We all encounter it now and again in our various sites: You are just hanging out, minding your own business, when someone you barely know will come up and say, "Hey, you're the Peace Corps person, aren't you? Why don't you teach english?"
Responses to this are numerous:
1. You don't know me, so what do you know about whether I'm giving english lessons.
2. If I'd wanted to teach english, I'd have gotten real money to do it elsewhere.
3. Even if I do offer lessons and take time out of my day to hold a lesson, I might get the occasional visitor, but I will not get anyone to come in succession every week, and therefore any progress that could be made with people would be almost nonexistent.
Despite the validity of these arguments, I have been bullied into offering lessons. I refuse to go sit somewhere at a scheduled hour, but I tell people that they can come to my house any time, and I'll offer them a lesson. Usually no one takes me up on the offer. But the other day, I had my first student. It was a humble beginning, what with both the teacher and the student being inexperienced at playing school. But I managed to make her repeat the alphabet until she could say all the letters. Then I taught her phrases like Good Morning, My Name is ____, etc. She was fighting the derisive comments of my neighbor (this is typical Elsa) and the attempts at conversations being made by this other dude (that was just rude), and then we paused the lesson for a good while to argue with the guy about some event that happened at least ten years ago. But my student bravely soldiered on through the adversities of learning english in the jungle. If she ever comes back, I'll make her go over what I taught her the first time.
I am chalking this one up as a win. It's going on my trimester report.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Sunday, April 1, 2012
In-Service Training
Hello Everyone!
I have come to the city for In-Service Training. The SUR 16's (those who came to Suriname a year before I did) had what is called their Close of Service Training. Their departure is so close they can smell it. When the 16's leave, there will be no more replacements, so there will be only 20 peace corps volunteers in Suriname left. We 17's are not thrilled about this, but I guess it will bring us closer, so that's nice. In any case, it'll be a huge transition for me. Unlike most other volunteers in Suriname, I have what I like to call a Site-Mate. There's another volunteer living about a two minute walk away from me. We have dinner every day. In addition, there is a couple who is employed by the Peace Corps as response volunteers, whom I also see almost every day in my village. All three of those people will be leaving around June. After that, I spend my next year being the only Peace Corps Volunteer in my village. That is generally the norm, but will be a new experience for me. I think I will find myself taking more trips up and down the river to go see my coworkers in other villages.
And now for a little tribute to my cat. As some of you might know, I have a cat named Milk (aka Meiki) living with me at my house. He has been my best friend, and occasionally my only consolation when I have felt all alone in a strange place with nobody to listen to my complaints. Milk is my buddy. We spend the evenings cuddling. He likes to annoy me by jumping onto the lids of my meat buckets (buckets originally meant for exporting meat, but now used to keep rats out of my food) right as I am about to open them. He likes to sit on my lap when I'm eating breakfast and he enjoys surveying the land from the highest vantage points in my house. I didn't realize how much I like having him around until he nearly died. Recently, my cat got extremely sick. He had eaten a poisoned rat. He was fine in the morning, and all of a sudden, he began throwing up. Then he threw up only bile, and then he was retching without having anything to throw up anymore. By the end of the day he was motionless, hiding under my bed. Later that night, he stumbled pathetically outside and fell into the weeds. When I tried to force him to eat things, he whined at me and moved further away. I got the hint and left him alone. That night he didn't come back. In fact, he didn't come back the day after either. Or the day after. I was certain he had died. That's when I realized how much I love the little bugger. I was in serious distress over losing him, and (I will admit), I cried quite a bit that day. Then, at 11 PM on that second day, he stumbled in and cried at me to wake me up. He was skin and bones, and he slept on the floor, which he never does. But he proceeded to recover! I got to laugh at him during those days of recovery for being an old man and not being able to jump onto my bed anymore. But in the meantime, he's back to his old self, and all thoughts of losing him have faded into the background.
I hope everyone back home is passing the time and making the best of it! Thank you to everyone who has spent precious time and effort to send me a package. Getting a package is one of the most exciting experiences of living here.
I have come to the city for In-Service Training. The SUR 16's (those who came to Suriname a year before I did) had what is called their Close of Service Training. Their departure is so close they can smell it. When the 16's leave, there will be no more replacements, so there will be only 20 peace corps volunteers in Suriname left. We 17's are not thrilled about this, but I guess it will bring us closer, so that's nice. In any case, it'll be a huge transition for me. Unlike most other volunteers in Suriname, I have what I like to call a Site-Mate. There's another volunteer living about a two minute walk away from me. We have dinner every day. In addition, there is a couple who is employed by the Peace Corps as response volunteers, whom I also see almost every day in my village. All three of those people will be leaving around June. After that, I spend my next year being the only Peace Corps Volunteer in my village. That is generally the norm, but will be a new experience for me. I think I will find myself taking more trips up and down the river to go see my coworkers in other villages.
And now for a little tribute to my cat. As some of you might know, I have a cat named Milk (aka Meiki) living with me at my house. He has been my best friend, and occasionally my only consolation when I have felt all alone in a strange place with nobody to listen to my complaints. Milk is my buddy. We spend the evenings cuddling. He likes to annoy me by jumping onto the lids of my meat buckets (buckets originally meant for exporting meat, but now used to keep rats out of my food) right as I am about to open them. He likes to sit on my lap when I'm eating breakfast and he enjoys surveying the land from the highest vantage points in my house. I didn't realize how much I like having him around until he nearly died. Recently, my cat got extremely sick. He had eaten a poisoned rat. He was fine in the morning, and all of a sudden, he began throwing up. Then he threw up only bile, and then he was retching without having anything to throw up anymore. By the end of the day he was motionless, hiding under my bed. Later that night, he stumbled pathetically outside and fell into the weeds. When I tried to force him to eat things, he whined at me and moved further away. I got the hint and left him alone. That night he didn't come back. In fact, he didn't come back the day after either. Or the day after. I was certain he had died. That's when I realized how much I love the little bugger. I was in serious distress over losing him, and (I will admit), I cried quite a bit that day. Then, at 11 PM on that second day, he stumbled in and cried at me to wake me up. He was skin and bones, and he slept on the floor, which he never does. But he proceeded to recover! I got to laugh at him during those days of recovery for being an old man and not being able to jump onto my bed anymore. But in the meantime, he's back to his old self, and all thoughts of losing him have faded into the background.
I hope everyone back home is passing the time and making the best of it! Thank you to everyone who has spent precious time and effort to send me a package. Getting a package is one of the most exciting experiences of living here.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Work Work Work
Hello all,
Here I am again. It doesn't feel like it's been all that long since I've last written. After all, I was in the city this time last month. It definitely does not feel like Christmas here. Instead of the smells of cookies and pine trees, you get a lot of the smell of fireworks. Every store here is selling giant quantities of fireworks. The president of Suriname mandated that one must not shoot them before the 27th of December so as to minimize injuries, but starting about a week ago, I have been hearing the occasional crack of an explosive going off. The sound has been getting more and more frequent, and I am assuming it's all building up to New Years Eve. I'm told there are so many fireworks going off at midnight that you can't hear anything. I, myself, have purchased the occasional firework to contribute to the madness. Just to feel like I was part of things.
Moving on, I'd like to spend some time on the project work that has been going on since I've been getting a lot of questions about that lately. But first, I'd like to provide my readers with a frame of mind with which they might understand what we're up against here in Suriname. I came across this website while I was doing some research, and what I found shocked me. Although I shouldn't have been all that surprised. Anyways, here's the site:
http://www.doingbusiness.org/data/exploreeconomies/suriname/#starting-a-business
The site ranks countries by their ease of starting a business. Suriname's process takes an average of 680 days. It costs a huge amount of money. Suriname is ranked one of the least new-business-friendly countries in the world. 158 out of 183, to be exact. The whole website has some very cool information. I recommend checking it out if you've got some time on your hands (and I take it you do since you're reading my blog).
So there you have it. Suriname is a hostile environment if you are trying to get anything done. We Peace Corps Volunteers are all fighting this issue as we try to push our projects to completion. With that in mind, here's an update on the notorious Toilet Project:
My village has all of the materials necessary to build these little structures. There are some questions as to how much cement we need and whether we should buy the flush part of the toilet (as opposed to just the bowl, which is common in these parts) in case there will be a functioning water system to get hooked up to, but all in all, those little details can be worked out when we get to that stage. Right now, the village must get it's butt in gear, and provide the manual labor that it has promised to contribute to the project. We have spent many a day manually shoveling sand from the middle of the river into a boat and then onto the dock, and then to it's final location. If you have any idea how much sand you need to make thousands of cement blocks, and you compare that to the average amount of sand one person can carry on their head, you will realize that this is a big project. And we completed that. We even made the cement blocks already. Again, hours of manual labor are required to mix the cement, pour it into a mold, stamp the cement into the mold with a mallet-like piece of wood, set the new stone out to dry in the sun, and use the same mold to make another stone. You can make about a hundred stones in a day's worth of work. We made thousands all together. And we have dug seven gigantic holes, which in itself has been a big step only because choosing a location for a toilet is a very political process. You'll never get 100% buy-in. To this day I have a guy complaining that there is a toilet-hole in front of his house that he is planning on filling back in. My major road-block is the attitude that you can just take the initiative to ruin a project, but it is not common after that to find an alternative route to completion. People will put their own desires first, and the conflict which then ensues with the goals of the project forces the project into stagnation.
So, here we are, in the middle of this project, and we have come to a stand-still. It's nobody's priority to do work for no pay, and since people are busy with "making money to prepare for the holidays," as I was told, if anyone is available to do work, they will refuse to work because some neighbor of theirs is not doing any work. Many conversations with villagers have provoked my anger on this matter. The unfortunate reality is that nobody is invested in this project enough to step up and do work on their own accord. And although I would love to be that person, I actually don't know how to place the stone blocks for the toilets, and am thus physically incapable of stepping up to do any work. So I rely on my counterpart. And, well, he's not exactly on good terms with this project now that people have accused him of only working on it when there was money to be made. Which is kind of true. So, politics have put a temporary stop to my work. But I have faith that progress will be made yet. I will not give up!
And now for another note: The Blue Ball Project has started! In a previous blog, I mentioned that some of my coworkers were working on a project to get the indestructible balls into the country. Well, they came through! My village is hoping to receive 20 of these soccer balls. We are planning to get a person who knows soccer to teach some life skills while holding soccer camps. Any donations to this effect are very much appreciated. I can honestly say that the biggest help I, as a PCV, can do in my village, is to educate. Aid is a very controversial thing out here, since most of the aid that has been done in my village previously, is now broken, or locked up in some storage space, or has been stolen. Large and complicated electronics (like computers) are bound to live a short and unproductive life when donated. Also, that kind of aid perpetuates a mentality of waiting to do anything on your own because you might just be getting it for free eventually. This mindset is already popular and is hard to eradicate in my village as it is. What works, though, is the education. Because it has long-term effects on the people involved. Which is why I like the idea of being a Volunteer. I am the only aid worker here that has the time to share perspectives and explain motives. So, my point is, this is a project that I can really get behind. If you feel the same way about it, please check out this link:
https://www.peacecorps.gov/
Ok everyone, this blog has gotten very long. I will stop overwhelming you all with information now.
Peace Out!
Here I am again. It doesn't feel like it's been all that long since I've last written. After all, I was in the city this time last month. It definitely does not feel like Christmas here. Instead of the smells of cookies and pine trees, you get a lot of the smell of fireworks. Every store here is selling giant quantities of fireworks. The president of Suriname mandated that one must not shoot them before the 27th of December so as to minimize injuries, but starting about a week ago, I have been hearing the occasional crack of an explosive going off. The sound has been getting more and more frequent, and I am assuming it's all building up to New Years Eve. I'm told there are so many fireworks going off at midnight that you can't hear anything. I, myself, have purchased the occasional firework to contribute to the madness. Just to feel like I was part of things.
Moving on, I'd like to spend some time on the project work that has been going on since I've been getting a lot of questions about that lately. But first, I'd like to provide my readers with a frame of mind with which they might understand what we're up against here in Suriname. I came across this website while I was doing some research, and what I found shocked me. Although I shouldn't have been all that surprised. Anyways, here's the site:
http://www.doingbusiness.org/data/exploreeconomies/suriname/#starting-a-business
The site ranks countries by their ease of starting a business. Suriname's process takes an average of 680 days. It costs a huge amount of money. Suriname is ranked one of the least new-business-friendly countries in the world. 158 out of 183, to be exact. The whole website has some very cool information. I recommend checking it out if you've got some time on your hands (and I take it you do since you're reading my blog).
So there you have it. Suriname is a hostile environment if you are trying to get anything done. We Peace Corps Volunteers are all fighting this issue as we try to push our projects to completion. With that in mind, here's an update on the notorious Toilet Project:
My village has all of the materials necessary to build these little structures. There are some questions as to how much cement we need and whether we should buy the flush part of the toilet (as opposed to just the bowl, which is common in these parts) in case there will be a functioning water system to get hooked up to, but all in all, those little details can be worked out when we get to that stage. Right now, the village must get it's butt in gear, and provide the manual labor that it has promised to contribute to the project. We have spent many a day manually shoveling sand from the middle of the river into a boat and then onto the dock, and then to it's final location. If you have any idea how much sand you need to make thousands of cement blocks, and you compare that to the average amount of sand one person can carry on their head, you will realize that this is a big project. And we completed that. We even made the cement blocks already. Again, hours of manual labor are required to mix the cement, pour it into a mold, stamp the cement into the mold with a mallet-like piece of wood, set the new stone out to dry in the sun, and use the same mold to make another stone. You can make about a hundred stones in a day's worth of work. We made thousands all together. And we have dug seven gigantic holes, which in itself has been a big step only because choosing a location for a toilet is a very political process. You'll never get 100% buy-in. To this day I have a guy complaining that there is a toilet-hole in front of his house that he is planning on filling back in. My major road-block is the attitude that you can just take the initiative to ruin a project, but it is not common after that to find an alternative route to completion. People will put their own desires first, and the conflict which then ensues with the goals of the project forces the project into stagnation.
So, here we are, in the middle of this project, and we have come to a stand-still. It's nobody's priority to do work for no pay, and since people are busy with "making money to prepare for the holidays," as I was told, if anyone is available to do work, they will refuse to work because some neighbor of theirs is not doing any work. Many conversations with villagers have provoked my anger on this matter. The unfortunate reality is that nobody is invested in this project enough to step up and do work on their own accord. And although I would love to be that person, I actually don't know how to place the stone blocks for the toilets, and am thus physically incapable of stepping up to do any work. So I rely on my counterpart. And, well, he's not exactly on good terms with this project now that people have accused him of only working on it when there was money to be made. Which is kind of true. So, politics have put a temporary stop to my work. But I have faith that progress will be made yet. I will not give up!
And now for another note: The Blue Ball Project has started! In a previous blog, I mentioned that some of my coworkers were working on a project to get the indestructible balls into the country. Well, they came through! My village is hoping to receive 20 of these soccer balls. We are planning to get a person who knows soccer to teach some life skills while holding soccer camps. Any donations to this effect are very much appreciated. I can honestly say that the biggest help I, as a PCV, can do in my village, is to educate. Aid is a very controversial thing out here, since most of the aid that has been done in my village previously, is now broken, or locked up in some storage space, or has been stolen. Large and complicated electronics (like computers) are bound to live a short and unproductive life when donated. Also, that kind of aid perpetuates a mentality of waiting to do anything on your own because you might just be getting it for free eventually. This mindset is already popular and is hard to eradicate in my village as it is. What works, though, is the education. Because it has long-term effects on the people involved. Which is why I like the idea of being a Volunteer. I am the only aid worker here that has the time to share perspectives and explain motives. So, my point is, this is a project that I can really get behind. If you feel the same way about it, please check out this link:
https://www.peacecorps.gov/
Ok everyone, this blog has gotten very long. I will stop overwhelming you all with information now.
Peace Out!
Monday, November 21, 2011
The Adventures Continue
Hello everyone! I've come back to the city for Thanksgiving. Coincidentally, November 25th is Surinamese Independence day, so I'll be experiencing that one in the city too. The ambassador is hosting a thanksgiving party that we have been invited to as well. It will be a fun week.
Back at site, I have been having a good time. As it turns out, I am pretty good at speaking the language already. I found this out on my adventure with Baa Belly. Baa Belly is my neighbor. He is something like 90 years old and he takes care of me with bush medicine when I'm feeling sick. (Side note: The other day I had a pretty bad cold and Baa Belly came over with an orange and spent a long time explaining exactly how to squeeze the juice out of it and then how to strain the seeds out of the juice and then to put sugar into it and then how to drink it. All for a glass of orange juice. Some things are just universal I guess. When you're sick, you drink orange juice.) Anyways, Baa Belly has family in another village on the river, one where there is a Peace Corps Volunteer as well. He probably has family in almost every village because I am not kidding you when I say he must have like a hundred children by many different women.
So Baa Belly was going to travel to this village for a ceremony called Limba Uwii (Clean the Leaves). It's one of the many things that are done after someone dies. After much conversation, people convinced me that I should go too, since I had never seen one before. However, they made a big deal about me not leaving Baa Belly's side. And how when someone brings you to a place, he is responsible for you and you must not go off on your own. One guy came over to my house just to tell me that I shouldn't travel because you never know when a crazy guy will come and stab you. I just sort of ignored his advice... But all this hype about sticking with Baa Belly turned out to be completely false. As soon as we got out of the boat, I told Baa Belly that I had a Peace Corps friend in the village, and that was about the last time I saw Baa Belly. He went off and did his thing and I went off and did mine. After the second day, when we were supposed to go home together, Baa Belly went as far as to tell me to look for my own boat home because he was going to stay a few more days. I was very surprised. Why did everyone make such a big deal out of sticking together?? I may never know.
Before getting there, I had convinced two other PCV's to come to the ceremony with me, and two others were within walking distance of the village, so we all got together and it was a party. You can imagine the already tiny house filled with hammocks. A Limba Uwii ceremony starts early in the morning. Everyone in the village gets together and literally cleans the paths that lead to the river. They do yardwork. But it's cooler because you do it with machetes. When they collectively decide that they are done weeding, there is a communal river bath. A few things go on throughout the day after that. Someone has killed jungle meat and this is made into a soup that is distributed with cassava bread throughout the village in the evening. They also make a beverage out of boiled sugar cane. This will be consumed the next day. In the evening, there is music playing in the common area. As in, people are drumming and singing. Everyone is all dressed up and the young men are drinking beer at the Wankies. No one really dances except for the kids. Later they begin playing Saramaccan music through speakers and around 12 to 1 am, you see a few adults starting to dance. There will be electricity and music until the sun comes up around 6:30AM. Being one of the few females in Saramacca that drinks, (drinking is associated with promiscuity), I get a lot of free beer at events like this. I was quite drunk by the end of the night and stayed up till 3 am. The next morning, we got all dressed up again and around 9 AM, the real ceremony starts. They call it the Puu Ajoe. An Ajoe is something like a spirit that lingers around, and the ceremony is done to release the spirit so it can go away. There is a group of old men drumming and a group of women with their heads covered in a white koosu, dancing around a circle, or just dancing, and often just standing. All kinds of strange things happen to you when you sit among the crowd at this ceremony. The coolest thing was that they came around and tied a random koosu on everyone's head. Once you have your head tied, you are allowed to get up and dance if you want. You can also keep the koosu. They pass out all kinds of goodies. Various cakes, cassava bread with sugar on it, soda, beer and Palm Rum. You can drink the beverages, or get creatve with them. A lot of the rum gets poured into hands and then rubbed on heads or legs. People pour soda on heads, alcohol too. Some people spray the beverage of choice onto other people. At some point boys came around with what is called Peppe Wata (pepper water) and used leaves to flick it on people's heads. It doesn't burn unless it gets into your eye. One lady kept forcing people to take giant gulps of Palm. People get very drunk after enough time. Eventually, the young men appear, dressed in masks and covered from head to toe so you cannot recognize them. They mostly run around and scare the kids, but also dance with people and do inappropriate things on the dance floor. It's a crazy day. And good times are had by all.
Outside of the Limba Uwii, we had a good time in the village. It's really big so I felt like I could get lost at any time. We went to the museum, saw the biggest wankie on the river, hung out with the wood carver guys, and had an all around good time.
Back at site, I have been having a good time. As it turns out, I am pretty good at speaking the language already. I found this out on my adventure with Baa Belly. Baa Belly is my neighbor. He is something like 90 years old and he takes care of me with bush medicine when I'm feeling sick. (Side note: The other day I had a pretty bad cold and Baa Belly came over with an orange and spent a long time explaining exactly how to squeeze the juice out of it and then how to strain the seeds out of the juice and then to put sugar into it and then how to drink it. All for a glass of orange juice. Some things are just universal I guess. When you're sick, you drink orange juice.) Anyways, Baa Belly has family in another village on the river, one where there is a Peace Corps Volunteer as well. He probably has family in almost every village because I am not kidding you when I say he must have like a hundred children by many different women.
So Baa Belly was going to travel to this village for a ceremony called Limba Uwii (Clean the Leaves). It's one of the many things that are done after someone dies. After much conversation, people convinced me that I should go too, since I had never seen one before. However, they made a big deal about me not leaving Baa Belly's side. And how when someone brings you to a place, he is responsible for you and you must not go off on your own. One guy came over to my house just to tell me that I shouldn't travel because you never know when a crazy guy will come and stab you. I just sort of ignored his advice... But all this hype about sticking with Baa Belly turned out to be completely false. As soon as we got out of the boat, I told Baa Belly that I had a Peace Corps friend in the village, and that was about the last time I saw Baa Belly. He went off and did his thing and I went off and did mine. After the second day, when we were supposed to go home together, Baa Belly went as far as to tell me to look for my own boat home because he was going to stay a few more days. I was very surprised. Why did everyone make such a big deal out of sticking together?? I may never know.
Before getting there, I had convinced two other PCV's to come to the ceremony with me, and two others were within walking distance of the village, so we all got together and it was a party. You can imagine the already tiny house filled with hammocks. A Limba Uwii ceremony starts early in the morning. Everyone in the village gets together and literally cleans the paths that lead to the river. They do yardwork. But it's cooler because you do it with machetes. When they collectively decide that they are done weeding, there is a communal river bath. A few things go on throughout the day after that. Someone has killed jungle meat and this is made into a soup that is distributed with cassava bread throughout the village in the evening. They also make a beverage out of boiled sugar cane. This will be consumed the next day. In the evening, there is music playing in the common area. As in, people are drumming and singing. Everyone is all dressed up and the young men are drinking beer at the Wankies. No one really dances except for the kids. Later they begin playing Saramaccan music through speakers and around 12 to 1 am, you see a few adults starting to dance. There will be electricity and music until the sun comes up around 6:30AM. Being one of the few females in Saramacca that drinks, (drinking is associated with promiscuity), I get a lot of free beer at events like this. I was quite drunk by the end of the night and stayed up till 3 am. The next morning, we got all dressed up again and around 9 AM, the real ceremony starts. They call it the Puu Ajoe. An Ajoe is something like a spirit that lingers around, and the ceremony is done to release the spirit so it can go away. There is a group of old men drumming and a group of women with their heads covered in a white koosu, dancing around a circle, or just dancing, and often just standing. All kinds of strange things happen to you when you sit among the crowd at this ceremony. The coolest thing was that they came around and tied a random koosu on everyone's head. Once you have your head tied, you are allowed to get up and dance if you want. You can also keep the koosu. They pass out all kinds of goodies. Various cakes, cassava bread with sugar on it, soda, beer and Palm Rum. You can drink the beverages, or get creatve with them. A lot of the rum gets poured into hands and then rubbed on heads or legs. People pour soda on heads, alcohol too. Some people spray the beverage of choice onto other people. At some point boys came around with what is called Peppe Wata (pepper water) and used leaves to flick it on people's heads. It doesn't burn unless it gets into your eye. One lady kept forcing people to take giant gulps of Palm. People get very drunk after enough time. Eventually, the young men appear, dressed in masks and covered from head to toe so you cannot recognize them. They mostly run around and scare the kids, but also dance with people and do inappropriate things on the dance floor. It's a crazy day. And good times are had by all.
Outside of the Limba Uwii, we had a good time in the village. It's really big so I felt like I could get lost at any time. We went to the museum, saw the biggest wankie on the river, hung out with the wood carver guys, and had an all around good time.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
This blog is more work-related
Hello again, everyone!
I'll expand a bit more on my work here as a Peace Corps volunteer, since I have gotten some questions about that from the few of you that I can keep in contact with.
Peace Corps has mandated that we not begin any work in the first three months of our service. I have been faithful to that, except to continue the work on the toilet project that my predecessor passed on to me. Which is progressing nicely. My counterpart will be coming in to the city to receive a check with the donated money soon. Together, we will begin purchasing raw materials. I had some trouble motivating the village to pull sand out of the river, since that was a part of what the community had promised to contribute to the project. I tried to make the community meet several times until I gave my counterpart the job of getting people together to do the work. He finally got them to pull the sand. (Lesson learned: PCV's should be behind the scenes. Pick a local, trusted leader to get people on board with the project.)
Since I've come to the city, the focus has changed. All of a sudden, talk revolves around our future projects. We've been shown how to write proposals for grants, how to assess the community we live in for potential projects, and how to use the resources and databases that are available to us. We also spent time learning about Edutainment from a group of Jamaican entertainers, as well as learning about education through sports from an organization called A Ganar. In fact, we were playing with the most ingenious thing in that session. A soccer ball that never goes flat! I thought is was fascinating, so I found it on the web so you guys could enjoy this:
http://oneworldfutbol.com/the-simple-power-of-a-durable-ball/
This ball was invented in Oakland, CA (yay NorCal!) and is made out of the same material they make crocs from. You can puncture it and it will retain its shape. The site I linked to has some cool media on the animals that have chewed but not destroyed this ball. Also, I played with it, and it was AWESOME! I can't wait 'till someone from Peace Corps starts a project in which people can buy these soccer balls to send to our villages. As of now, we'd have to buy one and send it to my address, and then a second one would be donated to an organization of your choice. But not Peace Corps. Poop. I'll let you know if that changes.
Anyways, I think indestructible soccer balls would be an incredible gift to villages in Suriname, since they are always destroying their balls and having to buy more. Usually, the kids play with whatever they can find, which often means a citrus fruit of some kind. I would love to find a way to bring these soccer balls into the village. (Hmmm... Project idea?)
Time to get back to work! Until next time.
I'll expand a bit more on my work here as a Peace Corps volunteer, since I have gotten some questions about that from the few of you that I can keep in contact with.
Peace Corps has mandated that we not begin any work in the first three months of our service. I have been faithful to that, except to continue the work on the toilet project that my predecessor passed on to me. Which is progressing nicely. My counterpart will be coming in to the city to receive a check with the donated money soon. Together, we will begin purchasing raw materials. I had some trouble motivating the village to pull sand out of the river, since that was a part of what the community had promised to contribute to the project. I tried to make the community meet several times until I gave my counterpart the job of getting people together to do the work. He finally got them to pull the sand. (Lesson learned: PCV's should be behind the scenes. Pick a local, trusted leader to get people on board with the project.)
Since I've come to the city, the focus has changed. All of a sudden, talk revolves around our future projects. We've been shown how to write proposals for grants, how to assess the community we live in for potential projects, and how to use the resources and databases that are available to us. We also spent time learning about Edutainment from a group of Jamaican entertainers, as well as learning about education through sports from an organization called A Ganar. In fact, we were playing with the most ingenious thing in that session. A soccer ball that never goes flat! I thought is was fascinating, so I found it on the web so you guys could enjoy this:
http://oneworldfutbol.com/the-simple-power-of-a-durable-ball/
This ball was invented in Oakland, CA (yay NorCal!) and is made out of the same material they make crocs from. You can puncture it and it will retain its shape. The site I linked to has some cool media on the animals that have chewed but not destroyed this ball. Also, I played with it, and it was AWESOME! I can't wait 'till someone from Peace Corps starts a project in which people can buy these soccer balls to send to our villages. As of now, we'd have to buy one and send it to my address, and then a second one would be donated to an organization of your choice. But not Peace Corps. Poop. I'll let you know if that changes.
Anyways, I think indestructible soccer balls would be an incredible gift to villages in Suriname, since they are always destroying their balls and having to buy more. Usually, the kids play with whatever they can find, which often means a citrus fruit of some kind. I would love to find a way to bring these soccer balls into the village. (Hmmm... Project idea?)
Time to get back to work! Until next time.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Adjusting to Noon-time Naps
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.
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.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Wow. Back in the city.
To everyone who is reading this blog and who took my project and my request for money seriously, THANK YOU! The money was just rolling in. We have already met the required amount, and will now be able to start construction on the toilets! Updates on that to follow.
And now for a little update:
For the last 5 weeks I have made my new home in my little house in the jungle, among the most heartwarmingly friendly people I have ever known. When I wake up in the morning, it is often to someone yelling my name through the walls of my house to see if I'm up. I don't respond, for the sake of creating SOME semblance of boundaries, but I secretly love it. Children here are always testing my boundaries, often poking me or touching me and then looking guilty to see if I'll do anything about it. Mostly, they just have nothing to do, and need some structure. Which is why I have taken to giving them little chores to do if they come to my house. It keeps them out of trouble. Kids can be sent to do your dishes at the river (but bewarned, the little ones aren't very thorough), to throw things onto the trash pile in the "jungle" behind the house, to sweep the porch, and other things. They are very eager to do chores here. It's one of the few things a kid here can do to get some positive reinforcement. Mostly they get yelled at, which is understandable, as there are far too many kids and far too few adults hanging around this village. (Work opportunities often exist mainly in the city, or require you to move around.) And, well, people here have lots of kids.
Since I've been in my village, I have experienced so many things that I would have loved to have shared with people back home. I've gone to "Baka Seei" (grounds, for subsistence farming) with three separate families. Around here, the female head of every household is in charge of her own "kondre" (country). If you follow a path into the jungle, the kondre's are scattered on little hidden paths off of the big path. Your kondre is a little home away from home. You might walk about 2-3 hours to get to your kondre. Barefoot, carrying everything you'll need on your head, wading through creeks, and balancing on logs, or pushing a wheelbarrow on a log over a river. Four-year-old's have been outperforming me in this department. Once there, you will find two or three little structures. One for sleeping, one for cooking, and sometimes one that is a little raised off the ground for food storage. You'll also build a little shade-structure in the middle of your fields for mid-day cooking and shade. You probably have a hammock and some dishes and food waiting for you there too. When you go to your grounds, you might go for a couple of hours, or you might stay there overnight a few nights. I have done both, every time an adventure. Right now is the season for harvesting rice, so I learned how to do that, and how to find potatoes in the ground, and which okra to pick and which to leave. Needless to say, I am learning a lot.
I have also been fighting the good fight against the evil mice. Even when mice can't find anything edible in my house, they will find something plastic to destroy. The things that I have had to part with due to mouse-destruction include: my wallet, gardening gloves, a mirror (really?), several articles of clothing, a dishrag, the lids off of several plastic containers, and they even chewed the buckets that I keep my food in (which they're not supposed to be able to get into). I have decided to get a cat to join forces with my side. Wish me luck.
And so, everyone, it is time for me to part with you for now.
Talk to you soon!
And now for a little update:
For the last 5 weeks I have made my new home in my little house in the jungle, among the most heartwarmingly friendly people I have ever known. When I wake up in the morning, it is often to someone yelling my name through the walls of my house to see if I'm up. I don't respond, for the sake of creating SOME semblance of boundaries, but I secretly love it. Children here are always testing my boundaries, often poking me or touching me and then looking guilty to see if I'll do anything about it. Mostly, they just have nothing to do, and need some structure. Which is why I have taken to giving them little chores to do if they come to my house. It keeps them out of trouble. Kids can be sent to do your dishes at the river (but bewarned, the little ones aren't very thorough), to throw things onto the trash pile in the "jungle" behind the house, to sweep the porch, and other things. They are very eager to do chores here. It's one of the few things a kid here can do to get some positive reinforcement. Mostly they get yelled at, which is understandable, as there are far too many kids and far too few adults hanging around this village. (Work opportunities often exist mainly in the city, or require you to move around.) And, well, people here have lots of kids.
Since I've been in my village, I have experienced so many things that I would have loved to have shared with people back home. I've gone to "Baka Seei" (grounds, for subsistence farming) with three separate families. Around here, the female head of every household is in charge of her own "kondre" (country). If you follow a path into the jungle, the kondre's are scattered on little hidden paths off of the big path. Your kondre is a little home away from home. You might walk about 2-3 hours to get to your kondre. Barefoot, carrying everything you'll need on your head, wading through creeks, and balancing on logs, or pushing a wheelbarrow on a log over a river. Four-year-old's have been outperforming me in this department. Once there, you will find two or three little structures. One for sleeping, one for cooking, and sometimes one that is a little raised off the ground for food storage. You'll also build a little shade-structure in the middle of your fields for mid-day cooking and shade. You probably have a hammock and some dishes and food waiting for you there too. When you go to your grounds, you might go for a couple of hours, or you might stay there overnight a few nights. I have done both, every time an adventure. Right now is the season for harvesting rice, so I learned how to do that, and how to find potatoes in the ground, and which okra to pick and which to leave. Needless to say, I am learning a lot.
I have also been fighting the good fight against the evil mice. Even when mice can't find anything edible in my house, they will find something plastic to destroy. The things that I have had to part with due to mouse-destruction include: my wallet, gardening gloves, a mirror (really?), several articles of clothing, a dishrag, the lids off of several plastic containers, and they even chewed the buckets that I keep my food in (which they're not supposed to be able to get into). I have decided to get a cat to join forces with my side. Wish me luck.
And so, everyone, it is time for me to part with you for now.
Talk to you soon!
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