WorldTeach

On November 1st while Christians honored their blessed saints for All Saints Day, Magda and I celebrated our first Hindu holiday, Diwali, a festival of light. On this day, Hindus celebrate the triumph of good over evil by lighting their homes with diyas, small homemade candles fashioned out of red ceramic dishes, coconut oil and twisted cloth for a wick. Mother Lachme, one of the ten main deities of the religion, is the “patron saint” of these festivities.

Magda and I were invited to a student’s home in a neighboring village to celebrate. We ate 7 curry with rice out of a large lotus leaf - with our fingers, a skill we’ve been slowly cultivating. Afterwards we helped the family light over 500 diyas which they then in turn placed in neat rows around their yard.

We also lit sparklers, flares, and spun steel wool - a very dangerous form of entertainment that involves steel wool. Imagine SOS pads shoved on the end of a wire coat hanger, set ablaze, and then spun around over your head sending a smattering of golden sparks in all directions. After we had our fun with fire, we walked down the street admiring the other Hindu houses swathed in light. Note: If there is a death in the family, they observe but do not participate in the fanfare.

All and all, Diwali was a very unique experience and will without a doubt prove to be one of my favorite memories of Guyana.

Hammocks are the greatest piece of furniture ever invented. What's more, Guyana seems to have been strategically designed for hammock lounging, especially between the hours of 11 am and 3:30 pm.

Bike riding at night on dirt roads in the middle of the savannah might be one of the most fun things ever. I rode my bike 35 miles in 25 hours this weekend. It was pretty fun. We are going to ride down to Lethem for the East Indian "Festival of Lights" in the beginning of October. Its about 100 miles, but we will have a full moon and a tent so it should work out well.

I have discovered the most perfect frozen food ever. I don't even know what they are called, but they are good. And only 30 cents each. Refreshment has never been cheaper. We buy them down the road (about 45 min walking) from "Brazza-man," a Brazilian guy who doesn't speak a lick of English, but has a nice Amerindian wife and mother-in-law and hilarious kids. I think I will miss this "ice cream" the most. You'll have to come visit if you want to try them. It's worth it.

The two British guys and I rode down to a nearby village yesterday for some good ol' fashioned Amerindian Heritage Month Games. Cassava grating, basket weaving, cotton spinning, archery, and "fire lighting from nothing" were all good fun.

Welcome to Guyana !! Right now I am in Bartica, which is considered the gateway to the rest of the country. I am currently staying at the compound, which is the dorm for the Bartica Secondary students. We are just off Potaro Road, which is a red dirt road, the only road that leads into the interior of Guyana . Seeing as I will be living 12-16 hours into the interior, looking at it from this point makes me feel slightly claustrophobic just knowing that this is the only way in or out of the interior. Of course you could always get out of there by a plane, but this is expensive…Luckily I will be taking a plane out to my site, but once I am there, this road is my only way out.

We definitely stand out here; however, we are welcomed with open arms by the locals, who are both friendly and curious. My first stop was in Georgetown, which is home to about 300,000 people out of the 700,000 that reside in the whole country. I have found this to be the land of wild animals, no matter if you are in the city or in the jungle. In the city you will find wild dogs, donkeys, and goats running rampantly. In Bartica there is a more diverse bunch of animals that is extended to include cows, roosters, and chickens.

Getting to Bartica:

On August 28th there will be elections in Guyana . There is a chance that things could get dangerous for us in Georgetown, so we have come to Bartica as a precautionary measure. In order to get to Bartica we took the slow ferry down the Essequibo River. The ferry covers 50 miles in 5 hours and the expression “packed like sardines” was probably coined on this ferry. Seriously. One of the girls, Dana, said it was “slave ship-esque.” This originally sounded like fun, but let me tell you, this was our most challenging experience this far. The weather here is about 100% humidity all the time and about 75-90 degrees during the day. We got the ferry a little late so all the merchants had already loaded their goods and all the people had already boarded. All of a sudden about 35 white people with roughly 70 suitcases and 35 backpacks needed to board this already stuffed to the gourd boat that was just about ready to depart. The cars were already on board, so there was no way for us to walk up the stairs with our luggage. The only choice that we had was to pass our suitcases, weighing about 50 pounds each, up to one of the volunteers from the dock. We then had to find space around all the people to stack all of these suitcases. The picture should give you a better idea, but at the same time, you have no idea…It was one of those moments where you are so fed up you want to scream, but you know that all you can do is just keep going and get it done because you have no other choice. The horn sounded and the captain was ready to go, however we still had about 40 bags on the ground, as well as the 20 volunteers that owned these bags. With sweat dripping into our burning eyes, we just kept going and to all of our surprise, we all made it with our luggage shoved into some corner or hallway of the boat. Some people had to sit uncomfortably holding bags in the sun, and then there were those few of us that found a nice comfortable home for the duration of the trip sitting on top of the masses of boxes of vodka that were stored at the back of the boat. Slowly, we volunteers found our prized spot, which then became just as crowded and uncomfortable as the rest of the boat. It was a long, slow trip, and I was exhausted. By the time we got to Bartica, half of the boat had unloaded, so getting of wasn’t nearly as intense as getting on, hallelujah. A minibus came to pick us up and took us to the next dormitory, which was really nice compared to the first…

(photos to come)

Our living situation:

All of us live together. There are currently 4 girls in one room with 2 sets of bunk beds. It’s not that bad. We do not have running water though. Every morning we take turns using the buckets…we walk through the yard that has fire ant hills randomly here and there, fill up our buckets with water that is less than clear, try our hardest to get it back through the foyer without spilling it all over ourselves and the floor, trek back up the stairs, share our shower space with a number of different arthropods, and try to conserve the amount of water we are dumping over our heads with our cups as we try to get the rest of the shampoo out of our hair. And I came here on my own accord…it’s interesting, but already a nice, long, hot shower sounds amazing…and it’s only just begun. You know you are roughing it when a flushing toilet is what you call a luxury.

It’s really not that bad, although we are getting anxious to get to our sites…but we are trying to enjoy this now because things after this aren’t going to be so easy and will get a bit lonely.

The Bugs:

They are big. They are small. They are everywhere. I swear to you, ants might take over the world. I found this beetle and was ready to get back on that tightly packed ferry in order to catch the next plane out…but then I fell in love and wanted to dissect it. Now we go out looking for the things that creep and crawl through the night. I have never seen ants behave this way. I suppose I have never had so much time to watch them, but they attack all kinds of bugs (you should have seen the size of the moth they got this morning) and then they carry them up the wall. It is a crazy sight to see… I saw a huge spider, not quite as big as a tarantula, and it had its eggs underneath its abdomen. We were at the internet café and my field director Nancy got so scared she kicked the modem and shut every computer down. She said I chased it towards here, but I swear I didn’t.

(photos to come)

Amy and I on our way out to look for some tarantulas up the hill from us. We didn’t find any, but it was fun anyways. Don’t we look cool? The dorky scientists.

More about Guyana…

Guyana is a poor country…you see it as soon as you step off the plane. It is definitely beautiful but with it’s poverty, you can only hope that they learn to conserve their resources and not destroy this land just for money; it’s a hard situation. Walking through Georgetown one day, it really hit me. The houses are broken down huts on stilts and the roads aren’t paved; they are red dirt roads with the most amazing potholes you have ever seen. You wonder why all those SUV’s are on the paved American city roads when they would be most useful for this terrain. It’s like nothing I have ever seen before. I don’t even know how to explain it really. There is trash everywhere and they just stack it in their front yards until they get a good accumulation and then they burn it. There is litter everywhere you step and in every waterway you see. It’s disturbing and one can only wonder how they could fix the problem. At one time it seems so awful: all the garbage, the crime, the merchants begging for your business on streets. Then at the other times, it has its beauty and the people are a big part of the charm. Everyone passes by you and says either good morning, good afternoon, or good night.

To give you an idea about their schools, they are poor. In America we spend about $8,000 a year per student. In Guyana they spend $300. And the double-edged sword is that while the Ministry of Education is trying hard to get these kids to finish secondary school, they are only setting themselves up for the educated to leave the country, leaving Guyana right where it started. There are no universities really, except the University of Guyana, so if you stress that university is important, they leave the country and go somewhere else, and the odds of them returning to seek employment in their home country is slim to none. The teachers here are never a sure thing, it is unknown if they will come back after “summer” break (it’s summer all the time here for us), and if they do, it is unsure how many days a week they will actually make it to their classes.

In my head:

Sometimes I wonder how I am going to make it here a year. I know that this not going to be easy, and there are days I have already had where I have to search inside myself to find the courage to not get on a plane to go back home to the comforts I know. I still am not sure if the idea that I am going to be here a year has really set in. The living conditions I am currently in makes this feel a bit like summer camp, which is not going to be the reality once I get to my site. Once I actually do get to my site however, hopefully I can settle in and try to make it my home. Until then, I feel a bit in limbo and go up and down in terms of my emotions about how I feel about this whole thing. But then you see the kids (we have been having teaching training, so we are actually teaching students) and you really want to teach them and get to know them. I feel lonely at times and miss my family a bunch, especially my mom, but luckily I have a phone right now so I can call her as often as I like. Once I get to my site I will not have access to a phone, so that might be hard, but at least I will have a place to finally call home for a year, so that might make the blow a little less troublesome. We will see here soon. I depart for my site on August 20th. I will be living in the village of Annai, which is an Amerindian village of about 500 people that is about an hour or so away from the Brazilian border. There will be a chief of my village and everything I do will be scrutinized by the people of this tiny and conservative village. We have been having training sessions that deal with how to live in one of these villages. They told us our lives are no longer private, they are public knowledge, and to keep that in mind as we move about our days. I even have to ask the chief if he will allow visitors to come and see me.