Interior Monologue: Reflections on a Journey into Guyana's Heartland

SUMMARY In 2002, a group made up mainly of American academics embarked on an excursion to the interior of Guyana. It was soon very clear that there would be a shift in accepted assumptions about the relationship between the developed and the developing world. But it was only when the group left the city behind and entered the rain forest itself that the travelers understood the true power of the experience, the encounter with the majestic landscape and the indigenous peoples who had lived in harmony with it for millennia; and, in the silence of the forest, the encounter with the self.