Jonestown, Demerara

Jonestown is a village in Demerara, Guyana.

Jonestown stands about 30 kilometres (19 mi) southeasterly from Georgetown, near the lower reaches of the Mahaica River, on the low coastal plain of Guyana whereon that country's population and agriculture are concentrated. This is within the historical bounds of Demerara, one of the original, smaller colonies that were joined to become British Guiana, which took the name Guyana upon gaining its independence. More narrowly, traditional geographic terms put Jonestown in the Mahaica district of the East Coast of Demerara — East Coast Demerara or just ECD, for short, in any case meaning that part of Demerara east of the Demerara River and facing the Atlantic Ocean. Thus, when making its location explicit, the village tends to be called "Jonestown, Mahaica" or "Jonestown, Mahaica, ECD", even today, although by current Guyanese administrative regions it is in Demerara-Mahaica.

Lewis Osborne Inniss, the Trinidadian writer and folklorist (a druggist, by profession), was born in Jonestown in 1848.^[1]

Jonestown, together with nearby areas along the lower courses of the Mahaica and other rivers of northeastern Guyana, has suffered from flooding during the wet season in the early years of the 21st century.

This Jonestown is not to be confused with the Jonestown of the 1978 mass murder-and-suicide by members of the Peoples Temple. Although that short-lived Jonestown was also in Guyana, it was in a different part of the country. The two places share their name by happenstance and have no other ties.

Notes

1. Pierre, p.xv

References

• Pierre, Barry V. (2000). Verbum Sap: A Tribute to L.O. Inniss. Port-of-Spain: (self-published). ISBN 1-86033-509-8.