I've been in New Amsterdam about 2.5 weeks now; not very long but I'm starting to get a better sense of the town. I'm also getting a better sense of what I'll be doing at work come fall, and that's the main point of this entry.
I've been assigned to a place that specializes in teaching community adults. Due to Peace Corps rules and restrictions I am not allowed to say exactly which place it is, but suffice to say we run short classes year-long in a number of different subjects ranging from cooking to welding to communication. (In all honesty, Peace Corps has never said a word to us about electronic communication or about blogs, nor have they even asked which of us have blogs -- so maybe they've eased off a bit at least for Guyana, but I mean to take no chances.)
It's not a really big place; don't picture a college or anything. It's pretty humble, though it does have about twenty to thirty teachers running classes all day during the regular part of the year. During summer there are only a couple classes and so they run summer school for young kids. That's what I've been doing for the last couple weeks -- helping my Counterpart run summer school. It's hell, believe me. The kids are pretty wild, and it's hot in that classroom. It just ended today, though, so - hooray!
Come fall (well, actually come two weeks from now) I'll begin teaching my own classes. They're trying to set me up teaching Report Writing to several groups of adults. This class will teach them the essentials in how to compose reports, do research, cite their research, and all that stuff, including a grammar refresher. I'll probably teach 3 or 4 of those classes. What else I'll do with my hours I'm not sure yet; maybe I'll present myself as a one-on-one tutor available during the early afternoon. My classes will begin around 4:30 pm and last about an hour and a half. With this schedule I won't need to get up until late in the morning and I can stay up into the night, which is perfect for me!
The other class I might teach is "Communication," which focuses more upon the importance and practice of both delivering information in speech form and to properly listening. Not something I've ever taught, and I'm a little nervous about it, but I'm sure I could catch on easily. That class would require students to give short speeches, so it would be nice to be on the TEACHER end of that equation for once!
Finally, yesterday I went out with my Supervisor to the local University of Guyana Extension campus, which is about a half hour ride from New Amsterdam. I met there with three people: the Dean, the Director of the Education Department, and an Education teacher (English falls under the School of Education). They want me to teach out there as well, and were falling all over themselves to get me -- since I'm free, I suppose, plus I was educated in America. Anyway, they offer a twin English course, much like schools all over the U.S., with a fall and spring course one after the next. It's a little different from anything I've seen beforem though: the fall course is purely grammar, while all possible types of essay writing are jam-packed into the spring semester. Both of them follow a lecture/tutorial format. So like 80 students cram into a long room and listen to a dry grammar lecture... it sounds to me like a horrible class, for teacher and student alike. No interaction, no discussion, no essays. Just lecture. Then some other time in the week there is a tutorial where about 1/4th of the students meet to review the lecture, and here the teacher sits in the room while the students fill out handouts. Again, not effective teaching and quite boring for all involved. But I guess that's why the education system in Guyana is failing.
In fact, during this visit two of the men I spoke with railed against the abhorrent state of education here, ranging from student passivity to teacher slothfulness. Literally in the same discussion I heard them condemn teachers for being soft on their slacker students, then I was told I couldn't demand anything from my students were I to teach the course. Just give them the handouts, deliver a lecture, then test them. Blah blah. If I teach there, I'll try to stretch the bounds of the class and we'll see who has better results!
But for now, I'll probably stick with my primary project and not work at U.G. I honestly don't relish the idea of teaching a LECTURE class in grammar to 80 students for four months. Yuck! Instead, I'll wait until Spring semester and do the essay-writing course. By then I'll be better situated and have a clearer idea of what I can and can't do.
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
And in Case That Link Didn't Work...
Group picture taken on stage at the National Cultural Center after the ceremony. From left to right: Jason, Jody, Michael, Kumar (CD), Beth, Karla, Rustin, Jacq, Roanne, Brian, Wes, Charge D’Affaires at US Embassy, Liz, Andrea, Caroline, Lydia, Nancy, David, Ministry of Education Officer, Erin, Luke, Justin.
This photo appeared in the Guyana Chronicle along with the following article, found at: www.guyanachronicle.com/ARCHIVES/archive%2030-07-05.html#...
Nineteen Peace Corps volunteers sworn in
By Renu Raghubir
NINETEEN Americans will be dispatched soon in six of the ten Administrative Regions to teach in schools and other institutions, boosting the government’s continuing drive to enhance education delivery.
The young men and women were sworn-in as Volunteer Peace Corps (VPCs) by Deputy Chief of Mission of Peace Corps, Mr. Anthony Interlandi last evening at the National Cultural Centre in Georgetown.Associate Director of Training, Mr. Claudius Prince, who chaired the ceremony, said the batch went through eight weeks of training that concluded on Thursday.
They will teach Information Technology, Mathematics and Science in a number of primary and secondary schools and educational centres.
Prince said the volunteers will be dispatched to Regions Two (Pomeroon/Supenaam), Three (Essequibo Islands/West Demerara), Four (Demerara/Mahaica), Six (East Berbice/Corentyne), Seven (Cuyuni/Mazaruni) and Ten (Upper Demerara/Berbice).
He said, “The group is well-rounded, they understand the way of life of the people who have been hosting them and they are anxious to work in the schools.”
Deputy Chief Education Officer responsibility for Development, Ministry of Education, Mrs. Genevieve White-Nedd, welcomed the batch. She pointed out that the Ministry in its 2003 to 2007 Strategic Plan includes the institutionalising of community alliances and partnerships.
According to her, the Peace Corps has a longstanding relationship with the Ministry and many schools have benefited over the years.
Mrs. White-Nedd said the volunteers’ presence in Guyana is at a most ideal time as there is a shortage of teaching staff among other difficulties facing the Ministry. She explained that they will assist in eliminating illiteracy.
Mr. Interlandi encouraged the volunteers to strive to enhance public health, comfort and care for people and serve with “everything you got”.
The Peace Corps was established in 1961 to promote world peace and friendship by helping the people of interested countries in meeting their needs for trained men and women.
It has 7,733 Volunteers in 72 countries working to teach children, bring about HIV/AIDS awareness, and improve information technology and business development.
The Guyana volunteers also received certificates for successfully completing their training.
georgetown.usembassy.gov/guyana/charge_peacecorps.html
Swearing-in Ceremony: Peace Corps Guyana
National Cultural Center
July 29, 2005
Remarks by Anthony J. Interlandi, Charge D’Affaires
Founding of the Peace Corps
It was 2 o'clock in the morning of October 14, 1960. Democratic Party Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy arrived late to speak to students at the University of Michigan.
More than 10,000 of them had patiently awaited Kennedy’s arrival [historical documents.com].
On that chilly autumn night, Kennedy challenged those youth to devote part of their lives to live and work in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
He wanted them to back his effort to form a volunteer organization, later to be known as the Peace Corps.
The student response was immediate. Within weeks, they organized a petition drive and gathered 1,000 signatures in support of the idea. Several hundred others pledged to serve. Letters poured into Democratic Party headquarters.
Kennedy went on to win the election in November 1960. He made founding of the Peace Corps a priority.
Within two months of taking office, Kennedy issued an Executive order establishing the Peace Corps within the State Department.
He used authority and funds from the Mutual Security Act of 1954 to set up the Peace Corps as a unit within the Department of State.
The Executive Order directed the Peace Corps to train men and women for service abroad for new programs of assistance to nations of the world.
The Peace Corps would support existing U.S. economic assistance programs [Executive Order 10924, 1961].
Kennedy named his brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, to head the new agency. Shriver was a fervent idealist. Within months the first volunteers trained and went to the field.
Kennedy and Shriver wanted permanence and autonomy for the Peace Corps. Many members of Congress agreed.
In September 1961, the 87th Congress passed Public Law 87-293. It established the Peace Corps as an independent agency of the United States Government.
Since then, more than 168,000 citizens of all ages and backgrounds have worked in more than 130 countries throughout the world. They have served in fields such as health, teaching, agriculture, and technology.
Today in Guyana
You, the Class of Guy 16, follow in these hallowed footsteps.
It will be your duty to serve in schools.
It will be your duty to improve informational technology in Guyana. You will do this by working with volunteer organizations, schools and the University of Guyana.
In addition, all Peace Corps volunteers train to help prevent the scourge of HIV/AIDS in Guyana. Use your talents to enhance public health.
Always conduct yourself with dignity and discipline, because:
You, more than I, or others, will be the face of United States of America in your communities.
You will be the face of 45 years of the finest Peace Corps tradition of service and brotherhood.
On November 22, 1963, an assassin extinguished the life of John F. Kennedy.
But that assassin did not extinguish – nor could he extinguish – that shining vision of an American outreach to the world.
Today, John Kennedy’s vision lives on in you.
Sargent Shriver’s Exhortation
Sargent Shriver summed it best at the 40th anniversary of the Peace Corps, at the Lincoln Memorial on September 22, 2001:
Here’s what he said [www.medaloffreedom.com/Sargent Shriver.htm, 2005]:
“…The Peace Corps exists to serve our fellow human beings, regardless of race, education or power…
The Peace Corps works it magic from below, not from above…
It concentrates on the basics of food, health, education and community…”
You as Peace Corps volunteers, thus, must go out and
“…Be servants of peace…
Work humbly, persistently and intelligently…
Weep with those who are sorrowful…
Care for those who are sick…
Serve your neighbors…
Serve your towns…
Serve the poor…
That is your challenge…”
I implore you to:
Go out and use all of your training…
Go out and use all of the talents given to you by your Creator…
Go out and stay faithful to the oath you will take…
And, above all, in the timeless words of Sargent Shriver…
Go out and…
“Serve! Serve! And Serve!”
An Innocent Question
So I'm chilling at my house here in New Amsterdam, entertaining myself by playing a video game. It's a "trivial pursuit"-style game from the early 90s I hadn't played in a while. Right around halfway through the game the following question pops up:
"What is the capital of Guyana?
A) Georgetown
B) Linden
C) Paramaraibo
D) New Amsterdam"
I stared speechlessly at it for a second and the timer almost ran out. For some reason, it struck me pretty hard. This innocent question, which one year ago I would have never known nor cared much about, now speaks directly to my daily life. It even mentioned this tiny town in a backwater part of a distant continent, the town where I now live.
This particular game I played in the arcade many years ago in Waikiki after I had first moved there, and I couldn't help but wonder if it had asked me that question all those years ago. I could have had no way of knowing Guyana would ever factor into my life at the time, much less that I'd LIVE THERE. And yet... here I am a short decade later.
There's nothing odd about the question itself, only the way life takes us on new and unexpected paths that change everything. I wonder what else is in store for me in the decades to come?
"What is the capital of Guyana?
A) Georgetown
B) Linden
C) Paramaraibo
D) New Amsterdam"
I stared speechlessly at it for a second and the timer almost ran out. For some reason, it struck me pretty hard. This innocent question, which one year ago I would have never known nor cared much about, now speaks directly to my daily life. It even mentioned this tiny town in a backwater part of a distant continent, the town where I now live.
This particular game I played in the arcade many years ago in Waikiki after I had first moved there, and I couldn't help but wonder if it had asked me that question all those years ago. I could have had no way of knowing Guyana would ever factor into my life at the time, much less that I'd LIVE THERE. And yet... here I am a short decade later.
There's nothing odd about the question itself, only the way life takes us on new and unexpected paths that change everything. I wonder what else is in store for me in the decades to come?
A Newsworthy Event, Apparently
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
A Tale of Three Parties
You may recall from an earlier post, I went on a trip to the Essequibo Coast on a "Volunteer Visit," the idea of which was to let us see first-hand the life of a Guyana PCV. We had several days of parties, which was followed up by two more. Here is what happened:
On July 2nd, we were invited to the Ambassador's mansion for an American Independence Day celebration. Yes, we knew the 4th was really Independence Day, but July 4th also happens to mark Caricom Day, which is a Guyanese holiday, so the Embassy decided to hold it on that Saturday instead. We went out to the Ambassador's residence in our Peace Corps vans and were stunned: the Ambassador is put up in a gorgeous apricot-colored mansion along the highway leading out of town, on a sprawling acreage surrounded by razor-wire fencing. The grass is edged and cut, there are no cows wandering around, and there's a gorgeous turquoise pool alongside near the tennis courts.
The party was already in full swing when we arrived. Though there wasn't anything to eat for a vegetarian, there was plenty of food in general, including barbecue for the meat-consumers. Attending the party was pretty much anyone in Guyana associated with the United States, whether that meant through the Embassy or through the local branch of the CDC, which is down here for AIDS relief. And the Peace Corps, natch. Also attending, though, were a group of find folks from Loma Linda University, a private school in northern California. They were on a short two-week trip to Guyana as part of their studies in medicine, coming down here to do sort of a "case study" of the health care situation. They had been going from hospital to clinic. Since us Trainees were so green and knew so few PCVs, there was a lot of confusion as to just who was with Peace Corps, with Loma Linda, or with any of the other U.S. institutions in country.
Most of what I did during this party was to swim. Yes, I availed myself of the sparkling pool, the bluest water any of us had seen in a good long while. It was the perfect temperature, and even though it was a little crowded with kids and other people, it was practically perfect. I floated and looked up at a blue sky and palm trees and just enjoyed life.
That party ended, sadly, way too early, so we were driven home. The next day was party #6 for some of us. The Peace Corps took us out on a nice Sunday morning to a place called "Splashmin's," which is sort of like a water park on a black water lake about 30 miles or so south of Georgetown. While there were no water slides, like for some reason we were led to believe, there was a nice lake and lots of thatch-covered huts in a great big grassy lawn to stretch out in. A loudspeaker system was playing music (ranging from soca and dancehall to, at one point, Madonna's greatest hits). We splashed around in the water and drank at the bar and just generally enjoyed each other's company. There were all kinds of water toys to rent, like jet-skis or rafts or paddleboats, but all of them were a little to pricy, and we had already spent $500 Guyanese to get into the park, so most of us just stuck with the free stuff -- the lake itself.
The seventh and final party came on Monday, July 4th. This was Caricom Day throughout the Caribbean. Caricom is a political organization of most of the countries of the Caribbean, something like the European Union. While they haven't united enough to have a common currency (the Eastern Caribbean has that, but nowhere else), nor have they figured out just how much they want to unify politically, the burgeoning economic entity of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) celebrates its existence on this day.
So for Caricom Day we went to the house of our Country Director. Like all CDs, the Peace Corps puts him up in pretty good digs. He has a two-story, air-conditioned house with reliable water, a gorgeous clean kitchen, the works. It was big enough to house most of the PCVs, and our Loma Linda friends, who returned for yet another party. I met several of the people and ended up talking with two of the ladies from L.L. for an hour or so.
Most of my time was taken up, though, talking to a gorgeous woman from Guyana. She knows our Safety and Security Officer and a lot of the PCVs from Georgetown, and so is always invited to their parties. I spent most of my time enjoying a conversation with her, and now we are friends. One interesting irony: she works at a mine here in Guyana where one of my dad's long-time friends used to work, at least before his company sold the mine to hers.
Arguably, the highlight of the party were the two veggie burgers I had, complete with lettuce and ketchup. Ahhh.... It was nearly the only lettuce I've had since arriving in Guyana! (At one point I bought some from a local supermarket that caters to expats, and it was this really expensive imported romaine -- it hit both "the spot" and "the wallet!")
And this brought our marathon of parties to an end. Lest anyone reading this blog thinks to himself or herself, "Jeez, these dang Peace Corps Guyana people do nothing but freaking party!" I can assure you we do not. What you saw there was a bizarre concordance of parties, a sort of planets-aligning kind of thing. It's as if almost all the parties we would ever have during training were coincidentally thrown all in the same week. The downside is that all the other weekends have been slow. :)
There was one other party, which came a couple weeks later, held at the house of a financial officer from the Embassy. But that's another story...
-Bri
On July 2nd, we were invited to the Ambassador's mansion for an American Independence Day celebration. Yes, we knew the 4th was really Independence Day, but July 4th also happens to mark Caricom Day, which is a Guyanese holiday, so the Embassy decided to hold it on that Saturday instead. We went out to the Ambassador's residence in our Peace Corps vans and were stunned: the Ambassador is put up in a gorgeous apricot-colored mansion along the highway leading out of town, on a sprawling acreage surrounded by razor-wire fencing. The grass is edged and cut, there are no cows wandering around, and there's a gorgeous turquoise pool alongside near the tennis courts.
The party was already in full swing when we arrived. Though there wasn't anything to eat for a vegetarian, there was plenty of food in general, including barbecue for the meat-consumers. Attending the party was pretty much anyone in Guyana associated with the United States, whether that meant through the Embassy or through the local branch of the CDC, which is down here for AIDS relief. And the Peace Corps, natch. Also attending, though, were a group of find folks from Loma Linda University, a private school in northern California. They were on a short two-week trip to Guyana as part of their studies in medicine, coming down here to do sort of a "case study" of the health care situation. They had been going from hospital to clinic. Since us Trainees were so green and knew so few PCVs, there was a lot of confusion as to just who was with Peace Corps, with Loma Linda, or with any of the other U.S. institutions in country.
Most of what I did during this party was to swim. Yes, I availed myself of the sparkling pool, the bluest water any of us had seen in a good long while. It was the perfect temperature, and even though it was a little crowded with kids and other people, it was practically perfect. I floated and looked up at a blue sky and palm trees and just enjoyed life.
That party ended, sadly, way too early, so we were driven home. The next day was party #6 for some of us. The Peace Corps took us out on a nice Sunday morning to a place called "Splashmin's," which is sort of like a water park on a black water lake about 30 miles or so south of Georgetown. While there were no water slides, like for some reason we were led to believe, there was a nice lake and lots of thatch-covered huts in a great big grassy lawn to stretch out in. A loudspeaker system was playing music (ranging from soca and dancehall to, at one point, Madonna's greatest hits). We splashed around in the water and drank at the bar and just generally enjoyed each other's company. There were all kinds of water toys to rent, like jet-skis or rafts or paddleboats, but all of them were a little to pricy, and we had already spent $500 Guyanese to get into the park, so most of us just stuck with the free stuff -- the lake itself.
The seventh and final party came on Monday, July 4th. This was Caricom Day throughout the Caribbean. Caricom is a political organization of most of the countries of the Caribbean, something like the European Union. While they haven't united enough to have a common currency (the Eastern Caribbean has that, but nowhere else), nor have they figured out just how much they want to unify politically, the burgeoning economic entity of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) celebrates its existence on this day.
So for Caricom Day we went to the house of our Country Director. Like all CDs, the Peace Corps puts him up in pretty good digs. He has a two-story, air-conditioned house with reliable water, a gorgeous clean kitchen, the works. It was big enough to house most of the PCVs, and our Loma Linda friends, who returned for yet another party. I met several of the people and ended up talking with two of the ladies from L.L. for an hour or so.
Most of my time was taken up, though, talking to a gorgeous woman from Guyana. She knows our Safety and Security Officer and a lot of the PCVs from Georgetown, and so is always invited to their parties. I spent most of my time enjoying a conversation with her, and now we are friends. One interesting irony: she works at a mine here in Guyana where one of my dad's long-time friends used to work, at least before his company sold the mine to hers.
Arguably, the highlight of the party were the two veggie burgers I had, complete with lettuce and ketchup. Ahhh.... It was nearly the only lettuce I've had since arriving in Guyana! (At one point I bought some from a local supermarket that caters to expats, and it was this really expensive imported romaine -- it hit both "the spot" and "the wallet!")
And this brought our marathon of parties to an end. Lest anyone reading this blog thinks to himself or herself, "Jeez, these dang Peace Corps Guyana people do nothing but freaking party!" I can assure you we do not. What you saw there was a bizarre concordance of parties, a sort of planets-aligning kind of thing. It's as if almost all the parties we would ever have during training were coincidentally thrown all in the same week. The downside is that all the other weekends have been slow. :)
There was one other party, which came a couple weeks later, held at the house of a financial officer from the Embassy. But that's another story...
-Bri
This is the Real Thing, Baby
Well, at long last I'm an official PCV. We had our Swearing-In ceremony on the 29th of July, and that following Sunday the Peace Corps drove everyone out to their respective sites. Everything went down like this:
The afternoon of Swearing-In we dressed in our finest. I wore a nice Aloha shirt I hadn't worn ever, brought just for the occasion, along with khaki linen slacks; but I was very sore that I'd neglected to bring my kukui nut lei, which would have perfectly rounded out the ensemble. I have a really nice one, with these polished black kukui nuts spaced apart by clusters of tiny little shells. It looks fab with a black and tan Aloha shirt.
Anyway. So we went to the Cultural Center in Georgetown, which was basically like an Opera house, and probably one of the nicest buildings in all of Guyana. It had a large theatre, of which only about a tenth was filled with people who came out for our "graduation," but we didn't mind -- the media was there, and so we ended up on the news! The ceremony itself was about two hours long, involving a few (thankfully) short speeches by our CD, APCD, a representative of the Embassy, and a representative of the Guyanese Education department. Afterward we were called up one by one onto the stage, where we were handed a piece of paper which declared we had successfully finished out Training and were proper PCVs. It was very much like a graduation ceremony in that sense, minus the cap and gown. When this was finished, we stood in a long line and the CD's wife and the wife of the guy from the Embassy went down and gave each of us a nifty little Peace Corps lapel pin, which had the Peace Corps circle logo underneath the crossed Guyanese and American flags.
Following this, we resumed our seats and a local dance troupe of several young ladies from a local church came out and did a stunning interpretive dance to Luther Vandross' "Dance With My Father," which was so moving it was hard to avoid bursting into tears. Seriously. I want to weep just thinking about it. Whoops! There I go.
Afterward, we were called up on stage en masse to give our own speeches, those of us who chose to do so. Mercifully, only three of us wanted to do this. Following this, we gave the Peace Corps a nice surprise with a pair of songs a fellow Trainee had written to the tunes of "My Favorite Things" and "So Long, Farewell" from The Sound of Music. If I can find my copy of the lyrics I'll post them here. It was amusing, and got some good laughs.
The ceremony over, we held a brief reception upstairs, with pupu platters and delicious cherry juice. As this ended we made our way to the Ocean View hotel for our big party. This was a nice bit of symbolism, because the Ocean View was the hotel we stayed at for a couple of days when we first arrived in Guyana. The party went well -- we had it catered and had a d.j., though I ended up not getting completely drunk, as I predicted I would. That isn't to say others didn't get totally drunk: we had one volunteer who was so hammered on the way home she vomited like a fountain and then passed out. Ah, frivolity.
Some of us wanted to go from the party directly to the National Park, where dancehall legend Beenie Man was having a concert that very night (horrible timing!!!) but the Peace Corps said absolutely NO. We had a special APCD just for training, a great guy and a wonderful teacher (and a Rasta, to boot) and his last act as our temporary APCD was to see us all home safely. One volunteer, drunk and not making the best decisions, slipped away on the sly with some PCVs from previous years who were going to the concert. She was found out because her alibis didn't jive with each other, and came damn close to being Administratively Separated on the very night of her Swearing-In! Scary thing is, I dang near went with her that night... but as I said, I wasn't that drunk, so better judgement prevailed and I dodged that particular bullet.
In the end, we all went home and woke up as PCVs. I was remarking to another volunteer here in New Amsterdam that it's almost like it took me 7 years to make it through Training... But I'm here, and it's f-ing awesome!
-Bri
The afternoon of Swearing-In we dressed in our finest. I wore a nice Aloha shirt I hadn't worn ever, brought just for the occasion, along with khaki linen slacks; but I was very sore that I'd neglected to bring my kukui nut lei, which would have perfectly rounded out the ensemble. I have a really nice one, with these polished black kukui nuts spaced apart by clusters of tiny little shells. It looks fab with a black and tan Aloha shirt.
Anyway. So we went to the Cultural Center in Georgetown, which was basically like an Opera house, and probably one of the nicest buildings in all of Guyana. It had a large theatre, of which only about a tenth was filled with people who came out for our "graduation," but we didn't mind -- the media was there, and so we ended up on the news! The ceremony itself was about two hours long, involving a few (thankfully) short speeches by our CD, APCD, a representative of the Embassy, and a representative of the Guyanese Education department. Afterward we were called up one by one onto the stage, where we were handed a piece of paper which declared we had successfully finished out Training and were proper PCVs. It was very much like a graduation ceremony in that sense, minus the cap and gown. When this was finished, we stood in a long line and the CD's wife and the wife of the guy from the Embassy went down and gave each of us a nifty little Peace Corps lapel pin, which had the Peace Corps circle logo underneath the crossed Guyanese and American flags.
Following this, we resumed our seats and a local dance troupe of several young ladies from a local church came out and did a stunning interpretive dance to Luther Vandross' "Dance With My Father," which was so moving it was hard to avoid bursting into tears. Seriously. I want to weep just thinking about it. Whoops! There I go.
Afterward, we were called up on stage en masse to give our own speeches, those of us who chose to do so. Mercifully, only three of us wanted to do this. Following this, we gave the Peace Corps a nice surprise with a pair of songs a fellow Trainee had written to the tunes of "My Favorite Things" and "So Long, Farewell" from The Sound of Music. If I can find my copy of the lyrics I'll post them here. It was amusing, and got some good laughs.
The ceremony over, we held a brief reception upstairs, with pupu platters and delicious cherry juice. As this ended we made our way to the Ocean View hotel for our big party. This was a nice bit of symbolism, because the Ocean View was the hotel we stayed at for a couple of days when we first arrived in Guyana. The party went well -- we had it catered and had a d.j., though I ended up not getting completely drunk, as I predicted I would. That isn't to say others didn't get totally drunk: we had one volunteer who was so hammered on the way home she vomited like a fountain and then passed out. Ah, frivolity.
Some of us wanted to go from the party directly to the National Park, where dancehall legend Beenie Man was having a concert that very night (horrible timing!!!) but the Peace Corps said absolutely NO. We had a special APCD just for training, a great guy and a wonderful teacher (and a Rasta, to boot) and his last act as our temporary APCD was to see us all home safely. One volunteer, drunk and not making the best decisions, slipped away on the sly with some PCVs from previous years who were going to the concert. She was found out because her alibis didn't jive with each other, and came damn close to being Administratively Separated on the very night of her Swearing-In! Scary thing is, I dang near went with her that night... but as I said, I wasn't that drunk, so better judgement prevailed and I dodged that particular bullet.
In the end, we all went home and woke up as PCVs. I was remarking to another volunteer here in New Amsterdam that it's almost like it took me 7 years to make it through Training... But I'm here, and it's f-ing awesome!
-Bri
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
The Essequibo Coast
Following up on my previous post, this is a write-up of another excellent experience I had a couple weeks ago. During our fourth week in Guyana, everyone was sent out on what they called a "Volunteer Visit," a chance to see some of the other parts of the country and witness volunteer life in person. They have a set of volunteers who have agreed to take one or two trainees under their wing for a half week, and other than matching genders, they assign volunteers to trainees in a totally random fashion.
My host volunteer was from Guy 14, having arrived one year ahead of me. He lived in a town pretty far away from Georgetown (I'm forbidden to say exactly where, sadly, but I can say it was somewhere between the Essequibo river and the Pomeroon river). In order to get there, I had to travel by bus from Georgetown to Parika, cross the Essequibo, then take a bus all the way to his town. The first leg of the journey took about an hour and cost $300 Guyanese dollars. Fortunately I was traveling with several other people who were headed to volunteers living near mine, so for most of the way we travelled together, and that mitigated some of the terror of having to find our way alone. We jammed into a bus hailed near the Starbroek Market (a danger zone, by the way, and forbidden to us) and rode out across the floating Demerara bridge. The bridge is a long steel structure that is designed to open in two spots to allow boat traffic up the Demerara. It isn't paved; the driving deck of the bridge is covered with steel plates that rest in fittings, so that they clank when one drives across them. The bridge also "flexes" in a most unnerving way, which you can especially see if you are driving behind a large truck.
Across this river, we drove along the coast and the seawall to Parika, a tiny town on the edge of the Essequibo. Here we went to the end of the "stelling," a Dutch term for a covered boat dock, and caught a speedboat. One of the trainees traveling with us balked when she saw the small boat bobbing in the chocolate-colored river water and refused to get on. Granted, it was a little nervous-making stepping into the boat with a huge backpack, feeling it bob and weave under us and threaten to toss us overboard. But she stayed behind (assisted by a PCV from the area who came to help us out) and we pressed on. Crossing the Essequibo was amazing. The speedboat skimmed across the water, following the shoreline of some delta islands. The shore was a primal jungle of palms, trees with dangling vines, and the occasional darkened inlet that burrowed back into the jungle like a grotto. A couple of these islands have volunteers going to them later, although I hear they aren't as thickly forested inland.
The boat let us out at a town with an unpronouncable name (costing us $900 Guyanese dollars) and we found, to our delight, another PCV from the area had come to assist, this time bringing a friend who owned a bus, so we didn't need to hail one ourself. En masse we spent the afternoon playing pool and having lunch at a nice roadside restaurant/nightclub, then we all went to our respective houses. My volunteer lived in the bottom floor of a two-story building behind a family home. The top floor was rented out to some woman whom I never saw, and some of the ground floor was taken up by a "garage" where an SUV was stored under a sheet. What remained was my volunteer host's place. It was bare concrete, on the floor, walls, and ceiling, largely undecorated except for the occasional taped picture and a large gaudy rug depicting a toreador. One trainee come with me to this place, and he slept in a hammock in a back room, enshrouded in a mosquito net. I let him have the hammock -- it didn't seem like the kind of thing I could comfortably sleep in for a whole night. Instead, I took a single bed tucked against a wall. A bit small for me, but I didn't mind.
The first night we bought a few food items and then rented a movie. Yes, rented a movie. See, here in Guyana there is a thriving video sales and rental business, but almost none of the movies are legit. Most of them are pirated copies brought over from China or Taiwan. I plan to write about them sometime in depth, so I won't steal my thunder here, other than to say the blurb on the back of the movie we chose, Clive Cussler's Sahara, was so poorly translated as to be almost meaningless.
So we watched Sahara that night on his computer (the movie wasn't bad, by the way). Then we went to sleep. Long about midnight I tried to tuck the mosquito net a little more firmly into the bed, to eliminate some sags, and the whole thing popped out of the ceiling and collapsed over me. I couldn't figure out how it had been affixed to the ceiling so that night I had to sleep without a net. Considering the aggressive and numerous mosquitos in Guyana, I made out pretty well -- we had a mosquito coil burning and I had a fan directed onto me the whole night, so that helped.
The next day we awoke to some scrambled eggs and toast, out on nice clothes, and went up to visit the school where our PCV host taught. It was a technical school, and people there were studying all kinds of things I could never do, like taking a car apart and putting it back together, cutting chair legs with a band saw, learning higher-order mathematics ("maths" here), etc. So we met some of the school's administrators and key teachers, then sat in a computer classroom and checked our e-mail and played Hearts until it was time to go.
That afternoon was party #2 (the first was at the restaurant the afternoon before). This was to be a weekend of many parties, it would turn out, some in Georgetown. But our party was excellent -- it was held at the house of another PCV, this one extending for his third year. He was a master chef and made eggplant parmesan and garlic bread (my that sounds nice right now) and we drank and "limed" all evening. He had a nice place that overlooked the seawall and the ocean, and was continuously bathed in cool breezes. In fact, I found all of the Essequibo coast to be cooler in temperature to Georgetown, mainly because it is right there on the ocean and subject to cool winds. We ended the party at a roadside rum shop. It was so quiet, compared to where we do our training, that for three hours we didn't see another car go by. At last we hailed the midnight bus and went back for some sleep.
Our sleep was short, though, because in the morning we all got up and went to Charity, a town at the end of the road on the Pomeroon. There we caught another speedboat and shot up the river a few miles to the farm of a local man, a friend to several of the PCVs. This was party #3. We spent the whole day here, liming and playing cards, relaxing in hammocks, or swimming in the Pomeroon. Like all the other rivers, this river is the color of chocolate Yoohoo, but we heard this one has piranhas in it. Sadly, I heard that after our trip there, otherwise I might have gone swimming! You know, so I could say I've been swimming in piranha-infested waters?
In the cool shade and breezes I slept in a hammock and read my book and did some crosswords, and everyone had a great time all around me. At noon we had a huge pot, more like a cauldron, of "cook-up" rice which was mighty delicious (cook-up rice is a type of rice made with coconut). At one point I got into a small rowboat with two other PCVs and paddled down the Pomeroon to a riverside store -- yes, a store that only services the river side -- and paddled back up. We fought the current only one direction -- oddly it was the downriver way, because during high tide in the coast the water actually goes upriver. This is the same for all the rivers here. We've seen mats of vegetation or floating logs going upstream, because the ocean pushes the river back during high tide. This, despite the fact that we were many miles inland.
We took the speedboat back to Parika, the operator's music vibrating the boat boards and echoing across the jungly Pomeroon ("Rich Girl" by Gwen Stefani, oddly). We spent a couple of hours at a Chinese restaurant where, despite deplorable hygiene conditions, I actually had a delicious meal of chow mein, then headed back home for some much-deserved sleep. In the morning it was time to head back to Georgetown and training. Party #4 came that evening, when the last of our PCT group had returned. We convened at a tiny roadside shack, a "rum shop," where we have often limed and commiserated. We had many drinks there and shared stories of adventures from all over Guyana, from New Amsterdam to the Pomeroon (check a map -- that's most of the Guyana coastline).
Then we slept like the dead. It was exhausting, and we would need our strength for parties #5, #6, and #7 -- which I'll write about another time.
My host volunteer was from Guy 14, having arrived one year ahead of me. He lived in a town pretty far away from Georgetown (I'm forbidden to say exactly where, sadly, but I can say it was somewhere between the Essequibo river and the Pomeroon river). In order to get there, I had to travel by bus from Georgetown to Parika, cross the Essequibo, then take a bus all the way to his town. The first leg of the journey took about an hour and cost $300 Guyanese dollars. Fortunately I was traveling with several other people who were headed to volunteers living near mine, so for most of the way we travelled together, and that mitigated some of the terror of having to find our way alone. We jammed into a bus hailed near the Starbroek Market (a danger zone, by the way, and forbidden to us) and rode out across the floating Demerara bridge. The bridge is a long steel structure that is designed to open in two spots to allow boat traffic up the Demerara. It isn't paved; the driving deck of the bridge is covered with steel plates that rest in fittings, so that they clank when one drives across them. The bridge also "flexes" in a most unnerving way, which you can especially see if you are driving behind a large truck.
Across this river, we drove along the coast and the seawall to Parika, a tiny town on the edge of the Essequibo. Here we went to the end of the "stelling," a Dutch term for a covered boat dock, and caught a speedboat. One of the trainees traveling with us balked when she saw the small boat bobbing in the chocolate-colored river water and refused to get on. Granted, it was a little nervous-making stepping into the boat with a huge backpack, feeling it bob and weave under us and threaten to toss us overboard. But she stayed behind (assisted by a PCV from the area who came to help us out) and we pressed on. Crossing the Essequibo was amazing. The speedboat skimmed across the water, following the shoreline of some delta islands. The shore was a primal jungle of palms, trees with dangling vines, and the occasional darkened inlet that burrowed back into the jungle like a grotto. A couple of these islands have volunteers going to them later, although I hear they aren't as thickly forested inland.
The boat let us out at a town with an unpronouncable name (costing us $900 Guyanese dollars) and we found, to our delight, another PCV from the area had come to assist, this time bringing a friend who owned a bus, so we didn't need to hail one ourself. En masse we spent the afternoon playing pool and having lunch at a nice roadside restaurant/nightclub, then we all went to our respective houses. My volunteer lived in the bottom floor of a two-story building behind a family home. The top floor was rented out to some woman whom I never saw, and some of the ground floor was taken up by a "garage" where an SUV was stored under a sheet. What remained was my volunteer host's place. It was bare concrete, on the floor, walls, and ceiling, largely undecorated except for the occasional taped picture and a large gaudy rug depicting a toreador. One trainee come with me to this place, and he slept in a hammock in a back room, enshrouded in a mosquito net. I let him have the hammock -- it didn't seem like the kind of thing I could comfortably sleep in for a whole night. Instead, I took a single bed tucked against a wall. A bit small for me, but I didn't mind.
The first night we bought a few food items and then rented a movie. Yes, rented a movie. See, here in Guyana there is a thriving video sales and rental business, but almost none of the movies are legit. Most of them are pirated copies brought over from China or Taiwan. I plan to write about them sometime in depth, so I won't steal my thunder here, other than to say the blurb on the back of the movie we chose, Clive Cussler's Sahara, was so poorly translated as to be almost meaningless.
So we watched Sahara that night on his computer (the movie wasn't bad, by the way). Then we went to sleep. Long about midnight I tried to tuck the mosquito net a little more firmly into the bed, to eliminate some sags, and the whole thing popped out of the ceiling and collapsed over me. I couldn't figure out how it had been affixed to the ceiling so that night I had to sleep without a net. Considering the aggressive and numerous mosquitos in Guyana, I made out pretty well -- we had a mosquito coil burning and I had a fan directed onto me the whole night, so that helped.
The next day we awoke to some scrambled eggs and toast, out on nice clothes, and went up to visit the school where our PCV host taught. It was a technical school, and people there were studying all kinds of things I could never do, like taking a car apart and putting it back together, cutting chair legs with a band saw, learning higher-order mathematics ("maths" here), etc. So we met some of the school's administrators and key teachers, then sat in a computer classroom and checked our e-mail and played Hearts until it was time to go.
That afternoon was party #2 (the first was at the restaurant the afternoon before). This was to be a weekend of many parties, it would turn out, some in Georgetown. But our party was excellent -- it was held at the house of another PCV, this one extending for his third year. He was a master chef and made eggplant parmesan and garlic bread (my that sounds nice right now) and we drank and "limed" all evening. He had a nice place that overlooked the seawall and the ocean, and was continuously bathed in cool breezes. In fact, I found all of the Essequibo coast to be cooler in temperature to Georgetown, mainly because it is right there on the ocean and subject to cool winds. We ended the party at a roadside rum shop. It was so quiet, compared to where we do our training, that for three hours we didn't see another car go by. At last we hailed the midnight bus and went back for some sleep.
Our sleep was short, though, because in the morning we all got up and went to Charity, a town at the end of the road on the Pomeroon. There we caught another speedboat and shot up the river a few miles to the farm of a local man, a friend to several of the PCVs. This was party #3. We spent the whole day here, liming and playing cards, relaxing in hammocks, or swimming in the Pomeroon. Like all the other rivers, this river is the color of chocolate Yoohoo, but we heard this one has piranhas in it. Sadly, I heard that after our trip there, otherwise I might have gone swimming! You know, so I could say I've been swimming in piranha-infested waters?
In the cool shade and breezes I slept in a hammock and read my book and did some crosswords, and everyone had a great time all around me. At noon we had a huge pot, more like a cauldron, of "cook-up" rice which was mighty delicious (cook-up rice is a type of rice made with coconut). At one point I got into a small rowboat with two other PCVs and paddled down the Pomeroon to a riverside store -- yes, a store that only services the river side -- and paddled back up. We fought the current only one direction -- oddly it was the downriver way, because during high tide in the coast the water actually goes upriver. This is the same for all the rivers here. We've seen mats of vegetation or floating logs going upstream, because the ocean pushes the river back during high tide. This, despite the fact that we were many miles inland.
We took the speedboat back to Parika, the operator's music vibrating the boat boards and echoing across the jungly Pomeroon ("Rich Girl" by Gwen Stefani, oddly). We spent a couple of hours at a Chinese restaurant where, despite deplorable hygiene conditions, I actually had a delicious meal of chow mein, then headed back home for some much-deserved sleep. In the morning it was time to head back to Georgetown and training. Party #4 came that evening, when the last of our PCT group had returned. We convened at a tiny roadside shack, a "rum shop," where we have often limed and commiserated. We had many drinks there and shared stories of adventures from all over Guyana, from New Amsterdam to the Pomeroon (check a map -- that's most of the Guyana coastline).
Then we slept like the dead. It was exhausting, and we would need our strength for parties #5, #6, and #7 -- which I'll write about another time.
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Culture Day vs. St.Cuthbert's
This entry is about two events I somehow failed to mention when they happened. The first was called "Culture Day," an event that took place on I believe our second Saturday in Guyana. The second took place a couple weeks later, and involved a trip out to a place called St. Cuthbert's. It's a little long, but it should be of interest.
First things first. Culture Day was our first taste of things outside of the urban and semi-urban areas where we train. Early on a Saturday morning the Peace Corps vans came and picked us up and drove us far out of town to the south. Following the Demerara river inland, we finally took another highway away from the river and pulled into an area of forests and vast hilly fields. Here, at the end of a narrow and winding dirt track through the crowding forest we arrived at a retreat center of sorts. Mostly it was a large tin-roofed gathering hall ringed by small wooden shacks which stood in as cabins. The place had the delightful and tongue-tangling name of Kurukururu, and it was a popular spot to host church or business retreats.
We began by being introduced to the game of cricket. I'd seen it in the Eastern Caribbean, but never got very close to it, much less played it. But they divided us into two teams and we squared off on the cricket field.
Now, I don't know if you've ever played cricket, but it goes something like this: The field is roundish with a central stripe of dirt. At either end of the stripe is a wicket, a sort of trio of sticks attached to thin base that is easy to topple. It needs to be easy to topple, because the job of the "bowler" is to toss a ball at it and knock it down. If you're the "batsman," your job is to prevent this from happening by swinging a cricket bat at the ball. Much like one would do in baseball, that is if the pitcher was trying to knock over the home plate. Should the batsman connect with the ball and send it flying, he should then race down the dirt strip to the other wicket. That will score a point. And, like baseball, if you have time you can run back to the original wicket and score another point, and on and on until someone throws that ball back to the bowler. Again like baseball, if you aren't at a base when the ball comes back, you're out. To toss another layer of complexity on it, there are actually two people doing the running, one starting at each wicket (including the person who hits the ball). So, in effect you have baseball with only two bases, and both bases are constantly loaded.
There are other little rules, but that's the gist of it. It's actually pretty simple, really. I didn't want to play at first, but we were all required to, so eventually I had to take to bat. It was blazing hot outside and everyone could feel themselves burning as it happened. Gratefully, a bank of clouds came to temper the heat somewhat, but then all the running and swinging brought out the sweat. So anyway, I swung and connected, and ran as well as a 235-pound, out-of-shape man can run from wicket to wicket. Alas, the next batsman was struck out and by that time our team had cycled through and it was time to switch. So I took outfield and hustled as well as I could to catch the other team's hit balls. Eventually it was my turn to "bowl," or throw the ball, so I took it and underhanded the bad boy, trying to aim for the wicket. I struck the person out. Nice. So the next person took to the bat and I did the same. A fluke? Everyone was giggling at the nice run of luck. Then when I struck out a third person in a row everyone began to laugh hysterically, myself included -- the non-athletic guy, the one who hated sports and didn't want to play, bowled better than anyone else there!
The next thing on the agenda that day was learning to dance. Well, that's what I thought, anyway, but we didn't really get taught any dance moves. Or musical styles, either. They gathered us together and tried to talk a little about reggae and soca and dancehall and whatnot, but most people couldn't follow. Then we all got up and danced as well as we could for one song -- if memory serves, it was the old dancehall classic, "Action," by Terror Fabulous (I told you I know a lot of the music down here).
We ended the day with a swim in the black water. Now, this was our first experience with the stuff -- we've had a few since -- and we were a little alarmed. Walking down to the creek, we were treated to a stagnant pond, black and brackish looking, overhung with trees. We stripped to our swimming suits and slowly got in. The water felt very nice and cool, and surprisingly it didn't stink of rotting vegetation. But it was a deep orange/yellow/red color as we climbed in, roughly the same color as iodine, but so very dark that light only travels a few inches through it. Someone standing up to their knees in the water wouldn't be able to see anything more than their knee caps, and what skin was barely visible would be orange through the water. It sounds unhealthy as hell, but it was actually quite enjoyable. We swam down an adjoining arm of the pond into a jungle-like bayou, floating mats of vegetation bobbing along the edges and palms and great buttress-root trees forming a canopy overhead. I was up to my chin in the water, occasionally brushing against slimy sticks underwater, but otherwise unharmed. Some others came with me, and yet more rowed up to meet us in a colorful blue canoe. Together we explored the farthest stretches of the bayou. It was amazing.
I wanted also to mention St. Cuthbert's. It goes well with the Culture Day discussion, because it also involved swimming in some black water, and it was in the same general direction as Kurukururu. But it differed in one major way, and that was how to get out to St. Cuthbert's. See, St. Cuthbert's is an Amerindian village, and like most Amerindian villages, it is very remote and isolated. In order to get to St. Cuthbert's, we headed out the same highway as Kurukururu, but went farther yet, then pulled over beside the road where we were met by a huge truck. This truck was an old army troop-carrier, and was still painted the same army green and even had a covered cupola in the truck cab where a gunner's nest might be attached. We, however, rode in the bed of the truck, sitting on wooden benches or clinging to the overhead canopy's metal frame as the canvas flapped in the wind. The truck drove off road onto a winding trail of white dirt, and proceeded to follow this bumpy, twisting "road" for about fifteen miles, veering to avoid debris and occasionally plunging into vast, deep puddles left over from the rains. Following us was the rest of the Peace Corps staff in two Land Rovers with snorkels, and sometimes the puddles were so deep that the Land Rovers would be nearly buried under a wall of water as they plunged in. I got some amazing MPEG videos of the event, which one day I'll post here.
I am still in awe of that ride. It was very adventurous, trundling through the savannah like that. Hanging to the metal frame and rocking with the jostles, we were like riders on a subway -- a very rough subway, at least. And the fact that we were lined up in a huge troop truck, being followed by Land Rovers, made me turn to someone at one point and say how much like Indiana Jones this whole thing was -- as though our CD was Indy and we were the Nazis with the Ark.
Most of what we did at St. Cuthbert's was swim. More black water, so I won't belabor that. But it was interesting to see an Amerindian village. The missionaries had really worked hard to get them decent housing -- probably the first good thing I've seen from a missionary -- and so they had matching small wood-frame houses colored these bright and cheerful hues. There were a couple larger buildings, including a health center and the "Captain's" house. They also had a craft center where they sell wonderful works of sculpture and weaving, alas for more than I could afford at the time. They live very isolated lives out there, and it can be very hot, but there were plenty of shade trees. Plenty of fruit trees, too, for that matter -- I saw a starfruit tree (called "Five Finger" down here) that was so laden down with the juicy, ripe-looking fruits that I couldn't begin to count them all. And nobody was bothering to pick them! There was also a huge, colorful macaw clinging to a tree branch and it let us get very close and interact with it. Got a great shot of that.
At one point one of the Program people in charge of placement asked if I wanted to be placed out there (this was weeks ago, before they had finalized the sites). I said no. It was nice, and so were the people, but I really wanted something more urban. Turns out, nobody got placed in St. Cuthbert's. Three were put in Amerindian villages, all of them more remote than St. Cuthbert's.
First things first. Culture Day was our first taste of things outside of the urban and semi-urban areas where we train. Early on a Saturday morning the Peace Corps vans came and picked us up and drove us far out of town to the south. Following the Demerara river inland, we finally took another highway away from the river and pulled into an area of forests and vast hilly fields. Here, at the end of a narrow and winding dirt track through the crowding forest we arrived at a retreat center of sorts. Mostly it was a large tin-roofed gathering hall ringed by small wooden shacks which stood in as cabins. The place had the delightful and tongue-tangling name of Kurukururu, and it was a popular spot to host church or business retreats.
We began by being introduced to the game of cricket. I'd seen it in the Eastern Caribbean, but never got very close to it, much less played it. But they divided us into two teams and we squared off on the cricket field.
Now, I don't know if you've ever played cricket, but it goes something like this: The field is roundish with a central stripe of dirt. At either end of the stripe is a wicket, a sort of trio of sticks attached to thin base that is easy to topple. It needs to be easy to topple, because the job of the "bowler" is to toss a ball at it and knock it down. If you're the "batsman," your job is to prevent this from happening by swinging a cricket bat at the ball. Much like one would do in baseball, that is if the pitcher was trying to knock over the home plate. Should the batsman connect with the ball and send it flying, he should then race down the dirt strip to the other wicket. That will score a point. And, like baseball, if you have time you can run back to the original wicket and score another point, and on and on until someone throws that ball back to the bowler. Again like baseball, if you aren't at a base when the ball comes back, you're out. To toss another layer of complexity on it, there are actually two people doing the running, one starting at each wicket (including the person who hits the ball). So, in effect you have baseball with only two bases, and both bases are constantly loaded.
There are other little rules, but that's the gist of it. It's actually pretty simple, really. I didn't want to play at first, but we were all required to, so eventually I had to take to bat. It was blazing hot outside and everyone could feel themselves burning as it happened. Gratefully, a bank of clouds came to temper the heat somewhat, but then all the running and swinging brought out the sweat. So anyway, I swung and connected, and ran as well as a 235-pound, out-of-shape man can run from wicket to wicket. Alas, the next batsman was struck out and by that time our team had cycled through and it was time to switch. So I took outfield and hustled as well as I could to catch the other team's hit balls. Eventually it was my turn to "bowl," or throw the ball, so I took it and underhanded the bad boy, trying to aim for the wicket. I struck the person out. Nice. So the next person took to the bat and I did the same. A fluke? Everyone was giggling at the nice run of luck. Then when I struck out a third person in a row everyone began to laugh hysterically, myself included -- the non-athletic guy, the one who hated sports and didn't want to play, bowled better than anyone else there!
The next thing on the agenda that day was learning to dance. Well, that's what I thought, anyway, but we didn't really get taught any dance moves. Or musical styles, either. They gathered us together and tried to talk a little about reggae and soca and dancehall and whatnot, but most people couldn't follow. Then we all got up and danced as well as we could for one song -- if memory serves, it was the old dancehall classic, "Action," by Terror Fabulous (I told you I know a lot of the music down here).
We ended the day with a swim in the black water. Now, this was our first experience with the stuff -- we've had a few since -- and we were a little alarmed. Walking down to the creek, we were treated to a stagnant pond, black and brackish looking, overhung with trees. We stripped to our swimming suits and slowly got in. The water felt very nice and cool, and surprisingly it didn't stink of rotting vegetation. But it was a deep orange/yellow/red color as we climbed in, roughly the same color as iodine, but so very dark that light only travels a few inches through it. Someone standing up to their knees in the water wouldn't be able to see anything more than their knee caps, and what skin was barely visible would be orange through the water. It sounds unhealthy as hell, but it was actually quite enjoyable. We swam down an adjoining arm of the pond into a jungle-like bayou, floating mats of vegetation bobbing along the edges and palms and great buttress-root trees forming a canopy overhead. I was up to my chin in the water, occasionally brushing against slimy sticks underwater, but otherwise unharmed. Some others came with me, and yet more rowed up to meet us in a colorful blue canoe. Together we explored the farthest stretches of the bayou. It was amazing.
I wanted also to mention St. Cuthbert's. It goes well with the Culture Day discussion, because it also involved swimming in some black water, and it was in the same general direction as Kurukururu. But it differed in one major way, and that was how to get out to St. Cuthbert's. See, St. Cuthbert's is an Amerindian village, and like most Amerindian villages, it is very remote and isolated. In order to get to St. Cuthbert's, we headed out the same highway as Kurukururu, but went farther yet, then pulled over beside the road where we were met by a huge truck. This truck was an old army troop-carrier, and was still painted the same army green and even had a covered cupola in the truck cab where a gunner's nest might be attached. We, however, rode in the bed of the truck, sitting on wooden benches or clinging to the overhead canopy's metal frame as the canvas flapped in the wind. The truck drove off road onto a winding trail of white dirt, and proceeded to follow this bumpy, twisting "road" for about fifteen miles, veering to avoid debris and occasionally plunging into vast, deep puddles left over from the rains. Following us was the rest of the Peace Corps staff in two Land Rovers with snorkels, and sometimes the puddles were so deep that the Land Rovers would be nearly buried under a wall of water as they plunged in. I got some amazing MPEG videos of the event, which one day I'll post here.
I am still in awe of that ride. It was very adventurous, trundling through the savannah like that. Hanging to the metal frame and rocking with the jostles, we were like riders on a subway -- a very rough subway, at least. And the fact that we were lined up in a huge troop truck, being followed by Land Rovers, made me turn to someone at one point and say how much like Indiana Jones this whole thing was -- as though our CD was Indy and we were the Nazis with the Ark.
Most of what we did at St. Cuthbert's was swim. More black water, so I won't belabor that. But it was interesting to see an Amerindian village. The missionaries had really worked hard to get them decent housing -- probably the first good thing I've seen from a missionary -- and so they had matching small wood-frame houses colored these bright and cheerful hues. There were a couple larger buildings, including a health center and the "Captain's" house. They also had a craft center where they sell wonderful works of sculpture and weaving, alas for more than I could afford at the time. They live very isolated lives out there, and it can be very hot, but there were plenty of shade trees. Plenty of fruit trees, too, for that matter -- I saw a starfruit tree (called "Five Finger" down here) that was so laden down with the juicy, ripe-looking fruits that I couldn't begin to count them all. And nobody was bothering to pick them! There was also a huge, colorful macaw clinging to a tree branch and it let us get very close and interact with it. Got a great shot of that.
At one point one of the Program people in charge of placement asked if I wanted to be placed out there (this was weeks ago, before they had finalized the sites). I said no. It was nice, and so were the people, but I really wanted something more urban. Turns out, nobody got placed in St. Cuthbert's. Three were put in Amerindian villages, all of them more remote than St. Cuthbert's.
Stuff I Didn't Get to Say
I was away for a site visit when these came up, but here are a couple of points of interest I noticed:
I've now been in the Peace Corps longer than ever. July 2nd marked the beginning of the second month. I didn't get that far last time.
July 18th was the anniversary of my first Peace Corps attempt, back in 1998. Seven years ago this evening I was in St. Lucia at the home of Ruth St. Claire in Babonneau.
Not that I'm spending much time looking back these days, but these two items just sort of struck me one day, and I thought I'd share.
I've now been in the Peace Corps longer than ever. July 2nd marked the beginning of the second month. I didn't get that far last time.
July 18th was the anniversary of my first Peace Corps attempt, back in 1998. Seven years ago this evening I was in St. Lucia at the home of Ruth St. Claire in Babonneau.
Not that I'm spending much time looking back these days, but these two items just sort of struck me one day, and I thought I'd share.
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Site Visit Report
I haven't blogged in a couple weeks because I've been very busy. Even though I have free internet access from where I work, I didn't have either the time or energy to write anything of any significance.
Last week I was in New Amsterdam on a "site visit," where volunteers get to head out to where they'll be spending the next two years and see the place for themselves. I stayed with the person I'll spend the first three months with, a sort of extended homestay. Normally I would dread this, but this particular match is excellent -- he is a guy in his twenties and he shares a three-building compound with two of his good friends. So it turns out I'm hanging with three dudes close to my age. And they're a lot of fun, too; on Saturday we went to a local nightclub called "Lenny's" and had a blast, drinking some rum and dancing to some reggae and dancehall. Two of the three have police department connections, so I feel very safe here. On Sunday night we went to a basketball tournament nearby and they sort of watched over me. They've also been giving me excellent advice; for example, while we were at the nightclub I saw an attractive woman walk by, and noticing my interest in her, one of them advised me, "she's not for you -- H.I.V. positive." It's nice having ex-police who know community members running interference for me since I'm so new to Guyana and to New Amsterdam in particular.
During the site visit I also went to where I'll be working over the next two years. Peace Corps restrictions don't allow me to talk about it with too much specificity, so I'll just try to give some general highlights. It's an organization that teaches members of the community, adults and children alike, but mostly adults. They give classes in a number of different and varied subjects from computers to cooking. Of course, I'm going to be teaching "language" to adults, which means literacy -- many are scared away by the term "literacy" since it has such connotations about their value to say they aren't literate. Anyhow, I might also be teaching a class in how to compose formal communications, like cover letters, thank-you letters, resumes, and any other kind of correspondence. My supervisor indicated that as a need for the community, and I could easily and gladly teach that. Might even be fun.
To top it off, they are going to introduce me to the Dean of the University of Guyana Extension, a branch of the main campus which is in Georgetown. The drive out along the Corentyne coast to the UG Extension is a little long, coming in at about $200 Guyanese dollars one-way, but it would be very nice to also be out there. That would be my secondary project, if I do that.
The town of New Amsterdam itself is quite nice. Someone told me it was half the size of Georgetown, which is not true, but it is nice anyway (It's closer to 1/16th the size of Georgetown). As people foretold me, everything I need is there -- a market, clothing stores, internet access (which I get free from work, by the way), and anything else. It even has a very nice supermarket stocked with a lot of American items, so I can get some nice soy milk and cereal to replace the horrendous mustard and cheese-spread sandwiches people like to eat for breakfast here. New Amsterdam even has night life, as I mentioned in the first paragraph. Nothing like Georgetown, and it's massive four-story dance club Buddies, but at least there's something to do.
One thing New Am doesn't have, though, is a Peace Corps office. As it stands, I have to travel about 2 hours by both ferry and bus to get to Georgetown. That in itself might not be so bad, but there's a wrinkle: just east of G'Town is a town called Buxton, which is the seat of crime in this area. Everything was peaceful until a few years ago, when five criminals escaped the jail and set themselves up in Buxton as crime lords. Even though only one now remains, the others gunned down in various altercations, crime has skyrocketed in Guyana under his tutelage, and things are hottest in Buxton. The problem is that there is no way around Buxton without going so far into the interior as to make it a two-day trip to Georgetown. So the Peace Corps will not permit PCVs to pass through Buxton on a bus; rather, we must be in a Peace Corps van. We tell them we are coming to Georgetown, or leaving it, and they will drive us through Buxton. The rest of the journey is up to us, as we take a bus all the way to Mahaica, a nearby town, calling on Peace Corps for the final leg of the journey. It's a pain in the ass, but more than that, this means the Peace Corps will always know whenever you are coming to Georgetown for anything, whether it be to visit another volunteer, to party at Buddy's, you name it. So no sneaking out for out-of-site visits off the books!
Overall, though, I'm very happy with my placement. I'll be back there in two weeks' time. Until then, it's back to training and the grind. Blah.
Last week I was in New Amsterdam on a "site visit," where volunteers get to head out to where they'll be spending the next two years and see the place for themselves. I stayed with the person I'll spend the first three months with, a sort of extended homestay. Normally I would dread this, but this particular match is excellent -- he is a guy in his twenties and he shares a three-building compound with two of his good friends. So it turns out I'm hanging with three dudes close to my age. And they're a lot of fun, too; on Saturday we went to a local nightclub called "Lenny's" and had a blast, drinking some rum and dancing to some reggae and dancehall. Two of the three have police department connections, so I feel very safe here. On Sunday night we went to a basketball tournament nearby and they sort of watched over me. They've also been giving me excellent advice; for example, while we were at the nightclub I saw an attractive woman walk by, and noticing my interest in her, one of them advised me, "she's not for you -- H.I.V. positive." It's nice having ex-police who know community members running interference for me since I'm so new to Guyana and to New Amsterdam in particular.
During the site visit I also went to where I'll be working over the next two years. Peace Corps restrictions don't allow me to talk about it with too much specificity, so I'll just try to give some general highlights. It's an organization that teaches members of the community, adults and children alike, but mostly adults. They give classes in a number of different and varied subjects from computers to cooking. Of course, I'm going to be teaching "language" to adults, which means literacy -- many are scared away by the term "literacy" since it has such connotations about their value to say they aren't literate. Anyhow, I might also be teaching a class in how to compose formal communications, like cover letters, thank-you letters, resumes, and any other kind of correspondence. My supervisor indicated that as a need for the community, and I could easily and gladly teach that. Might even be fun.
To top it off, they are going to introduce me to the Dean of the University of Guyana Extension, a branch of the main campus which is in Georgetown. The drive out along the Corentyne coast to the UG Extension is a little long, coming in at about $200 Guyanese dollars one-way, but it would be very nice to also be out there. That would be my secondary project, if I do that.
The town of New Amsterdam itself is quite nice. Someone told me it was half the size of Georgetown, which is not true, but it is nice anyway (It's closer to 1/16th the size of Georgetown). As people foretold me, everything I need is there -- a market, clothing stores, internet access (which I get free from work, by the way), and anything else. It even has a very nice supermarket stocked with a lot of American items, so I can get some nice soy milk and cereal to replace the horrendous mustard and cheese-spread sandwiches people like to eat for breakfast here. New Amsterdam even has night life, as I mentioned in the first paragraph. Nothing like Georgetown, and it's massive four-story dance club Buddies, but at least there's something to do.
One thing New Am doesn't have, though, is a Peace Corps office. As it stands, I have to travel about 2 hours by both ferry and bus to get to Georgetown. That in itself might not be so bad, but there's a wrinkle: just east of G'Town is a town called Buxton, which is the seat of crime in this area. Everything was peaceful until a few years ago, when five criminals escaped the jail and set themselves up in Buxton as crime lords. Even though only one now remains, the others gunned down in various altercations, crime has skyrocketed in Guyana under his tutelage, and things are hottest in Buxton. The problem is that there is no way around Buxton without going so far into the interior as to make it a two-day trip to Georgetown. So the Peace Corps will not permit PCVs to pass through Buxton on a bus; rather, we must be in a Peace Corps van. We tell them we are coming to Georgetown, or leaving it, and they will drive us through Buxton. The rest of the journey is up to us, as we take a bus all the way to Mahaica, a nearby town, calling on Peace Corps for the final leg of the journey. It's a pain in the ass, but more than that, this means the Peace Corps will always know whenever you are coming to Georgetown for anything, whether it be to visit another volunteer, to party at Buddy's, you name it. So no sneaking out for out-of-site visits off the books!
Overall, though, I'm very happy with my placement. I'll be back there in two weeks' time. Until then, it's back to training and the grind. Blah.
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