It may be another half year or so before Adel's is completed, but the atmosphere there is undeniable. The resort is flanked by the Pomeroon River, the Akawini Creek, and the farm. About 15 minutes away is the Atlantic Ocean and further along the coast there is the famous Shell Beach.
The air is clean and tranquil. At dusk, parrots screech over your head, flying in what seems like swarms compared to their numbers when they fly overhead in Georgetown. They seem to materialise, black shadows emerging suddenly, from the gray sky.
FOR many of us working in offices, yearend presents a paradox in life. There is that inevitable Christmas spirit, that buzz, the scurrying here and there that seems to imbue people all over the country with the extra energy that seems to be lacking through the usually lackadaisical eleven months or so of the year...and at the same time, it's cold season.
If you work in an office, especially one with air conditioning, you begin to get a sense of why so many North Americans leave their homes for more tropical climes. One of those North American residents who spent their Christmas in Guyana was Zena Bruce-Bone.
Zena is not a tourist, however. She is an over-seas based Guyanese, who owns a resort, Adel's Resort, on the Pomeroon River, not far from the coconut plantation formerly owned and run by her parents.
Mrs. Bruce-Bone invited the Sunday Chronicle to her resort for the Christmas.
Getting There
If you are travelling overland from Georgetown to the Pomeroon, it's always advisable to leave early in the morning. The journey from Georgetown to Parika is usually as uneventful as any, but as soon as you hit the Essequibo, the waters increase in choppiness as the day progresses. It usually takes between half an hour and 45 minutes by speedboat from Parika to Supenaam.
To travel from Supenaam to Charity, or other places along the Essequibo Coast, you usually have to board one of the taxis plying the route. Contrary to popular belief, Essequibo isn't all dirt road, and rural huts and old shingle houses. In fact, most of it seems more affluent, mile for mile, than the East Bank or East Coast Demerara.
The market at Charity, on market day is just as busy as the one at Parika. From the boat landing there, you can travel by speedboat - a notably smoother ride than on the Essequibo - to different locations on the Pomeroon.
Life on the Pomeroon River is essentially no different from other parts of Guyana. All along the river, there are gas stations, groceries, small shops, schools, churches, a mandir; at least one house with a pool table underneath. But the houses themselves - perhaps the mere fact that they are symbolic of people actually living there - are the most fascinating.
Though most of the houses on the river were more or less unpainted wooden shacks, others were well-designed, mostly wood and concrete structures with sturdy-boat landings, sculpted Christmas trees just outside of their yards, and even some with Direct TV dishes. The obviously more affluent ones usually had mounds of coconut shells - eerily reminiscent of skulls - piled up on the bank directly in front of them.
Between 25 minutes and half-hour after leaving Charity, on the eastern bank of the Pomeroon, there is a neat landing with triangular shaped Christmas trees and mounds of coconut shells. A signboard reads `Enterprise Estate: B & E Stoll Limited.'
The house was markedly different from all the other large houses that we had seen on the river. Wooden, white and shaped like a capital `L' thrown on its back and then raised on stilts, it seemed more rustic, more filled with spirit than all the other wood and concrete structures, with their garishly spiralling steps, at other parts of the river.
The Coconut Estate
B & E Estate is currently run by Sherman Stoll, Zena Bruce-Bone's brother, and his wife Carmen. The coconut plantation is situated on some 750 acres of fertile land and is one the largest coconut estates operating in Guyana today.
The plantation started out as a small grant run by Sherman's and Zena's parents, who expanded it until it reached, at its high point, almost one thousand acres and housed more than 70 workers and their families.
Once prosperous, the estate, like many others in the area, was affected when the world market price for copra - from which is derived coconut oil - fell. Sherman Stoll came back to his parents' estate about eight years ago and he and Carmen have struggled since then to keep the family business afloat.
With most of the family's current generation either abroad and the rest having no interest in going into what seems a failing business, Sherman says that he sees it as his duty to carry on the business that was his family's livelihood for so many years.
Zena Bruce-Bone
At almost 70 years of age, one of the first things one notices about Zena is that she has the appearance of one of those amazingly healthy older people that you see in those television ads for Ensure and Centrum Silver, the ones riding bikes, jogging, climbing mountains et cetera - the kind of people that turn the term geriatric over on its old gray-haired (or balding) head.
Zena Bruce-Bone has had quite a life. Born in 1934, she attended St. Joseph's convent before marrying at age 20 and moving to England. After divorcing from her first husband, Zena moved to America where she studied for her diploma in hospitality. In the mid-70s she acquired a hotel in Barbados, married again and worked part-time and then full-time coordinating and promoting a travel package, a student-travel programme called `Know the region in which you live', which she had sold in its idea form to regional air carrier BWIA. During this time, she both married and divorced again. She eventually sold her hotel business and went to work in the US.
In the mid-90s, with hospitality still in her blood, she decided to convert a piece of land that she had inherited into an eco-resort. She sold a beautiful home that she had owned in Barbados and invested the funds into laying the groundwork for Adel's, named after her grandmother who had originally owned the land. This first attempt proved abortive, however, since the person that she had hired to manage the work proved to be an unscrupulous character. Disillusioned, she abandoned the idea.
In 1999, she met retired physicist Fred Bone, originally from New Amsterdam, Berbice and soon after she became married for the third time.
Adel's Resort
It was obvious that Adel's was a work in progress. There is the main building, designed by Sherman Stoll, which consists of a kitchen, a bar, a recreation area and a hide-away, penthouse/attic apartment.
Two other 'constructions' flank the main building: one is the shell of the previous main building of Adel's while the other is the skeleton of a newer building, slated for housing up to eight downstairs rooms and another penthouse apartment.
There is a 'kitchen garden' run Mr. La Cruz, the recently hired gardener. Surrounding that is the larger farm area. The farm at Adel's is largely dedicated to the growing of plantains, bananas and coconuts.
It may be another half year or so before Adel's is completed, but the atmosphere there is undeniable. The resort is flanked by the Pomeroon River, the Akawini Creek, and the farm. About 15 minutes away is the Atlantic Ocean and further along the coast there is the famous Shell Beach.
The air is clean and tranquil. At dusk, parrots screech over your head, flying in what seems like swarms compared to their numbers when they fly overhead in Georgetown. They seem to materialise, black shadows emerging suddenly, from the gray sky.
Giving Back
On Christmas Day, 2003, Zena, Sherman and Carmen held a Christmas party for workers on the estate. Zena had, earlier in the year, expended generous amounts of her time, energy and money on acquiring toys and books for the children who live on the estate.
She believes that the lives of the mostly Amerindian workers, some of them whose families have lived on the estate for four generations, have been inextricably linked to the life of her family. She remembers playing in the workers' houses as a child and most of the workers refer to her as `Auntie Zena' and to her brother as `Uncle Sherman'.
She says that one sad fact that she learned about the children on the estate is that many of them are below the reading level of their age.
Zena has recently bought a boat with an engine, using the money she raised from a luncheon held at her home in Washington. Come January, 7, the speedboat, named after her, will be picking up children from the estate and dropping them to school at Charity.
This will come as good news to children like Nigel. Nigel is a 14-year-old first form student who lives on the estate. Speaking with Sunday Chronicle, Nigel says that he was an avid student until the teachers at his school, a short distance from the estate, simply stopped coming. Whereas he was able to walk to school, before, for him to take a boat to Charity to go to school, it would cost him $1,200 a day. To earn himself some spending money, Nigel has taken a job on the estate, which earns him about $400 a day.