Hello again. I'm back in the city for what they call early service training! I'll be in the city for two weeks, which is quite a lot but I'll be taking classes most of the time. Don't worry, though, I found time to blog!
Life has been both incredibly slow and moving way too fast. I usually get up around 7 AM, which is late, according to Saramaccan standards. I once got reprimanded by my neighbor for waking up at 8 AM because, according to her, I would miss all the news about the day if I got up that late. They like to get up at the break of dawn, get the fire started, cook a giant pot of rice and some veggies before it gets hot. They will eat out of that pot for the rest of the day, or else they'll make a little more in the evening.
So once I'm up, I'll take a bucket bath, rub mosquito lotion all over my legs, and get dressed. I'll sit down for a breakfast of oatmeal and tea (with milk and sugar. Horrible habit, I know). By the time I'm ready to move around, it's probably around nine AM. I usually try to find a reason to walk across the village at this point, as it is customary to ask everyone how they woke. Most days I walk to the river to do my dishes from the day before. If I have nothing to do after that, I walk back to my house. I often do come across someone who is doing something I can join. I have some neighbors that are often sitting and sewing together. I'll sit with them and listen to the gossip (which I can't really follow) and just take in the voices. Other times someone will be making cassava bread or pounding rice and it will become the focal point of the neighborhood and a good excuse to hang out. Some time around noon I get hungry and cook something for myself. Half of the time I cook a lot so that my neighboring Peace Corps Volunteer can come over and have dinner with me later. The other half of the time I go to his house for dinner. But there is a period from 12 to 4 when the sun is so incredibly hot that I cannot get myself to walk around. If I am not already doing something, I'm usually home and in my hammock on my porch until the sun is bearable or the kids have annoyed me enough to get me out of the hammock. Evening time is another chance to walk around the town, and I often find a reason to get out of the house for it. Then I have dinner and wait for someone to come get me to go do something fun at night. People like to come over and ask me for a taste of what I cooked (that's a Saramaccan thing. I could try to mooch off of my neighbors too, but I haven't gotten used to that idea yet.) Else I just sit in my house and read or close my front door and chill by myself for a bit. As relaxing as my day sounds, I occasionally have days when I just need to chill out and destress. Trying to talk in a foreign language and having to please all these people can get to you.
Of course, there are lots of other aspects of my life, like my cat, who likes to wake me up in the morning by rubbing his scent glands on my nose and purring into my ear. Or like the 13 year old girl who likes to come over and sit at my house and make me read the AIDS awareness poster to her in english. Or the countless young men that find excuses to come over to my house and ask me for my hand in marriage even though they have one or more wives already.
But all in all, life is an outdoors activity and work is to socialize and integrate into the community. I try to walk around as much as I can stand, as I have barely started to get to know people, and they can all tell who I am from a mile away. I find that getting close to people is closely related to how much time you spend with them, so I make efforts to get lots of exposure. And that's my job right now!
I would like to write a little something about my good friend in the village, Sikowtu, which translates to"police" in english. Sikowtu was one of the first kids to come over to my house in the evening and make me feel like I was a part of things. He and the other teenagers would sit on my porch and talk about relationship stuff, as teenagers do. And I would try to follow the conversation and feel so very pleased that they had chosen my house to hang out since I didn't know anyone at that point. Then I started lending my ipod to Sikowtu. He would come over in the mornings and I would know to have it ready for him, and if there was something going on that would be of interest to me, Sikowtu would tell me about it. He led me around the village when I was still getting lost there. He charged my phone when there was no electricity for a few days. When school got out, he took me to the ceremony the kids held. Usually, things here happen on a last minute basis, and if you miss the memo, you can easily just not hear about a current event. Sikowtu acted as my messenger. And in the evenings, he would bring back my ipod. Also, when I asked some locals about fixing my roof, and they were about to charge me an arm and a leg, he just butted in and offered to take me to the jungle to teach me about how to cut leaves for the roof myself. So we hiked into the jungle, chopped trees down with machetes and carried giant piles of leaves on our heads to get them back to the village. It was awesome. And I would never have gotten to do it if not for Sikowtu. He has even taken me to go play soccer with the boys. Sadly, he has since gone to the gold mines in search of riches. He has said that he will come back to the village in December, but I have a feeling a young man will get caught up in whatever opportunity comes his way, so he might be gone for a long time. When he left, people kept asking me if I would miss him, and every time, I said: YES. So this is my little ode to a dude that made my life as an outsider just a little bit sweeter. Cheers to you, Sikowtu.
