Cola-flavored gummy snakes and other news

I just had my first Christmas in Suriname. It was pretty awesome. It was definitely hard being away from my family, but I think we all managed to make it very fun and special. Jessica's family was in country, and so they were kind enough to invite us to join them for Christmas. So, it ended up being 10 of us spending 2 nights at a fellow volunteer's house in the district. It was really great. Her family was so gracious and despite them not being my family, it was nice to be with a family for the holidays. We shot off a lot of would-be-illegal-in-the-U.S. fireworks, smoked cigars, played the guitar, watched movies, took naps in hammocks and ate. Oh, and Jessica's family gave us all stockings! And we had a white-elephant gift exchange. I got a terrifying-looking mug and batteries. Just what I wanted. It was wonderful to spend the Christmas with the other volunteers. They're my Suriname family.

I just got very excited at the Wenkii (store) to buy gummy worms, but they ended up to be gummy snakes, and they were cola-flavored. Still had the proper texture, and that's all that really mattered, so who am I to complain.

So I made a bit of a blunder when meeting the Captain's wife of my village. She had been in the city for the first three weeks I was at site, so I hadn't met her yet. She came to my house to meet me. I was doing dishes at the time, and so my hands were dripping wet and soapy. I told her that I couldn't shake her hand, because my hands were wet. Or at least, that's what I wanted to tell her. Instead, I messed up a bit and told her I couldn't shake her hands because my hands were WHITE. Ooops. Not good when you're the only white girl in a village. I didn't realize my mistake until she was already gone. I'm hoping she understood that the dumb foreign girl just doesn't speak very well, because I did dry my hands and shake her hand then. I felt like banging my head against the wall when I realized. Oh well, the next year and a half will be full of many more embarrassing mistakes.

November 29, 2010

Wow. Back in the interior. I'm now laying in bed in my new home. It's very strange to be here after so long of not knowing where I was going to be going or what I was going to be doing, but here I am. A little over a week ago I was told that they had a site for me. So I went to go see it and in a matter of days I was moved in. It was all very sudden.

It's all really good though. I was really nervous to come here. Anticipation can be awful. The villagers have been amazing. They all showed up when we came on Saturday in the big white land cruiser and helped unload all of my things into my house. They've helped me set up my house and have tried to make me feel as comfortable and at home as possible.

I already have some promising projects. A few women here have started an after school club to give lessons to the kids. So, each day a different age group has an afternoon of lessons. Today I sat in on the one with the youngest ones (5, 6 and 7 year olds) as they practiced writing. They were all very cute. I forgot the amount of concentration it takes to draw an f when it's an entirely new experience. The women told me that I can sit in on the lessons until my language is better and then I can help out. So, that's super exciting. I was just very impressed that they were so dedicated to education. After a long day of working at grounds in the sun, they come back and give lessons to the children, all on their own initiative.

The things I like/dislike about Suriname

The photos are of a bird chirping competition I went to right next to the Presidential Palace. This shows a bit of what I talk about later, large men with tiny birds. Also, a caiman. I've seen probably 5 in country.

Here are some of my favorite things about Suriname:

Passion fruit juice.

Pompelmous (delicious huge grapefruity fruit, but less bitter).

Men who bike/moped around while carrying tiny birds in bird cages. It's an extremely masculine thing to do here.

The public buses in the city. I know this wouldn't be on the top of most volunteers' list, but I rather like them. They are smelly, packed full of people, and somehow, I love them.

After the fact, cab drivers. Much of the time, they are terrifying while I'm in the car, but they're a good story later. About a week ago a cab driver followed a woman who cut him off about 5 blocks, stopped outside her house, got out of the car, and screamed at her for about 5 minutes. All the neighbors started coming out of their houses. When he got back in the car, he very calmly and politely apologized to me for the inconvenience. Interesting.

My fellow volunteers. They're pretty awesome.

Cherry fruit juice.

Boat rides, as long as they are 2 hours long or less. I've been on a 12 hour one, which was less than fun. But the shorter ones are quite beautiful.

The view from the little plane, flying over the jungle.

Roti.

The stars in the interior. One of the advantages of not having electricity, completely clear sky.

Time to enjoy the little things. My favorite thing to do right now is sit on the porch where the breeze is amazing, listen to my ipod and do sudoku or sew. Sometimes I just sit and listen to music.

The guy across the street who sits on his porch in his boxers. I've never seen him with a shirt on and he cracks me up.

My neighbor at my old site, Frans. He was great. One of the nicest guys I've ever met.

Kosbanti (long beans - I'm noticing a trend with my favorites, many are food related).

The free shelf.



Here are some of my LEAST favorite things about Suriname:

Kissy noises from men.

Ants.

Sweating. Constantly.

Dogs barking.

The way people treat their animals. This is mostly in the interior, but people do not treat their cats and dogs very well. Dogs are for protection, cats are to eat rats, and that's it.

Not being sure what could be lying underneath anything. Pretty much everything can kill you here and it makes me a bit jumpy.

Staring. It is constant and intense. I have been stared at by adults for 45 minutes straight without interruption. It's mostly by children, but a few of the more unusual adults will also stare to this degree. Very unnerving.

My hair never dries.

6 months

Back in training, when things were a bit rough, I set a date for myself. I told myself that there was nothing within my power that could make me go home before 6 months in country. It was a sanity thing. Looking ahead 27 months was far too overwhelming at that point, so I just set it mentally for 6 months. I remember sitting on my bed in my tiny little room at my host family's house, under my mosquito net, and almost being completely blown away by the thought of 27 months here. I told myself at that point I was allowed to reflect after 6 months and if I was completely miserable, I could go home. I'm extremely pleased to find that the 6 month mark came and went without my notice! Woo! I was afraid that I'd be counting down the days. Not so. I can safely say that I'm pretty happy here right now. I put a "right now" on that because I still don't know where I'm going to end up and how that will be. However, I'm pretty determined to make it the full two years.

I'm trying to stay busy in the city right now, doing small projects. I'm working on a write-up about a force feeding practice in the interior. It's a pretty dangerous practice that can cause aspiration of the lungs. So, that's been going pretty well and I'll see where that'll go in the future.

By the way, I was a pterodactyl for Halloween. It was awesome.

Home is where I sleep for 3 or more consecutive nights

So I've been a bit behind on updating my blog. I have no excuse other than not really knowing what to say. Some weeks ago I had some issues at my site and ended up getting pulled because of safety and security concerns. Let's just say that it was a pretty rough time. It was definitely hard to leave my village, even though I had only been there for 5 weeks. I really loved my village and the people were amazing, not to mention it's one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. I've kind of been in limbo since then, not really knowing where I'll be going or what I'll be doing. But, we do have a plan. I'll be moving to another village with a fellow volunteer. She just moved there and I will be moving there as soon as there is a house available for me. I'm not really sure how long that will take. In the meantime, I am staying at a fellow volunteer's house in the city and working on projects in the city. Basically, everything is completely different now but things are good. The dust has finally settled and I'm starting to see a bit more clearly.

I've moved around so much since being in country, that I start to call a place "home" as soon as I've stayed there a few nights. Home has been my training site when I lived with the family, the hostel in the city, my house at site, Matt's house when I visited for 5 days, my house again, the hostel in the city again and now it's the apartment I'm staying at. I've also gotten way better at living in the present, which is good. My life has kind of been in limbo for so long that if I started to stress about it I'd get REALLY stressed, so I'm just taking it a little at a time.

2 weeks in the city

I got into the city a week ago for restocking and a general sanity-check. Actually, I thought that after 5 weeks in the jungle I'd be going crazy and desperately need this week in the city. Luckily though, I love my village and I wasn't as desperate to have a break from the village. Surprisingly, the city is the stressful experience, not the village. I think I'm going to be screwed when I get back to the States after 2 years here. Already, this city of 250,000 seems overwhelming and chaotic. After 2 years of not seeing cars, I think American cities are going to seem crazy to me.

I'm staying in the city for an extra week because all the flights back to my site were booked until next Saturday. I don't think this is a normal thing (hopefully). The country has vacation from school right now, so a lot more people are going back and forth from the city to the interior. I'm partly happy to be in the city for another week, because I didn't feel I had enough time to really buy everything I needed for site, so I'll be able to do that. But, I'm also kind of disappointed because 2 weeks is a long time to be out of site. I miss my home and my villagers! I'm so relieved that I do. I was afraid (before having actually been to my village) that I would dread going back, and I don't at all. This week I'm going to visit another volunteer for a few days. Her village also speaks Ndjuka, so it'll be a good chance to practice during these 2 weeks. Anyway, not much to say. Site is great and I've killed a tarantula in my house with a machete and got to pet a baby sloth in the same day. I've also found out that there are a lot of jaguars near my village. Great. I would love to see one, but that's a very theoretical feeling. I think if I actually saw one I'd be so terrified. I haven't seen a snake yet, or at least not an alive one. Knock on wood for that one.

July 30,2010

I've been at site now for 9 days. It feels amazing because I've been completely happy for 9 whole days! I'll be honest, training was pretty hard. Living in someone else's home is a tough situation. It was a good experience, and it definitely was necessary to teach me what I needed to learn, but I'm glad it's over. Training was just extremely overwhelming. I felt an extreme amount of stress and pressure, which made me feel like I might snap at any moment. I haven't felt like that at all here.

And now I'm actually here, and it's great! The day we came, Thursday the 22nd, was such a long, exhausting day. It took us 12 hours to get here. Instead of flying, which is what I'll normally do, we took a Peace Corps vehicle (way to go white land cruisers!), and then we loaded all of Matt, Brittany and my stuff on to one boat (yes, that's a motorized CANOE carrying all of our possessions to set up three houses), and headed upriver. The car ride was only supposed to take 2 to 3 hours, but there was a blockade on the road because a school teacher was demanding that the government fix the road and her car. Yes, her car. I didn't get a look at her car, but the road was really bad. So, we had to wait there for a while until the local equivalent of the SWAT team showed up and un-blockaded it all. It was pretty cool to see actually. The Peace Corps staff member, who is Surinamese was pretty excited about it all.

The first day here wasn't the best. It was just super overwhelming getting here, and having all of my stuff in the middle of my floor in boxes and buckets and trying to say initial hellos to my community. And since the week in the city for shopping was so jam-packed I had just thrown all my stuff into boxes, so I had no idea where anything was. But, since then it's been pretty amazing. My community is just awesome. They're super chill and really nice. They don't do much gawking (well, most of them don't) and they're very friendly and helpful. Also, it's just great to have my own schedule and my own space. The first 3 nights I was here we didn't have electricity, but since then we have had it every night from 7 - 11. Matt and Brittany came a few days ago to hang out with me here. Matt is still here, but Brittany left this morning. Matt is my savior. He spent all of Thursday evening and the entire day yesterday wiring my house. He put in two electrical outlets and three lights. Before, I just had one single lightbulb in my house. Now, I have light in my bedroom! And, I can charge things! It seriously seems like a luxury. He's also helped me with a bunch of other things around the house, like putting nice big locks on my doors and other things like that. We really played traditional boy/girl roles this week. He did the manly stuff around the house and I cooked and cleaned for him. It worked out.

My language is getting better. I feel like I'm sort of starting to make friends here. At least I seem to know everyone. Not necessarily their names, but I pretty much recognize 90% of the people when I walk around. So yeah, it's been really good and I think I'll be pretty happy here.