“I couldn’t believe I was in Guyana” – migrant returns home to a country transformed

By Andrew Carmichael

Vonda Liverpool did not expect to feel disoriented when she returned home. She expected familiarity. Comfort. Recognition. Instead, standing outside of the Cheddi Jagan Airport (CJIA) after almost eight years away, she felt something closer to disbelief.

“I couldn’t believe I was in Guyana,” she declared. Not because she doubted where she was, but because she no longer recognised what she saw.

The skyline felt taller, the roads wider, the bridges bolder. Villages [Leitchfield, West Coast Berbice (WCB)] she once knew as modest and quiet now displayed rows of large houses, bright colours, and confident architecture. Georgetown, once predictable in her memory, now felt like a city rewriting itself.

Liverpool left Guyana for the first time in 1994. Since then, she has travelled back and forth, but rarely and briefly. This visit, however, forced comparisons between what she remembers and what now stands before her, such as the giant Bharrat Jagdeo Demerara River Bridge.

She has not yet crossed the new high-span, cable-stayed bridge, but she has already planned the moment carefully. Not in daylight – at night.

“I want to see it with the lights,” she said.

For her, the transformation is not just physical. It is emotional.

Memories

She grew up without running water in her yard. She remembers bathing with trench water after letting it settle in the sun. She remembers praying for rainwater to wash clothes. She remembers pushing heavy drums on go-karts for miles, hoping not to lose everything to a pothole before reaching home.

Those memories are not stories for sympathy. They are the foundation of her perspective.
“When I turn on a tap now, I know what it means,” she said.

One of her clearest memories is from her second pregnancy. She broke a pipe in her village to fetch water, running back and forth through crowds to fill two barrels. That same night, she went into labour.

“I always say my son was born because I exercised myself fetching water,” she said.
Today, she walks into homes and sees water everywhere: kitchens, bathrooms, yards… and she sees not luxury, but relief.

Her return has also been filled with humour. When her sister suggested she rent a car, she laughed.

“I don’t know these roads,” she said. “Everything changed. The bridges. The flyovers. The cut-throughs. The unfamiliar routes… It’s beautiful. It’s really beautiful,” she declared.

Crossing the Berbice Bridge brought another moment of pause.

“I never knew the river was so wide,” she said. “I only knew it from the boat.”

Standing at Fort Wellington, WCB, looking across at the Ministry of Housing buildings she never imagined existing, she felt decades collapse into seconds.

“We never had these things,” she said.

Come home 

Liverpool does not claim Guyana is perfect. She does not deny flaws. But she insists that progress must be acknowledged honestly.

“A dressmaker can make a small mistake and go back and fix it. That doesn’t mean the dress is useless,” she said.

Her message to Guyanese overseas is simple. “Come home and see for yourself.”

She remembers how Guyanese were once treated in other Caribbean countries, questioned harshly, seated on benches, and returned on flights.

“We were just looking for a better life. Now people want to come to Guyana,” she said. That reversal matters, and Liverpool has noticed it at immigration encounters, customer service locally, and the attitudes of those in the public sector.

At the Guyana Revenue Authority, she was struck by politeness, patience, and professionalism.

“It felt different,” she said.

At Georgetown Hospital, she observed emergency care that, while not perfect, exceeded what she had experienced in Trinidad, the country where she now lives. “We need to appreciate what we have,” she said.

On the roads, she saw Volvos, Audis, and young women driving confidently.

“If I was here, I would have done well,” she said, not with regret, but with recognition.
Yet, beneath every observation, one feeling remained constant. “I am proud to be home,” she added. “I am proud to call myself Guyanese.”

Liverpool, 56, grew up in Litchfield. No matter where life carried her, she never replaced that identity.

Her pride is not loud, but grounded. “I get overwhelmed… Because I’m happy,” she said.
She speaks of farmers, fisherfolk, rural people, and development reaching ordinary lives, not just headlines.

She believes more is coming; not because she was told, but because she sees momentum. When Liverpool tells her story, she is not praising a government. She is acknowledging a journey – from trenches to taps, from go-karts to flyovers, from leaving quietly to returning proudly.

Guyana, for her, is no longer the place people escape from. It is the place they come back to.

And when she finally crosses the Bharrat Jagdeo Demerara River Bridge, which she is hoping to do tonight, under lights she once could not imagine – she will not only be crossing water, she will be crossing memory into reality.