2001
September 24
September 20
September 17
September 03
July 24
July 23
July 14
July 6
July 3
June 28
June 23
June 18
June 14
June 11
September 24, 2001
Subject: Wild Kingdom
This week the jungle has really been trying to take over our happy home. There have been torrential, flooding rainstorms (at least we're on the second floor) that have taken power and trees and have had lightning strikes that felt like they hit next door.
We wage a constant battle against ants: the little buggers get into everything that's not sealed or in the fridge. We had been doubling up bowls and filling the outer one with water, but recently they've figured out how to SWIM to get at our bananas.
Liz had a lizard jump at her from underneath a pot she moved. We've seen signs of him, but this is the first sighting. We've named him Speedy, in honor of a certain New Mexican packrat. He's small and black and faster than greased lightning. We actually have come to appreciate him: he eats ants.
The real story took place yesterday morning. We opened our front door to find a green baby parrot, who strolled into our home and took up a perch on my hiking boots. He took a liking to the crackers we gave him, and munched happily until a neighbor kid came by looking for him.
Liz has been taking an active effort to clean up Bartica's beaches. This weekend she took her biology classes out with a bunch of plastic bags to collect garbage; she even got to use her EMT skills when one of the kids sliced his leg open on a rock. She patched him up and took him to the hospital.
Preparation for my Spanish classes has kept me busy. I now teach eight classes for secondary school students, two for teachers, and two for the community every week. Liz and I also have begun visiting the school's dorms every week to tutor and mentor.
We found out that the local bread is made with lard, so Liz has taken it upon herself to learn how to bake her own bread. Her first two loaves of Italian wheat bread, as she called it, were... hearty. She hasn't quite got the phenomena of "rising" into her process yet, but work continues. We have tortillas down to a science, and I was able to figure out hummus. Culinary experimentation has become a happy pasttime for us.
Liz's little garden continues to grow. She has a few seedlings of onions, squash, beets, peppers, and some herbs. Corn has yet to pop up.
September 20, 2001
Subject: Hi from Georgtown!
It rained four times today before 10am. We're supposed to be in the dry season, but for the last three days we've been soaked. Our clothes have been hanging on the line since Tuesday- they're going to get moldy.
Brian and I bought TONS of food while we were in town. Bartica's prices are really high, and usually there isn't much of a selection. We both had been craving things like strawberry jam and whole wheat flour for a month.
Monday, September 17, 2001
Subject: Not such a good week
Liz and I have been glued to the TV (thankfully, our one channel has been CNN
for the past week). Like everbody else, we're really torn up about Tuesday's
attacks. In spite of our feelings, we've done our best in our little community
to give a good example of American resolve.
We've begun to serve as tutors and mentors for the secondary school kids who live at the school's dorm because their families live so far in the interior that the kids stay in Bartica for the entire school year.
We're thoroughly enjoying Bartica and all it has to offer. We recently took a short boat trip to Rainbow Falls and Marshall Falls: a beautiful spot for a picnic after a 10 minute hike into the jungle. A real paradise. Yesterday, we took a 11 mile hike on the Potaro Road: the only real land road away from Bartica. It was just like that Sean Connery movie about the rainforest doctor: immensely thick underbrush, towering trees, valleys cut by streams and covered in green, thatched roof huts... really amazing. Most of our days are spent taking long walks, swimming, preparing for our classes, and just enjoying each other's time and company.
Monday, September 03, 2001
Subject: School Daze
Today was my first day of teaching. I taught one class of about forty-five 14-year-olds; that'll be pretty much how it is for me for every day of the week. Tomorrow I begin teacher capacitation: teaching teachers Spanish so that the Spanish program can continue after I leave. Next week I hope to begin community Spanish classes at Liz's office in the evenings (I mentioned the HUGE interest in learning Spanish here in Bartica, mostly due to Venezuela's claim on the region.)
Liz's classes don't start until Thursday, but right now she's at the Cry of AIDS office teaching a workshop to youth from around the whole region on setting up HIV/AIDS counselling in their own communities. She hasn't wasted any time in getting into the program and giving it her all. Already she's making a difference, I'm really proud of her.
Liz and I are taking daily morning walks, and they're really something. After 30 minutes, we're deep into jungle. DEEP. We're enjoying ourselves exploring the many trails and paths in the area. In the afternoons (and sometimes at night), we swim in the river. We're getting accustomed to timing our swims based on high tide when the water is cooler and clearer: the cycle is every 12 hours and 25 minutes.
Our home is completely set up and totally comfortable. We DID lose water this
past weekend, along with everyone else in town when the municipal water works
shut down for service, but our landlord has two huge tanks that we used to fill
up buckets that we lugged upstairs to our apartment. You get used to it, and
we actually live a lot better than many of the locals. I've decided my favorite
features of our home are the
veranda and the couch. A couch!! We're livin' large.
July 24, 2001
Subject: Site Assignment
We just got our site announcements! Brian and I got THE BEST site out of all
offered... we're going to Bartica, which is in Region 7 I think. It's considered
to be a frontier town, the last bit of civilization before going into the interior.
But
don't worry, it is civilized. Supposed to be very diverse- blacks, E.indians,
amerindians, chinese, and portuguese. And now us. I'm really excited!
Brian will be working at a secondary school teaching lifeskills and I'm going to be working at "Cry of AIDS Project" which I think is a NGO. Very cool. I'm so SO happy.
First a bit of Guyanese geography. The country looks like a big kidney bean, with Georgetown in the middle of the coast on the north side. The Essequibo River cuts through the middle of it, running north into the Atlantic Ocean. Georgetown is the center of Guyanese society, with the rest of civilzation spreading away from the north in a southerly direction east and west, becoming more and more sparse the further from Georgetown one travels.
With that in mind, Liz and I have been assigned to Bartica, on the Essequibo river, further away from Georgetown and the north coast than any other volunteer in our training group. The trip to Bartica takes four hours by ferry from Parika, at the mouth of the Essequibo River. We'll have running water and electricity (hopefully), and since the Essequibo is wider than the Mississippi and is the main mode of transportation, most, if not all, of our travel will be by boat on the Essequibo and its tributaries.
I've been assigned to a secondary school, teaching high school-aged kids. Liz has been assigned to work with an AIDS awareness outfit in the same area. We'll of course share a home together: the first place we've ever had all to ourselves. We couldn't be happier.
Bartica is a real "frontier town." It's the last hint of civilization on the road to Kaiteur Falls. It's real rainforest. It'll be a real adventure.
Our site visits our next week: we'll go out there, take a look at the area,
figure out what we'll need to get from Georgetown before we move out there,
set up a home and a post office box, and hopefully check out the email situation.
Don't hold your breath. After we're sworn in on the 17th of August, we may only
be able to email when we come in to Georgetown, which will probably be once
every three or four months.
Looks like it'll be back to snail mail, if anything.
We had a cooking class on Saturday, learning about and sampling Guyana's tasty fruits and veggies. I had an eddo, known in Argentina as a mandioca. Been a while since I've had that one. Most of them were totally unfamiliar, but a few were pomegranates, plantains, cassava, okra, passion fruit, guava, papaya, and some really outstanding pineapple.
On Friday we leave to visit Bartica, and we'll be there for the entire week. We'll write an update as soon as we get back. In the mean time, if anyone wants an anaconda airmailed to their front door, let me know
The trip to New Amsterdam was definitly refreshing. Tamika really showed me a good time- We toured the hospital, went on a epidemiology job, and ran two health clinics. Also, she volunteers at a local orphanage, so we spent some time with the kids. We should find out in a few days where we're going to go for our sites! By next Friday, Brian and I will be with our counterparts traveling toward our sites - I'm so excited!
14 July, 2001
Subject: Volunteer Visits
Liz and I spent this week visiting current volunteers out in their sites, and it was exactly what the doctor ordered. Training has been tedious in the extreme, so much so that we'd (well, me anyway) been losing focus, forgetting why we'd signed up in the first place if it meant having to go through 10 weeks of mind-numbing classes and difficult separation. The volunteer site visit changed all that: we got to live and work with current volunteers out in the field, meeting their friends, facing their challenges, helping with their assignments. It was great! If the next two years are anything like this past week, it's going to be hard to get us to come back to the states.
Never have I felt like I was doing the right thing as when I'm doing service.
Peace Corps provides the means and medium by which Liz and I can focus our energies
towards a worthwhile and necessary goal. Guyana really does NEED more teachers
in its schools and health counselors out in the field. There's a reason why
we're here, a place to fill, and an amazing experience to be had by being here.
We're going to have a great
time!!
We had a few noteworthy experiences happen to us. Besides the work of learning how to set up a school library, I went to the beach on the Essequibo River (made me homesick for the James River) and to a heritage museum run by a three-generations Guyanese British dude, full of old dutch bottles and stamps and coins. Liz worked hard, visiting 3 clinics, 3 orphanages, and a hospital. She's turned on the health work, and convinced that there's a lot that needs to be done.
On Wednesdauy, Liz and I celebrated the Fourth of July with the rest of the
Peace Corps trainees at a sandy swimming hole eating deviled eggs and throwing
footballs and frisbees. We get all American and Guyanese vacation days, which,
if you include
weekends, summer and winter breaks, paid vacations, and sick days, works out
to be about six total working days a year. Ain't it great working for the guvahmint?
Saturday was the real 4th celebration: the American ambassador to Guyana invited
us to his home for a barbecue, including hamburgers (yay!), brownies, potato
salad... in short, a lot of american food I missed as I try to gag down my ninty-third
bite of
brown rice with curry.
This week will be spent traveling: we're heading out into the Guyanese countryside to stay with current volunteers to get a feel for the real work. I'm looking forward to it, if only for the change of pace. Training has a lot of down time, and there are only so many games of spades or Gran Turismo you can play before your brain starts starving for something constructive. Journal writing helps, as does study just for the sake of learning, but we've all been feeling a little stir crazy. If I were at home and had this schedule, I'd find a second job.
3 July
Subject: Update from Guyana
Training continues, although it's become much more appealing and interesting,
partly because of a greater focus into our particular project area, mostly because
I glued a flat, magnetic chess board into the back of my notebook that Liz and
I use to stave off hours of boredom when our trainers decide to list, say, every
kind of insect found in Guyana. That was a loooong sentance.
The Fourth of July is tomorrow! The U.S. is 225 years old, and we're missing out on the fiesta. Partly, anyway: tomorrow the Peace Corps Volunteers are getting together at the "Crick" to go swimming. Iron deposits have turned the water dark red, making it seem like swimming in merlot. We've swum there before with no ill effects: we just have to watch out for anacondas.
Monday was Liz's birthday. I bought her a hammock for $4000.00 (guyanese). It's a really nice white cotton one, and she slept in it last night. Never mind that it sagged to the ground and she didn't bother to tighten it up. Stringing a hammock is all trial and error anyway. She was baked a total of FOUR cakes by her friends down here, one of which had a creative Tic Tac garnishing.
Mild illness has begun to affect us, mostly in the form of the occasional stomach cramps and need to run for the john. Hopefully we'll acclimate soon. Until then, we're very grateful that we had the foresight to pack US-made cottonelle toilet paper.
Also on Monday, "Caricom" (caribbean community) day was celebrated.
Mostly just an excuse not to have classes, we spent the day going from one party
to another and hobnobbing with the locals. I've discovered "drafts,"
the Guyanese version of checkers. The additional rules of flying kings and backwards
jumps make it a much more strategy-oriented game, and since no one here really
plays chess, it's quick
become my favorite local pasttime.
June 28
Subject: Training is Paining
Liz and I are finishing our third week of training, and it's pretty painful. We really enjoy our project-related sessions (education for me and health for Liz), but for some reason the Peace Corps feels it necessary to fill our heads and time with droning classes that are pretty much no-brainer stuff, like "don't walk down alleys where it looks like people want to mug you."
Taking our malaria medication, Larium, has been a real trip. Literally. Side effects include "bizarre ideation," which translates to whacked-out dreams. The other night I dreamt I was flying a plane that kept stalling and diving into the ocean, repeatedly.
Maybe it's a metaphor for a loss of control: they keep us under a pretty strict regimen for the time that we're in training: it took Liz a week to get down to the Post Office to pick up a package from her Mom (which arrived safe and sound, albeit left her with 300 dollars less in her pocket. That's Guyanese dollars: it translates to about $1.50.)
We ordered Lonely Planet's South America on a Shoestring to plan a little trip around the continent after we finish our service. We'd like to visit Venezuela, Peru, Chile, Brazil, and about a zillion places in Argentina. We figure it'll only take us three months to see everything.
Next week is the Fourth of July, and all us ex-pats are getting together at the US ambassador's house for a party.
June 23
Subject: I'm in town, chance to email
Everything is going great. Brian had a good birthday, some friends took him out for pizza, a real treat as opposed to the oily rice fare. THe classes are informative, but I feel like I could learn everything they've taught if I just read it. I'm making some good friends.
June 18th
Suject: When it rains….
Dear Family and Friends,
I've never SEEN so much rain!! Yesterday morning, it started raining, and it's been coming down ever since, but this is no ordinary rainstorm. It's like somebody turned on a gigantic faucet and the water just fell out of the sky. No lightning, no hunder, just buckets of rain. Made sleeping in my hammock interesting. It's actually strung up underneath a roof, outside, so it stayed dry, but the sound was pretty loud just the same.
Training continues. We're learning the finer points of the Guyanese culture, language (creolese, kind of like a pidgen English that's been shorthanded verbally and given its own unique Caribbean twang), education, teaching techniques, medical stuff, admin stuff, and general survival necessities.
This past weekend (before the rain) we played sports with the Guyanese on their own turf, the National Park. Cricket was totally incomprehensible, period. It's easier to learn astrophysics that that game. Soccer was a much anticipated experience, and playing a game with the locals totally lived up to my expectations. Other sports remain to be seen.
Went to the zoo a few days ago; the most interesting animals were actually OUTSIDE the zoo walls! Passing a pond, we noticed kids throwing grass into it and a large grey shape moving just beneath the surface. It turned out to be a manatee, a cow-sized seal-like animal pretty common in Guyana. I petted one, it had smooth, leathery skin, and seemed to like my touch: it lifted its head up underneath my hand like a dog would do.
Spotted wild macaws in the trees, and that's just here in the capital. We can't wait to see what we'll run into after we get out of the city. Each of the 15 foot anacondas that we saw in the zoo were donated by the locals, and they're the most commonly donated animals. Kinda makes me nervous.
Sunday Night Feaver
There are OREOS in Guyana!! I can live here
Dear Family and Friends:
Today marked day 1 of our ten week training program. Liz and I have been split up; she's learning how to be a communitgy health promoter and I'm learning the finer points of the the Guyanese education system. So far, the only thing I know for sure is that nothing's for sure: I could be teaching at a university (cripes!) or teaching underneath a palm tree in the middle of the jungle.
Our days are spent in informal class settings, touring the city to learn the local ways (minibuses, the post office, grocery shopping, etc.), and hanging out with the other volunteers. Yesterday we played Ultimate Frisbee with older PC volunteers, European VSO volunteers, Canadian Red Cross volunteers, Guyanese locals, and various other ex-pats, as they're called, a group in which we too are now included. Weird being called an "ex-patriate," makes it seem like we've abandoned the good ol' US of A.