Yesterday I was sitting on my porch when I received a call from a fellow trainee, telling me a group of them were in my homestay village. Sure enough, about 3 seconds later my little brother, Sheka Boi (that's his nickname, his real name is Alferardo), runs up to tell me that Peace Corps is here. News travels fast in this town, especially when it regards a troupe of bakaa (foreigners = white people). So, I walk to the street (because there's only one) and the health group of the trainees has arrived to visit with the local traditional healer in my village, Winston. I've met him a few times. He's a man in his late 30s who owns one of the little local stores, the one that's never actually open and sells mostly notebooks, thread and beer.
We all go down to the river and sit in a circle. Surrounding us are what I've known to be the traditional entrance-points to a village, placed at any place someone can enter, usually at the river. They are made up of 2 vertical sticks with dried palm leaves draped between them. It looks like an old, not very festive end-point of some kind of race.
Winston arrives in traditional healing garb. He has a pangi around his waist and another larger one tied like a toga around one shoulder. A third small one is tied around like a bandanna/scarf. All three are a matching rich blue color with white pieces of cloth sewn into them. The white cloth are shaped like the things he uses for healing, like a pot on a fire or instruments he uses when singing.
He told us a fair amount about traditional healing, although I'm sure we just scratched the surface. He heals things like broken bones, snake bites and other physical ailments. But then he also deals with issues concerning the soul, which is called yeye. Another word for some kind of soul thing is winti. The winti can present itself (possess?) to himself and others, which usually makes them speak in tongues and do unusual things. He is possessed by the winti so he can understand the language his patients speak when they are possesssed.
The spirit first possessed him and he knew he was a traditional healer when he was 13. The healing abilitiy passes through the maternal line, so it'll pass to his sister's children. It passes to someone when the current healer either dies or is too old to properly heal.
He has 4 buildings he works in. One is where the winti resides. There are 2 buildings for patients to stay, because they stay there until they are healed, which may take some time. There is one for men and one for women. The 4th is for larger gatherings, like dances. No one is allowed to enter any of the buildings if they are menstruating or if they've had sex in the last 3 days. He said people respect this because bad things happen if they don't, like a woman who enters on her period will have a continuous period for months and months on end. This culture definitely does not like menstruation.
The winti will not allow payment to the healer and his ancestors weren't allowed to accept any. However, he explained to the winti that times have changed and that everything required in life now requires money. The winti deliberated on this and finally decided that he could accept money, but he couldn't accept it personally and no one could accept it in his healing buildings. So, someone else usually is paid elsewhere for him.
There were 2 women with him during this talk. One was this very old woman who is always super raunchy. She has asked me every dirty horrible secret about my sex life. She wants to hook me up with a local so bad I think it makes her hurt. She's just going to have to hurt. Yesterday earlier in the day I went to visit her and she had a shirt on (kind of unusual), but there was a very large hole at one of her boobs and an entire breast was hanging out of it. Pretty great. When we first got to the healing session and sat down she went around and hugged each person and gave them each a name in Okanisi. Her job is basically to translate when Winston is possessed by the winti and speaks in tongues, because he is not aware of what he is doing.
The other woman, probably in her 40s, is basically his secretary. She handles the money, arranges things, and makes sure the house and surroundings are physically appealing to the spirits.
Later he sang a song that's supposed to summon the winti to present itself. It was pretty cool. He was a good singer. I don't think I would want to see it at night though, I think it would totally scare the crap out of me. The instructor, who is a Surinamese woman, kept on getting freaked out talking to him. She said she's terrified of this stuff.
While we were listening to the talk a group of tucans were playing in a nearby tree. And then, a bit later, we saw a caiman in the water. It seemed like some kind of fake tourist attraction, it was so perfect. Traditional healer. Check. Tucans. Check. Caiman. Check.
One last thing. The other day I ate a piranha head for dinner. It just looked like a fish head (apparently the favored part of the fish, the cheeks are excellent), and then I flipped it over and the huge razor sharp teeth were there. It was pretty big too.
This was long, but I thought the traditional healer stuff was pretty awesome.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
June 19
I just got back from a week of visits with current Peace Corps Volunteers and to our future sites. To say the least it was a pretty exciting and illuminating week. I'll be honest, I'm very proud of myself for just making it through it. That makes it sound like it was awful, when in reality it was really great. I was just very very nervous about it beforehand. I wasn't really nervous about the PCV visit, but there isn't a current volunteer at my future site, so I was very nervous about that. I knew that I had to spend 4 days alone at my site, introducing myself to my community and just hanging out.
So we flew out on Saturday and spent a night with a volunteer, Michael. We weren't supposed to stay with him but we had trouble finding a boat to the place we were supposed to be going. So, the next day we managed to get a boat and made our way to visit another volunteer, Shelly. Her site was super awesome. It was beautiful and fun and the people were awesome. We got to turn a compost pile, which we were told might be full of snakes because snakes love to hang out in them. Luckily, there weren't any. Most of the time we just walked around talking to people and hanging out with people.
Then on Tuesday they dropped me off my site. It was very intimidating. Three current volunteers and two trainees and I all came to my site. They brought me up to my house and we opened it up to find 2 bats flying around and a dead rat in the middle of the floor in a pool of blood. Someone tried to move the rat with a dustpan, but the rat was apparently not quite dead, so it started sluggishly moving. Pretty gross. My place was pretty dirty, since no one had been in there in about 5 months. I was pretty proud of myself for just dealing with it and hanging up my hammock and going to sleep with huge spiders, bats and gigantic toads jumping around (not to mention whatever other animals I didn't happen to see). My community is super awesome. They're super chill. Everyone was really welcoming and friendly, but not in my face. Sometimes in training it seems like everyone is constantly in my face, trying to correct something I'm doing or just staring. At my site people were just nice and treated me like just another person. I was super amazed that no one corrected a single thing I did in 4 whole days!
My village is also really pretty. It's on a big river and then there's a small creek near my house. Both have white water rapids. It's pretty hilly and rocky. I have an orange tree in front of my house and then a lime tree behind my house. There's also a belibon tree. It's a large green spiky fruit. If you know what durian is, it kind of looks like that. But inside are pods. They're nuts that you cook in water and salt and then peel and eat warm. They were pretty delicious. they reminded me of a less-Christmasy version of chestnuts roasted on an open fire. The lime tree is apparently my tree, so I'll be making lots of lime-ade. Yumm!
So we flew out on Saturday and spent a night with a volunteer, Michael. We weren't supposed to stay with him but we had trouble finding a boat to the place we were supposed to be going. So, the next day we managed to get a boat and made our way to visit another volunteer, Shelly. Her site was super awesome. It was beautiful and fun and the people were awesome. We got to turn a compost pile, which we were told might be full of snakes because snakes love to hang out in them. Luckily, there weren't any. Most of the time we just walked around talking to people and hanging out with people.
Then on Tuesday they dropped me off my site. It was very intimidating. Three current volunteers and two trainees and I all came to my site. They brought me up to my house and we opened it up to find 2 bats flying around and a dead rat in the middle of the floor in a pool of blood. Someone tried to move the rat with a dustpan, but the rat was apparently not quite dead, so it started sluggishly moving. Pretty gross. My place was pretty dirty, since no one had been in there in about 5 months. I was pretty proud of myself for just dealing with it and hanging up my hammock and going to sleep with huge spiders, bats and gigantic toads jumping around (not to mention whatever other animals I didn't happen to see). My community is super awesome. They're super chill. Everyone was really welcoming and friendly, but not in my face. Sometimes in training it seems like everyone is constantly in my face, trying to correct something I'm doing or just staring. At my site people were just nice and treated me like just another person. I was super amazed that no one corrected a single thing I did in 4 whole days!
My village is also really pretty. It's on a big river and then there's a small creek near my house. Both have white water rapids. It's pretty hilly and rocky. I have an orange tree in front of my house and then a lime tree behind my house. There's also a belibon tree. It's a large green spiky fruit. If you know what durian is, it kind of looks like that. But inside are pods. They're nuts that you cook in water and salt and then peel and eat warm. They were pretty delicious. they reminded me of a less-Christmasy version of chestnuts roasted on an open fire. The lime tree is apparently my tree, so I'll be making lots of lime-ade. Yumm!
Saturday, June 19, 2010
June 9
I realized I really haven't described very well where I'm living right now. I'm about 2 to 3 hours south of the city (I say 'the city' because there is only one in Suriname, Paramaribo). I'm in a little community on a dead-end dirt road with about 300 people living in it. It has two creeks, one small grade school, three little "corner stores" (there aren't any corners) and a bakery that seems to only sell buns and opens when it feels like it. The corner stores sell next-to-nothing. One of them sells literally probably 15 items. Another of them is never open. We've stopped by every day for about 2 weeks because it's the only place within an hour that sells notebooks and it's never been opened. Finally, yesterday we succeeded.
I'm definitely in the jungle. About 10 feet from my house the deep jungle begins. Like, I wouldn't step into it without a guide and knee-high rubber boots on kind of jungle. I haven't eaten anything crazy (that I know of, I don't ask what I'm eating for fear of finding out) but a few of the other trainees have had some interesting things. One ate sloth, which he was lucky enough to see caught. He was walking down a road when the woman in front of him walked into the bush and just grabbed an adorably smiley sloth off the ground. That was his dinner that night. And the other trainee in my community ate armadillo yesterday. She said it was pretty good. I watched her family skin it on my break from class yesterday. It was like watching a car crash. I was horrified, but just couldn't look away.
My community is made up of little tiny (and when I say tiny, I mean TINY) wooden huts. They're very simple and rectangular. Most are probably about 20 feet by 15 feet, although some are even smaller than that. There is usually a duro-tank out front. My community, since it is relatively close to the city, has 24-hour electricity, generously supplied by the government. My family seems to be fairly well off (that is extremely relative). We have a TV and a refrigerator. They do about half the cooking inside. There is no running water. Most of the water I use for washing and laundry and stuff like that comes from huge plastic drums that collect the rainwater outside. There's something really nice about bathing from rain water. We have a porch that wraps around 2 sides of the house. I love the porch.
There's only one real "street" in my community. It's a dirt road, but it's the only thing that's actually straight and I would really consider a street. There's another one that's pretty close, but I'm not going to count that one. Women wear the wrap-around cloth (pangi) and usually a bra or shirt when they leave their home, although if you come to their house there is a pretty good chance they'll be totally topless. I'm amazed how little it phases me. My American aversion to nudity is getting quickly beaten down.
I actually feel fairly lucky to be here for my training. It's a decent little community.
I'm definitely in the jungle. About 10 feet from my house the deep jungle begins. Like, I wouldn't step into it without a guide and knee-high rubber boots on kind of jungle. I haven't eaten anything crazy (that I know of, I don't ask what I'm eating for fear of finding out) but a few of the other trainees have had some interesting things. One ate sloth, which he was lucky enough to see caught. He was walking down a road when the woman in front of him walked into the bush and just grabbed an adorably smiley sloth off the ground. That was his dinner that night. And the other trainee in my community ate armadillo yesterday. She said it was pretty good. I watched her family skin it on my break from class yesterday. It was like watching a car crash. I was horrified, but just couldn't look away.
My community is made up of little tiny (and when I say tiny, I mean TINY) wooden huts. They're very simple and rectangular. Most are probably about 20 feet by 15 feet, although some are even smaller than that. There is usually a duro-tank out front. My community, since it is relatively close to the city, has 24-hour electricity, generously supplied by the government. My family seems to be fairly well off (that is extremely relative). We have a TV and a refrigerator. They do about half the cooking inside. There is no running water. Most of the water I use for washing and laundry and stuff like that comes from huge plastic drums that collect the rainwater outside. There's something really nice about bathing from rain water. We have a porch that wraps around 2 sides of the house. I love the porch.
There's only one real "street" in my community. It's a dirt road, but it's the only thing that's actually straight and I would really consider a street. There's another one that's pretty close, but I'm not going to count that one. Women wear the wrap-around cloth (pangi) and usually a bra or shirt when they leave their home, although if you come to their house there is a pretty good chance they'll be totally topless. I'm amazed how little it phases me. My American aversion to nudity is getting quickly beaten down.
I actually feel fairly lucky to be here for my training. It's a decent little community.
June 7
I had my 27th birthday yesterday and it was pretty great. Most of the trainees got together at the beach nearby and we had a party. The other trainees were so sweet and made my birthday really special. They made me 3 (yes 3!) cakes and posters and gave me fun little presents and everything. It was pretty great. And we got to spend the day swimming in piranha-infested waters. Fun fun fun. It's funny how the things that I thought I would never ever do (like swim in a river that has piranhas), I'm now doing without much fear or worry. I guess you get used to just about anything.
Speaking of getting used to things, I'm starting to feel really comfortable and happy here. The language is coming along and I'm able to actually have little conversations with people, which is super rewarding. I talked to an old woman yesterday who was drying out the rice she had harvested. It just felt nice to have a human connection about something. Not speaking a word of a language is frustrating on so many levels and it's nice to start overcoming those frustrations.
Tonight was fun. The little teenage girls gathered around and braided my hair and some teenage boys came and played the guitar on my porch.
I know that I'll have a lot more really hard times where I'm lonely, or homesick, or just physically sick, but these happy days are really encouraging. It really makes me feel like I can be really happy here. I hope that my future site is as welcoming as my training site, because everyone is so great here. Every day I just wander around this community, ending up in people's yards, next to their wash house, where they are half-naked and washing (sometimes fully naked) and they are nothing but friendly and welcoming. I've been very impressed by the people here.
So I'm hearing more and more about my future site and it's apparently really deep in the bush. Another volunteer was telling me today that I'll probably see some pretty crazy animals. I may even see a jaguar. I'd rather not see things that want to kill me, but I guess I don't have a whole lot of choice.
Speaking of getting used to things, I'm starting to feel really comfortable and happy here. The language is coming along and I'm able to actually have little conversations with people, which is super rewarding. I talked to an old woman yesterday who was drying out the rice she had harvested. It just felt nice to have a human connection about something. Not speaking a word of a language is frustrating on so many levels and it's nice to start overcoming those frustrations.
Tonight was fun. The little teenage girls gathered around and braided my hair and some teenage boys came and played the guitar on my porch.
I know that I'll have a lot more really hard times where I'm lonely, or homesick, or just physically sick, but these happy days are really encouraging. It really makes me feel like I can be really happy here. I hope that my future site is as welcoming as my training site, because everyone is so great here. Every day I just wander around this community, ending up in people's yards, next to their wash house, where they are half-naked and washing (sometimes fully naked) and they are nothing but friendly and welcoming. I've been very impressed by the people here.
So I'm hearing more and more about my future site and it's apparently really deep in the bush. Another volunteer was telling me today that I'll probably see some pretty crazy animals. I may even see a jaguar. I'd rather not see things that want to kill me, but I guess I don't have a whole lot of choice.
June 2
I'm about 3 weeks into my homestay experience. It's definitely been a learning experience. I'm so glad that they have us do our first few months with a family and with a different community than the one we will be living in permanently, though. It gives us the chance to basically screw up and not have it affect the next 2 years. We can realize how we should do things, and change when we get to our permanent site. I don't think I've made any major blunders so far, but that's not to say I won't.
It's so easy to get frustrated with the language and feel like I'll never truly learn it, and then I take a step back and remember that I've only been learning it for about 3 weeks. I'm able to have very small conversations and express many of the basic things I want to get across. I'm pretty impressed with how much we've been able to learn in 3 short weeks. Living in the language truly is the fastest way to learn. When the two-year-old hits his head and says "mi naki mi ede" about 10 times, I quickly learn how to say "I hit my head". Quite helpful.
I'm really anxious to see my site. I've heard it's really pretty and great. People have said really good things about it. There's supposed to be a beautiful little creek by it. Also, I've heard my house is relatively large compared to some of the other PCV houses. Also, my place is supposed to have a bit more privacy, which will be nice. I think it will be pretty overwhelming going to my site the first time. It seems like we're kind of just dropped off for 3 days with a hammock and a box of mac and cheese. I think I'll come out of this with a fair amount of resiliency at the very least.
I miss my family a lot. I remember when I came home from my year in Spain, I thought that I could never go that long without seeing my family again. And here I move to the Amazon for 2 years. Hmmm... I talked to both my mom and my brother Maia tonight and it's amazing how talking to family can lift my spirits. They know me better than anyone in the world does and it feels great right now having someone who knows me that well. I'm surrounded by people who have only ever heard me say things like "I want food" or "I wash myself". I don't exactly feel like my personality shines with those phrases. That'll come with time though.
The last two days have been kind of....egh. Just hard. I think I was just down. I get down at home too, though. But, the entire week before that I was legitimately happy to be here and that felt so good. It made me really hopeful about being really happy here. I am simplifying my life though, which is one of the reasons I wanted to join the Peace Corps. My host mom gave me a battered and deep fried banana last night and it was like a little piece of heaven. It truly made my night. Simplify life: check.
It's so easy to get frustrated with the language and feel like I'll never truly learn it, and then I take a step back and remember that I've only been learning it for about 3 weeks. I'm able to have very small conversations and express many of the basic things I want to get across. I'm pretty impressed with how much we've been able to learn in 3 short weeks. Living in the language truly is the fastest way to learn. When the two-year-old hits his head and says "mi naki mi ede" about 10 times, I quickly learn how to say "I hit my head". Quite helpful.
I'm really anxious to see my site. I've heard it's really pretty and great. People have said really good things about it. There's supposed to be a beautiful little creek by it. Also, I've heard my house is relatively large compared to some of the other PCV houses. Also, my place is supposed to have a bit more privacy, which will be nice. I think it will be pretty overwhelming going to my site the first time. It seems like we're kind of just dropped off for 3 days with a hammock and a box of mac and cheese. I think I'll come out of this with a fair amount of resiliency at the very least.
I miss my family a lot. I remember when I came home from my year in Spain, I thought that I could never go that long without seeing my family again. And here I move to the Amazon for 2 years. Hmmm... I talked to both my mom and my brother Maia tonight and it's amazing how talking to family can lift my spirits. They know me better than anyone in the world does and it feels great right now having someone who knows me that well. I'm surrounded by people who have only ever heard me say things like "I want food" or "I wash myself". I don't exactly feel like my personality shines with those phrases. That'll come with time though.
The last two days have been kind of....egh. Just hard. I think I was just down. I get down at home too, though. But, the entire week before that I was legitimately happy to be here and that felt so good. It made me really hopeful about being really happy here. I am simplifying my life though, which is one of the reasons I wanted to join the Peace Corps. My host mom gave me a battered and deep fried banana last night and it was like a little piece of heaven. It truly made my night. Simplify life: check.
I don't have time for titles
I'm at homestay for training and it's...I guess it's everything I imagined the Peace Corps to be. It's difficult, it's exciting, it's intense, it's exhausting, it's intensely beautiful, it makes my brain hurt and I want to jump up and down and just scream sometimes. And even though it's everything that I expected, every second of it has surprised me. Anticipating something and actually living something are very different, even if your expectations meet the actual experience.
For some strange reason I think the most comforting thing for me right now is the rain. It comes pouring down, sounding like hammers on my tin roof and making little ravines down every dirt path, and I just feel safe. It feels just like a rainstorm at home and I just want to curl up on the couch and smile. It also cools it down significantly, which is so necessary here. I just washed (for the third time today, just like every day) in my wash house an hour ago and I'm laying in bed, under my mosquito net, and sweat is just dripping down me. Very attractive.
I dropped my phone in a bucket of water tonight. So it's currently not working. My last phone mysteriously just stopped working, so that means I may be going on to phone #3 in about 2 1/2 weeks in country. I wonder if that's a record. I did have the record for most broken computers at my last job. 5. I was pretty proud of that. None were my fault (I think) though! Anyway, my phone is currently all taken apart and sitting in a 5 gallon container of rice. Makes sense, it'll suck out the moisture or something like that.
I'll give you a little example of my normal day here. My host mom wakes me up at 6:30. This morning she actually let me wake myself up. Maybe she realized that as an almost-27-year-old woman, I'm very capable of waking myself up. Probably not. She'll probably wake me up tomorrow. So, at 6:30 I immediately head to the scary latrine, because although I do have a shiny new green pee pot, I haven't really used it in my bedroom yet. I haven't quite assimilated that much...yet. So then I head to the wasosu (wash house) for my first bucket bath of the day. After that I go inside for a bun with either just peanut butter on it or peanut butter and cheese. Not as bad as it sounds, I actually quite like it. Then I head over to my language teacher's hut/small wooden shack for 4 hours of language lessons. About half of the days we go out for a koi (a little walk around the village, greeting people) for the 2nd half of our lesson. Then I head back to my place at noon. I wash up for a second time and eat lunch. Then I either have technical training in the afternoon, or I do laundry. That consists of 3 buckets of water and a washboard. I'm going to have some serious forearms by the end of this from all the clothes wringing. Then I try to fill up the rest of the afternoon without going insane with all the teenage girls staring at me. Then wash-up #3 and dinner and family time. I usually hang with my mom and 3 younger brothers and 1 younger sister for a few hours. Then it's "me time" (what I'm doing right now). Night is my favorite time here. Everything settles down a little. There aren't quite as many random kids screaming and running around my house and I get to spend more time with my host-siblings, who I really like.
For some strange reason I think the most comforting thing for me right now is the rain. It comes pouring down, sounding like hammers on my tin roof and making little ravines down every dirt path, and I just feel safe. It feels just like a rainstorm at home and I just want to curl up on the couch and smile. It also cools it down significantly, which is so necessary here. I just washed (for the third time today, just like every day) in my wash house an hour ago and I'm laying in bed, under my mosquito net, and sweat is just dripping down me. Very attractive.
I dropped my phone in a bucket of water tonight. So it's currently not working. My last phone mysteriously just stopped working, so that means I may be going on to phone #3 in about 2 1/2 weeks in country. I wonder if that's a record. I did have the record for most broken computers at my last job. 5. I was pretty proud of that. None were my fault (I think) though! Anyway, my phone is currently all taken apart and sitting in a 5 gallon container of rice. Makes sense, it'll suck out the moisture or something like that.
I'll give you a little example of my normal day here. My host mom wakes me up at 6:30. This morning she actually let me wake myself up. Maybe she realized that as an almost-27-year-old woman, I'm very capable of waking myself up. Probably not. She'll probably wake me up tomorrow. So, at 6:30 I immediately head to the scary latrine, because although I do have a shiny new green pee pot, I haven't really used it in my bedroom yet. I haven't quite assimilated that much...yet. So then I head to the wasosu (wash house) for my first bucket bath of the day. After that I go inside for a bun with either just peanut butter on it or peanut butter and cheese. Not as bad as it sounds, I actually quite like it. Then I head over to my language teacher's hut/small wooden shack for 4 hours of language lessons. About half of the days we go out for a koi (a little walk around the village, greeting people) for the 2nd half of our lesson. Then I head back to my place at noon. I wash up for a second time and eat lunch. Then I either have technical training in the afternoon, or I do laundry. That consists of 3 buckets of water and a washboard. I'm going to have some serious forearms by the end of this from all the clothes wringing. Then I try to fill up the rest of the afternoon without going insane with all the teenage girls staring at me. Then wash-up #3 and dinner and family time. I usually hang with my mom and 3 younger brothers and 1 younger sister for a few hours. Then it's "me time" (what I'm doing right now). Night is my favorite time here. Everything settles down a little. There aren't quite as many random kids screaming and running around my house and I get to spend more time with my host-siblings, who I really like.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
so I'm finally here
So, first blog entry from Suriname. So far so good. I feel like we're just at summer camp in some developing country. I really don't feel like I'm in Suriname. I've walked to town a few times, but we really haven't had much time to explore. I'm super excited (ok, nervous too) to go to our Community Based Training in Brokopondo. Then I'll be staying with a family and I'll really get to see a bit more how things are.
Everyone is super awesome so far. We all seem to be getting along really well and bonding and all that stuff.
We learned about our possible sites yesterday. It was all a little overwhelming. It's really hard to try to choose what you think you'd work well in with a description of a place. Without actually being there, it's next to impossible to know. But we'll find out our sites on Monday, which should be super exciting.
Everyone is super awesome so far. We all seem to be getting along really well and bonding and all that stuff.
We learned about our possible sites yesterday. It was all a little overwhelming. It's really hard to try to choose what you think you'd work well in with a description of a place. Without actually being there, it's next to impossible to know. But we'll find out our sites on Monday, which should be super exciting.
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