John Kenny's World Cup Diary
Entry 17 - 7 April
Our visit to Guyana will come to an end after Monday's game against New Zealand, the third game for Ireland at the Providence Stadium in Georgetown in the Super Eights after defeats to England and South Africa.
After a couple of days off, the Irish squad have returned to training and coach Adi Birrell put the 15 players through a tough couple of days to shake off any cobwebs.
At the end of the session, they invited me to face a few deliveries in the nets. I have played a little cricket before myself at school and for the now defunct Carlisle Club in Kimmage, Dublin. Indeed RTÉ still have a side and I keep my hand in with a few games every summer.
The likes of Kyle McCallen Niall O'Brien and Paul Mooney all had a bowl at me, but it's to my undying shame that RTÉ.ie reporter Ed Leahy was the only man to actually hit my stumps. He has been living on that moment for a few days now.
The rain that fell at the beginning of the week has abated and the weather has been hot and sunny. When the clouds roll over it becomes very, very humid and as a westerner who is not used to it, the humidity can be overpowering at times.
Sean McGrath, a Donegal man who owns the Cara Lodge Hotel where the squad and the remaining media are based, invited us to his home for a barbecue and it was a lovely evening. McGrath has been in Guyana for a while now, has married a local woman and is well settled in this South American country.
McGrath, indeed, is part of the tourism initiative board here in Guyana and helped shape the Five-Year Tourism Development Plan whose aim is to double the current levels of tourism in five years.
Guyana is a very diverse country. English is its primary language, although there are others spoken, including Creole. The majority of the population are of Asian Indian ancestry and indeed their President, Dr Cheddi Jagan, is himself of East Indian origin.
Black people known as Afro-Guyanese, make up about a third of the population and there is a small Amerindian group, many of whom still live in the rain forests.
As with much of northern South America, problems persist with its delicate eco system.
The World Resources Institute says that Guyana's abundant forest resources, encompassing 85 percent of its land area at the heart of the Guiana Shield, represent the largest remaining intact tropical forest frontier in the world.
But the country is under enormous pressure to sell logging rights to boost short-term economic growth.
The institute states: 'Guyana requires stronger government and civil machinery to plan and negotiate foreign investment in logging and to ensure that companies comply with national laws and codes of practice.
'But even with enlightened policies, Guyana still faces serious challenges, including reforming land allocation and land-use planning, reducing damage and increasing revenues from logging, building sustainable communities, developing non-timber forest enterprises, and making foreign assistance more effective.'
There is a move to try and bring more eco tourism to Guyana.
That must surely be the way forward for this country and not the destruction of its stunning and diverse rainforests by logging companies bent on profit.
Such matters will be furthest from the Irish cricketers' minds as they now face four games in nine days as after New Zealand ,it's two games on Barbados against Australia and Bangladesh (13 and 15 April) and one on Grenada against Sri Lanka (18 April).
