we have very strict regulations on automotive emissions with a very current conscious effort being put into reducing them. It seems so pointless though when you see what goes into the air from the vehicles here. The world would be far less polluted if they worked on reducing emissions here and all over Africa/South America. Let's say they made cars for poorer people, with reduced emissions and sold them well.  I'm confident that this would make a much more significant impact than the incremental change we have from the current cars in the EU. However this isn't nearly as profitable so I don't expect to see any change soon. Also the only cars that are here are Japanese or German. I haven't seen a single French car - I won't be...

It doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman, until you have gone to the rainforest and played football, you haven't played football in the rain. When you struggle to see 5 metres in front of you, that's when you know you're cool. In all honesty, I was so hot and sweaty, the rain was a very welcome change. I apologise if you're not into football but I'd like to mention the discrepancies between the English and Ghanian game. The first thing that really struck me as different and oddly different at that, is the way Ghanian people deal with time. Or rather how they don't deal. They have no conception of time. None whatsoever. This means when asking the referee how long left is in the game, the reply is simply a shrug of the shoulders. Moving on to the pitch. In the Premier League there are a set of dimensions that pitches have to comply with. While obviously the pitches here aren't measured with the precision of the professional teams, I have n...

Hi everyone, welcome to my blog! It has been 3 days since I flew out and despite the short time period, there are so many new things that I've seen. I don't really know how to blog so I'll attempt a monologue of parts of my head? First thing I'd like to address - passport control. Imagine you've just spent a couple of weeks relaxing on holiday and you're back at Heathrow in the passport control queue having landed. You can hear the general British public muttering about the length of the queue and what a waste of time it is. PLEASE, visit Ghana and tell me that the queue took a long time. They want your address when the Ghanian government willingly accept that there aren't real addresses!? Then they need to scan all of your fingers and ask you questions on your trip. Add a stuffy hall and mosquitoes and you have the right idea. Don't get me started on the queue pushers. I flew to Accra and my accommodation is about a 3 hour drive from the airport....