Guyana’s Coast and Interior — a note

Comparison

⚠ A WARNING ROW ABOUT WHERE PEOPLE ARE. Roughly 90 per cent of Guyanese live on the narrow ATLANTIC COASTAL PLAIN, much of it reclaimed polder land lying BELOW SEA LEVEL behind a sea wall and drained by kokers — a Dutch engineering inheritance and a permanent flood risk. That is where the rice, the sugar, the towns and nearly all the food economy are. The INTERIOR — Cuyuni-Mazaruni, Potaro-Siparuni, Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo and Barima-Waini — is rainforest, the Pakaraima mountains, the RUPUNUNI savanna and Indigenous territory, reached by boat, light aircraft or one long road. ⚠ THE TWO HALVES EAT DIFFERENTLY and the interior is not simply a rural version of the coast.