‘Vomit, urine and no space to move’ – Region One resident recalls grim reality of life aboard the MV Barima

What this source establishes

Passenger testimony on conditions aboard; APA picket, 12 August. The first sustained passenger account in this corpus of what the voyage was actually like, given by Claude Benjamin, 64, of Sebai, Region One, at the Amerindian Peoples Association picket outside the Office of the President.

Key claims

• **The first sustained passenger account in this corpus of what the voyage was actually like**, given by **Claude Benjamin**, 64, of Sebai, Region One, at the Amerindian Peoples Association picket outside the Office of the President.
• On sanitation: **"When someone gets upset stomach; vomit, vomit, vomit…you have to lie down whole night with that there, even with urine smell."** He describes toilet facilities as inadequate.
• On sleeping and crowding: **"You pull something to sleep on, like a piece of cardboard; some persons have hammocks. You have a few benches and you have to sit on them all night."** He compares the interior to a rusted truck.
• The run from the north-west to Georgetown is given as **24 hours**.
• APA governance field officer **Graham Atkinson** cites "unreliable water pumps, electrical faults", and vessels "packed together with luggage, cargo and fuel".
• **This is testimony, not a survey.** It is one passenger's recollection of a service he used, and it is not evidence of the condition of the vessel on 18 July. It is recorded because the corpus is otherwise almost entirely official statements, press reports and documents, and the people who actually rode this ferry appear in it hardly at all.

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