CATEGORY 112 AUSTRALASIAN DENTIST Many countries in northern South America are poor, but at the same time have large gold reserves. It is also from this region that rap artists’ fashion for grills with precious metals and jewels has come. Anyone who wants to get a filling or insert a crown in, for example, Guyana can also save on the dental bill by bringing their own gold to the dentist for a winning smile. Not many Australians make it to Guyana in northern South America. The entire country receives fewer visitors in a year than the Eiffel Tower receives in just two weeks. And with only 800,000 residents, most of whom live along the northern coast, it is in many places extremely desolate. Something that bears clear vision for the legend when flying a single-engine plane over Guyana’s rainforest-covered interior. Mile after endless mile of jungle – who would find you if you were to crash here? The capital, Georgetown, has a kind of funky small-town atmosphere and a Caribbean pulse at the same time. In one corner a speaker with pumping reggae music right on the sidewalk, in another a food stall with tempting smells of chicken curry or hamburgers. Add to that the warmth of the people: it’s easy to start a conversation on the street, even if the distinct Creole dialect challenges understanding somewhat. Oswald Saint, known as Bakewell, drives us around town in a taxi. He has a prosthetic set of shiny gold teeth that replace two incisors and a canine in his upper jaw. I was in an accident and fell into an iron bar, so I had to get dentures. Gold teeth were in style then. But some people do it because it’s a Guyanese tradition. If you go abroad and people see your gold teeth, they know you’re from Guyana, he says. Dentists go for gold in Guyana and Suriname By Joakim Rådström Although Guyana is a poor country, even from a South American perspective, gold is common here. Some streets in Georgetown are completely lined with gold sellers. In the gold mining town of Port Kaituma near Venezuela, signs advertising buyers of precious metals are everywhere. Other posters warn gold miners of the environmental and health risks of dangerous chemicals used in the extraction of gold. If you bring your own gold, it can cost around $150. If the dentists need to arrange the gold, it costs more, Oswald Bakewell Saint explains. Today’s fashion trend among hip-hop artists, rappers and Hollywood celebrities with removable and richly ornamented socalled grills actually comes from this part of the world. Eddie Plein, an entrepreneur in New York, brought the tradition of inserting gold teeth from his native Suriname to the United States, where he began creating jewelry with combined dentures in, among other things, gold and jewel settings. Suriname is located directly east of Guyana, and like its neighbor, also has large gold deposits in the ground. We visit the capital, Paramaribo, a charming place with many preserved buildings from the former Dutch colonial period. Many people here also have gold teeth, although not to the same extent as in Guyana. Michel Dors is one of those who had a removable gold denture inserted after one of his incisors fell out. I did it to change my look. It’s nice, and you feel nice yourself. But it’s expensive, 5,000 Surinamese dollars [around 200 Australian dollars], he says. However, many believe that gold dental work is not as common today as it used to be in Guyana or Suriname. Especially among licensed dentists, the craft has a somewhat tarnished reputation. DENTISTRY AROUND THE WORLD Oswald Saint
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