Mahdia is full of surprises. Not least of those is the fact that if you travel to this small township in the Potaro-Siparuni region you are more likely than not to meet one, possibly more, fellow coastlanders. All of them have decided that, for the time being at least, Mahdia is the place to be.
It is, in every case, an economic decision. Time was when some of the earlier inhabitants of Mahdia including Africans, the indigenous Patamonas and later on, immigrants from some of the smaller Caribbean islands, subsisted in an economy that comprised mainly farming, hunting, small-scale mining and coal burning; all that has changed. Unofficial estimates indicate that there could be as many as 150 dredges ‘working gold’ at Mahdia. The rest of the township’s economy revolves around the gold industry.
Trevor is in the business of ferrying supplies from Georgetown to Mahdia. Eighty per cent of his business transactions are done with dredge owners. If you can move stock to Mahdia you will