Ein Juli, Keti Koti, Sa sta bebe pepe maun....umm

So this happened a while ago but it is cool enough to be worth telling out of order. Keti Koti is the holiday celebrating the end of Slavery in the Netherlands Empire - which was a big deal here in Suriname since it was kind of a slave colony and I'm living with the descendants of the escapees.

I celebrated it with my Host Family, so I don't know what it will be like next year here up river, but it was pretty cool even in a relatively developed part of the country. The day started with sitting down with my extended host family around one of the spirit houses in the village. Every man was supposed to bring a beer and some kind of almond liqueur and the women brought/made tons of food.

Several of the villagers were in very traditional dress - wrapped in kosus (a swath of fabric about a meter wide and several meters long worn like a skirt by men and women) and white head dresses - and they began to beat a mixture of plants into a froth in an oversized mortar and pestle. They have huge ones here! And they use them for a lot of things - making oil, rice, and apparently holiday celebration aids! While they were beating the plants, another woman came around to throw a small amount of powder on everyone's head and shoulders.

This was all the beginning of a cleansing ritual that centered on the river - which really is the center piece of life here. At a certain time, the various family groups and the various holy sites moved to the main landing on the river, in front of the village ancestral totems. They had pulled a boat up onto the top of the bank - one of the heavy, hand made canoes you see everywhere on the river - and began to put the crushed leaves each group had made into it.

After the herbal mix, they children and certain adults carried river water to the boat and began to fill it. At the same time, the top woman in the village (my host mom's mom who is the mom of a Basia and the wife of one as well, and the oldest woman in the village) began to lead a chanting song for most of the women and certain men. The men began to add to the mix in the boat with beer and other liquors and several beers were sprayed like champagne across the crowd.

At this point, my host mom had told me it was ok to join as long as I was comfortable in traditional dress - to partake in the ceremony you had to dress like a true Saramaccan. Men and women in kosu skirts only (so both topless) and children naked. I wore something under my kosu and the Peace Corps women staying there with me kept on their sports bras and that was fine, but still it was very interesting to dress that way and stand amongst the crowd.

Once the boat was full, we began to wash in the mixture. You went up to the side of the boat, where one of the men stood and he would poor a calabash full of the mixture over your head three times while you scrubbed yourself with it. Washing in river water is the norm here, but keep in mind this was soup at this point - soapy with beer and full of leaves of herbs. You came out of that coated in green and then walked to a small gate they had constructed out of sticks.

At the top of the gate they had made a basket that served to strain another liquid mixture - this one based heavily in sugar cane - that they poured over your head as you walked through. Finally, you were coated again with white powdery liquid once you passed the gate.

From there, the crowd dispersed to eat the food and drink the beers and almond booze and I did likewise. I believe the most traditional people did not wash off the mixture at all that day. My host mom explained that it was a special wash that made you extra clean, to wash away all bad things from the year past. As dusk falls, you symbolically wash in smoke and the smoke carries away the bad things brought to the service by the cleaning and leaves them far out in the jungle where they cannot find their way back.

We did not make it to the smoke ceremony because I was helping my host mom cook and we lost track of time, but it was still an amazing day. I did end up washing off after a few hours because it was quite itchy at that point, but I did my host family proud and it was a really cool feeling to be included in the ceremony. Unfortunately, I could not take pictures and it's hard to make words capture it - but hopefully this gives you an idea.

Welcome to the Jungle

I’m going to continue to bounce these vignettes around – deal with it, it’s my blog! It’s weird talking to the internet. I’m also kinda writing these all at once, if you couldn’t tell. I meant to do this last night, but I was super tired after working in the jungle all day (the subject of this post) and kinda in pain. Something must have gotten inside my boot and bitten/stung me through my sock. One of the kids thinks it was a decent sized bug whose name I forget and anything is possible. He also suggested I pour lemon juice on it, which I did – can’t hurt right? So anyway, it kinda hurts to walk. 18 hours later it’s better, but more swollen and still hurts. It kinda looks like a big ugly bee sting, so nothing life threatening I think, but it hurts! Fortunately, it’s easy to keep your foot elevated in a hammock and so I did that while I slept last night.

Oh, I also cut my thumb relatively badly while in the jungle. Remember I just said I re-learned the importance of cutting away from yourself? Yeah. That’s what I was talking about. It is shallow but along, from the tip of my thumb almost to the base of the nail. It bled a lot and it taught me another good lesson – I need to make up a jungle/travel medkit to carry with me when I go on an excursion! I made a bandage out of a handkerchief and it was bleeding enough that it was clean, but yeah. Ouch. Cleaned it very well when I got home (soaked in antiseptic) and today it seems to be healing nicely with no sign of infection. Probably will scar, though, since the edges don’t quite want to go neatly together. Anyway, none of that is the point.

The point is, yesterday I went deep into the Jungle and did a hard day’s work! It was awesome! On my way home from a morning run a few days back, I walked past a house and saw a circle of guys standing around looking like they were seika-ed up for something cool (seika is a cool word in Sarmaccan, kinda like dwaeyo which is my favorite word in Korean – it means prepare). So I stopped to chat and they told me they were headed into the jungle on a boat and would be making boards. I managed to get invited/invite myself to their next excursion (scheduled for the following day). Random folks, just met them – totally fine. I talked to some of my main buddies here about it to check the guy and the work out and to let them know I’d be gone, and everything looked good!

So I got up early and did my workout and then cooked a day’s worth of food (which I didn’t end up needing, since they fed me – I’d heard they would but didn’t want to depend on it) and then headed over to the guy’s house. Nobody was there. Turns out they decided not to go that day. I was super bummed, and more so because I’d just spent 20 minutes trying to find his house in my full jungle-get up, carrying a heavy pack and a machete, and telling everyone I saw that I was going into the Bush! It worked out fine – I ended up going working with my main Rasta buddies all day instead, which was good too.

Later, rinse, repeat the following day and we were off! We took a boat about 10 minutes up river and then took a tiny foot path straight into the jungle for about half an hour. A man with a shot gun was in the lead and there were five of us in total. The thick, lushness of the jungle is almost indescribable. It is so…alive. I felt like I was in the movie Swiss Family Robinson, a childhood favorite (I think that was Aunt Ronnie – thanks!) Quiet but loud in that incredibly vibrant, natural way. Dark but filled with green light.

Our destination was a great tree – at least a meter thick and unknowably tall. The blue sky above it was almost like a scar after so much green.

We made an impromptu saw mill with machetes, an axe, trees for levers and wedges, and two chainsaws. These guys can use chainsaws better than I can use tweezers and I saw them pull boards out of a giant hunk of tree for nine hours. And yes, they were barefoot and the sawdust flew like snow. I helped as much as I could, which was a lot of carry and fetch and heave, but it was good work and I enjoyed it. I didn’t enjoy the noise so much, so I won’t go with them awesome, but it was very interesting to see one source of money and raw materials for the village.

At about sunset, we walked back. The lead chainsaw guy had the shotgun, in case we saw anything that might become dinner meat, but it was a quiet walk back. Except for my being silly enough to cut myself and something biting my foot, it was an awesome day. Next time I’ll wrap my boots and cut away from myself. And bring a jungle medkit, but less food and water. Good lessons to learn, and not bad for my first expedition!

Where's that Safety Committee meeting?

I wanted to tell a couple stories about the moving in process. So, I get here and it’s kinda frustrating because the house is exactly as I left it. People here and at the Peace Corps office made it sound like my roof would be fixed and my electricity installed before I got here, but that was a no go. On the upside, my durotank is full! (Downside, the spigot is broken and so I’m currently holding in the water with a machete-made cork (didn’t make it myself)).

The first day, I worked with a new friend named Edward to build shelves and set up my stove. That was fun and it is amazing how fast and hard these guys can work when they want to – Edward is a smart guy and clearly has some resources. He lives next to one of the nicer wash spots at the river and he showed me his sound system and computer the other day. Nice. Not sure how that all works just yet, but that’s a challenge for another day.

Anyway, the next day Edward came back and said we should work on wiring the house. The “Fajama,” who happens to be Edwards brother, would come later and help us hook up the electricity. Faja (sounds like Fire with out much of an r) is the word for fire, light, and electricity. So we laid the wiring and all that, and then came the fajama and time to hook up to the grid.

Gary, if you are reading this, sit down. I thought of you and the Ol’ safety committee the entire time. The Safety Committee was tough – half the time I felt like I was on the super lax end and the other half super strict – but man I missed the environment when they were wiring in my house!

Poles around the village make up a basic grid tied to a diesel generator – I haven’t seen it yet, but learning about it is on the list. To bring electricity to your house, you splice into one of the poles. Often literally. So here’s the scenario. It’s not quite sunset yet, but there are a lot of clouds so it’s dusky. The fajama is 20 feet up, leaning against a questionable pole on a questionable ladder – it would definitely not have ben checked into an McM warehouse. And he’s using the only tool (besides hammer, nails, and machete) we’ve used all day – my stainless steel leatherman. Now, it’s not that bad because the electricity isn’t on yet, but it get’s better.

When he gets to the top, there’s a bee’s nest or something. So after a quick climb down he’s back up there and no he’s juggling a can of local-brand Raid and spraying himself, the nest, the pole, and the air trying to keep them from stinging him. Raid should probably not be worn like Off, but strangely it smells pretty good here.

He doesn’t have any pockets (or a shirt and he’s wearing flip flops), so he just sticks the can into his waistband and goes from there. Some stripping, some splicing, and then we run another wire the 100 feet or so that my house is from the pole – resting in some trees and whatever else we can find along the way. Unfortunately, it isn’t long enough. So we take some of the extra house wire (this stuff has 3 individually coated strands within the bigger rubber coating) strip it hardcore, plait it around the end of the other wire, wrap that with a bunch of wire to hold it together, and then tie that into my house. Oddly, the tie in spot is a beautiful, brand new, could-have-bought-it-at-Walmart fuse box. Oh, I forgot to mention – throughout this adventure, it was raining. There was lightning too.

It was amazing. Safety means something else here. These guys do take it seriously, because hurting yourself can have huge consequences – and everybody has scars. I’ve already picked up a couple of cuts that will no doubt scar on me too (I’ve now relearned that wonderful lesson – hopefully – of cut away from yourself). It’s hard not too in this climate and under these hygiene conditions. But, anyway, taking safety seriously means they carefully know and consider the risks before the do something, but they often take risks we would never fathom in the States. And usually that is fine. If you are careful and skilled, we often way overthink things in the States – I know I felt that way on the Safety Committee once or twice. But, it’s pretty scary some other times!

So, I’ve got faja, some shelves, and my roof doesn’t leak anymore (that happened another day, though most of the new thatch fell of yesterday, so I need to figure out how to get that guy back here again…). Not too bad J

No horse open Slee!

Well! Hello, again! Adventures without number since last we spoke and so I will do my best to break them up into fun vignettes as much as possible. At some point here, I will also get better at calling the outside world, but I find that it is a fairly busy day for me here. One of the core expectations of the Peace Corps is that you are representing America 24x7 and so in many ways you are working every hour of every day. Because living really is work here, sometimes rewarding but always tiring (and sweaty!), especially when you are doing it under the eyes of evvvverybody nearby! So, anyway, when I’m at work it’s tough for me to make personal calls – just the way I was raised. But I’m establishing a routine and mapping out space for myself in that day, so that should change soon.

I guess I’m a bit out of order, so I’ll just run with it. I’ve been in my village for a week and a day now. I’m moved in, relatively settled, and starting to come up with a routine as I mentioned. My only job right now is to wander around in order to meet people, learn things, and integrate – which is kinda crazy. As implied above, it makes you feel like you are cheating if you sit at home too long. So it’s work, but it’s also hard because I’m not accomplishing anything measurable. I keep telling people, “Yeah I’ll help you learn English!” and then I want to set up a meeting with the school to start organizing classes and come up with a way to create a curriculum. But patience. Not yet. First I need to go shadow the teachers for a day, or at least attend some of the classes! Same with the Polyclinic, etc.

This week I’ve focused on informal stuff – so not those above. I’ve just been meeting people, asking them what they are doing, and trying to help if they want me to. I spent almost a whole day making Cassava bread which was really fun – grandmothers are grandmothers and so I ate very well that day! She made me cake, gave me about 8 coconuts (I love coconuts here) and of course cassava bread! You make it by grinding the cassava into a powder and then frying it over an open fire on a flat metal sheet. If you watched that episode of Bizarre Foods, then you saw! It’s a smokey taste and not exactly delicious on it’s own (except when it’s warm and fresh), but it’s good dipped in sweet tea which is the preferred method around here.

http://www.travelchannel.com/TV_Shows/Bizarre_Foods/Episodes_Travel_Guides/Suriname

The other days, I’ve either been working on my house or working with other folks. I’ll talk about a solid adventure there in a moment, but for now I’ll talk about my daily living. I get up between 6 and 7 (kinda just when I do) and do some pushups, situps, and stretch. I learned a good running path last week and have done it once – my plan is to do that a couple of times a week and do tkd-ish stuff a couple of times a week. I haven’t figured out how TKD will work, but I know a lot of kids are interesting in learning so I’ll think I’ll just kinda start doing it at a set place in time and see who joins in, to start with anyway.

After that, I wash yesterday’s clothes and dishes, as well as myself, at the river. I am way overpacked for clothes. Those shorts I bought? Nice, fine, good – silly. My dry fit shirts? Good, but I spend, unsurprisingly, as much time as possible shirtless and I bought a couple of wife beaters for $2SRD ($0.60) and so those are taking over a bit. Wish I’d brought more running/exercise style shorts. I wear my swim suit at least a third of the day. Really, the shorts where my only decent mistake – didn’t really need to buy them and should have brought more random cheap/exercise – and that isn’t bad.

I’m also adjusting to cooking without refrigeration. I’ve started a food journal (I spent a boatload of money on food because I have no idea how much I will eat in 3 months) in order to figure out how quickly I go through food and also keep track of good meals and stuff. So far, I tend to drastically overcook – both the food and the amount. How am I so bad at cooking rice? Ah well. I’m learning!

After I wash and clean up my house a bit, I generally go looking for people to meet and things to do. Sometimes that’s just walking around and talking to as many people as possible, other times I get sucked into a task pretty quickly. I’ve helped beat rice (they carry the cut plants back here to separate the grains from the stalks, using a giant mortar and pestle set up), crack maipa sei (nuts that they make into cooking oil), and generally sat and talked with a lot of people. As I mentioned above, it’s is hard work that doesn’t always feel like work, so it can be tough.

If I’m back home in mid day, I generally go back out around 1PM. It’s when school lets out so hanging out at home is a good way to get mobbed. Sometimes that is fun, but it’s also a good time to walk around with kids and see what is happening. Once the heat of the afternoon passes (around 5pm) it’s time to start getting ready to play soccer or start chasing kids away so I can close my door and talk to the internet/read/whatever. If I’m going to close my door, I try to wash at the river and cook dinner before dark. If I’m playing soccer, that will go until dark and so I’ll usually end up washing in my washhouse and making a small quick meal afterwards. Then sleep. It’s a full day and that is fun. It already feels like a long time – both in front of me and behind me) – but there’s so much I need to learn and need to do. It’s a big challenge. It’s nice to have that – I’ve missed the feeling.

Sloth!

Sloths

So we’ve been back at the training facility for the last week – and it is our last week here. Shortly we go back to our host families for a week and then we move into the city for two weeks or so in the ramp up to swearing in as official volunteers. We have more technical trainings, more language, more culture. It’s good to see everybody and to also get deeper into things – we are past most of the self reflection and introductory stuff now, which is good.

But we have also had some awesome adventures at the training camp. We are sort of on the fringes of a suburb about 45 minutes outside the city – so it isn’t exactly rural, but there are chunks of trees that look pretty jungle-y very close by. So that means there is a fair amount of flora and fauna hanging around. I haven’t had any trouble – besides two toads and a lizard jumping on me on three separate occasions (I made very manly noises, lemme tell you) – but two girls have been bitten by cockroaches. One of those girls was also pooped on by a cockroach, but that was in her village not here. No one else has had any trouble with cockroaches, so I think those girls need to evaluate their soap choices or something.

Anyway, we had a presentation from a local naturalist on various creepies and crawlies we might meet in the jungle – exciting stuff, look up the Brazilian Wandering Spider (or Banana Spider) sometime – and because he lives nearby he sometimes stops by to show us things that he bumped into in his/our backyard. For example, he stopped by with a horned beetle the size of my hand the other day. A bit before that, he came by with an adolescent boa constrictor – only about 2 meters long.

While he was here and we were petting the snake (it was in a tree near his house and he snagged it so someone wouldn’t kill it) someone noticed something moving in the low shrubs on the other side of the cinderblock wall (turned so that you can see through the openings, not solid) that separates our training facility from the construction company next door. It was an adult male sloth! He wasn’t very big, but his claws were and they just look like aliens! Their faces are so weird and the way they hold their heads is just…off. Also, their whole mode of motion just doesn’t feel quite right.

Anyway, the construction company has dogs that roam about and so the naturalist was worried that they would kill the sloth. No one was there, so this meant that several of us, the naturalist included were climbing/leaning over the wall trying to persuade the sloth to grab a broom handle and come to our side of the wall. Sloths are endangered and this one was evidently confused. Like I said, we aren’t far from the jungle we aren’t exactly close. The guy said that it likely wandered away from it’s normal zone while looking for a good place to poop (it’s what he said) and then got confused and probably crossed a couple roads.

We finally managed to get the sloth to grab hold and we brought it to our side of the wall. The naturalist has a friend that rescues slothes but, unfortunately, she is out of the country for a few weeks. So we picked it up (using the broom handles – you don’t want it to grab you directly with those claws) and walked down the road with it hanging between us like a….well a sloth! We found a decent patch of jungle-y woods, put it in a tree, and called it our good deed of the day. How’s that for jungle living? Amazing.

Self Starting

So it’s interesting to think about what being a self starter really means. It’s something we talk about in essays and interviews in the States, but with only a week in the interior under my belt I’m betting I am going to deepen my understanding of the concept.

Because there is nothing I need to do and nowhere I need to be, nor any particular time I need to be there – unless I go out and engineer it for myself, within a foreign culture and a foreign language. Of course, going out and doing that is kinda my job here. I’m not exactly one to laze around all day, but there is no doubt that it is work here just to start trying to find…work to do. Days are long here. In some ways, it was easier this week because I basically had no ability to feed myself or any of the stuff that would let my little house become a comfy castle, but in other ways it was harder because I lacked the excuses of cooking, washing dishes and clothes, etc that I will have when I actually start living in Pikin Slee.

Looking for a job is always work, but it’s pretty intense to start from zero. Especially for the first three months, when I’m not supposed to start any projects, it’s my job to just get to know people. So wandering around, looking over people’s shoulders and asking them to teach me what they are doing or take me with them where they are going is in fact my work. The goal is for that to develop a rapport and a local competency that enables successful, sustainable project work, but it is still a dauntying task.

Playing soccer around 630PM started to be the highlight of my day pretty quickly. Not because I love soccer, though I do (people are mad skilled here, by the way), but because it was a time and a place I knew I could be at a certain time in order to do a certain task with clearly defined goals and obstacles. Though some unexpected obstacles include not remembering who is on my team and not understanding what people that are actually on my team are yelling from across the field. Ah well.

Anyway, I can already tell that it’s going to be hard to fill the hours at times. You can fill them in your own head in your own house, but it is actually my job to fill them as much as possible by interacting with Surinamers. And it’s tough. Mentally and physically – it is hot here! They don’t speak English and cold drinks are rare. In a way, that’s nice – when something is hard like that, it makes it easier to think of it as my job and thus to approach it with the discipline it requires.

And the incentives for doing a good job are pretty awesome. If I do it, I get to learn new things, meet new people, and have experiences that just about no one gets an opportunity to do. A mean come on, I live in the jungle! Also, the better I do at getting to know people the more I will be able to do to . More projects will materialize and I will be able to do a better job of helping make them happen. Just getting to know people has its own intrinsic value and it makes me happy, but project work is why I wanted to come here and accomplishing things that have a real, lasting impact on people’s lives that I can see is important to making me feel satisfied with myself.

So you gotta do job 1 to get to job 2 – both are important, but they absolutely build off of each other. And both are real work that I can find real satisfaction in doing. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that getting to job 2 is important to me in a slightly different way. I like to be able to see the results of my work. I want to do a least a few things here with visible, sustainable, real impact on people’s lives. That is a real part of Peace Corps, but far from our only focus and so it’s important to me to keep it in mind. And additionally, just to be honest, I want to have stuff like that on my resume so that I know I’ll be able to land at the next thing when I’m issued a plane ticket at the end of two years.

That’s one of the fun things about Peace Corps – it has an expiration day. So you have to get yourself started every day, because I’ve heard the days are long but the two years goes fast. It’s exciting to be starting.

Adventures at Home

I was only in Pikin Slee for 5 days, but it’s an exciting town so I’ll walk through it a bit with some adventures! First, let me describe it. The town is on the side of the river and has at least four landings (that’s a lot). It has, I think, five Captains and innumerable Bascha’s, two official community meeting houses, and enough people for some internal commerce – people sell cassava, bread, eggs, etc even outside of the several formal stores.

There are some people with a lot of money and some people with not much, but most people are doing fairly alright from what I’ve seen so far. Many people have relatively nice, modern houses and others have relatively simple…breezy…more traditional houses like mine. To give you a sense of it, I have a thatched roof over a concrete pad with slatwood walls. Lots of gaps for breeze and anything else that wants in, but fortunately the bugs weren’t too bad at all during this visit at least.

The house itself is about 4 paces by 5 and the concrete and thatch extend out another 2 paces-ish to give me a porch. The concrete raises the house up above the sand that is around my house and that transitions to dirt and grass/brush/gardenisharea in about 20 feet in any given direction. The house has one window, though I may try to do something about that to get some more light and breeze. I have a newly built latrine and washhouse about 10 steps from my back door.

The house doesn’t get much shade and is about 30 feet from a kindergarten, but otherwise it’s a good area. I need to figure out how to get a clothesline going since there isn’t any obvious spot and I also really want to build a pull up bar. Other than that, hopefully I can get my neighbors/woodworking contacts to help me add some additional holes in the house (windows/vents) and close some others. Maybe get some shelves too – all I had for furniture during these four days was 2 overgrown stools and my hammock.

My house is about a 10 minute walk from the river and about a 15 minute walk from a spring/creek that is absolutely beautiful but tough to use for washing more than your dishes and clothes, since it’s only about 10 inches deep. The river is beautiful.

On the first day, I walked around with one of the main Rastas and he introduced me to people, showed me around, etc. Even by the end of the 5 days, I don’t think I’d seen the whole village but he gave me a start that day and then kept it going the next day. On the 3^rd day, he had to go to the jungle to cut more timber for the woodshop and so it was a bit of a rough day for me. I hate to beg for food, but my guy didn’t really arrange anything and I had minimal food and zero ability to cook. I knew I could make my way to the carpentry workshop and hang out there until someone fed me, but I’d been there for several hours the last two days and so I was determined not to go there until mid afternoon. My goals were to wander around, talk to some people, and successful get someone to feed me without feeling like a hobo.

It’s amazing how long the time from 8am to 2PM or so can feel, especially when you are running on apples and peanut butter. I didn’t do a great job of the food thing that day, though it got easier later and will be much easier once I can cook for myself (both because I can provide for myself and I’ll be able to offer something to people that feed me in the morning when they visit my house later in the day, making me feel much better about crashing their breakfast). But it got much better once I just resolved to put on my hat, some sunscreen, and start wandering.

It kept getting better as the day went on and my confidence grew a bit. I picked up a posse of kids that helped me find my way around a bit (even though I really didn’t have a destination), but you start to realize that just wandering and talking to people is actually part of my job right now. Kids are also great at helping you get food. I ate coconuts off the tree, appesinas (like an orange), pompelmus (a bigger grapefruit with more nodulized flesh), and also was fed by more moms. I eventually made my way to the workshop and helped with some basic woodwork for a while and ate with my counterpart.

After that, I played soccer with the older kids and men of the community. I did this almost every night and it tended to be the anchor of my day. You have no idea how disorienting it is to have an entire day looking at you where there is nowhere you have to be at a specific time. It makes the days so long and it would only be worse if I were capable of feeding myself in my house and had a chair and electricity (the house wasn’t wired yet).

Just knowing that I was going to be at the soccer field around 6PM at least gave some structure to my day which was surprisingly comforting. And it’s a nice routine that really takes you all the way to bed – play until dark, wash, have some food, hit the hammock around 9 or 10 unless you want to wander around at night.

On this particular day, it was the wash that really turned things around and reminded me how happy I am to be here. There are a lot of hardships and I’ve made sacrifices to be here and it is going to be hard work that has no guarantee to pay off in the ways that I think I want right now. But still. It is breathtaking here.

After the soccer game, it was about full dark so I groped my way home and found my head lamp (critical here! Mine broke the 2^nd to last night. Bad news, but anyway). But when I went to fetch water to wash, nothing was coming out of the rain catch. While I was standing in my doorway thinking about what to do and feeling sorry for myself, one of the kids I had met earlier in the day stopped by and asked what I was doing. I flubbed a response since I didn’t really know how to explain it in Saramaccan and didn’t know what I was doing anyway. I asked it back (just polite in this culture) and he said he was going to the river to wash. I decided to go with him.

We walked through the village in the light of a nearly full moon and stars – that kind of light that you only really get to see when humans aren’t interfering. When we came to the river, I had to stop walking because it was too beautiful. The landing is concrete stairs that go down the bank to jetty out into the river, but the river is high right now and so the steps just disappear into quick, black water. You could see it perfectly in the light of the moon that had risen over the jungle on the other side of the river.

Following the stairs down into the river and then stepping out into the water was electrifying. It’s a strong current and though it’s good footing on wide concrete steps, you can’t see anything through the reflection of the stars in the water. It was amazing to stand waist deep in the river, at the edge of a wild jungle with nothing but the light of the moon and stars above you.

I talked about the world with the kid as best I could in Saramaccan, while we both had what amounts to our nightly shower in this part of the world. The quality of the light and the incredible, dense, vibranc y of the jungle, combined with literally being immersed in the river and the culture that is the heart of Suriname – I can only tell you that it was breathtaking.

Peaky Say

I have seen the jungle, and it is beautiful. There’s still a lot more to see before I can really say that, but I’ll jump the gun a bit. Last week, I got in a boat with a bag or two, a hammock, and a water filter. The boat was about 30 feet long, 3 wide, and 2 deep, with a small motor. We went up river for a couple hours and I started to get a sense of what my life is going to look like over the next two years.

I first spent 3 days with a current volunteer – he’s been here for 2 years and will be going home in August – and then I went to my village for 4 days. I’m going to start making these posts more vignette style, breaking up topics rather than continuing epic length posts. But I guess we’ll see what happens.

Visiting with an experienced volunteer was interesting. Learned a lot of do’s and don’ts and generally what two years here can look like. I think my two years will look very different from his, but that’s for many reasons. But, anyway, that was a relatively relaxing and reassuring three days – his village was tiny and I think I would have gone crazy if I was there for 2 years, but I could see how life goes and a little of what it takes to survive and be some kind of effective.

After that, I went to my village for 5 days. Just me and my little bit of stuff and let me tell you it was scary. I’ve been learning the language for about 3 weeks at that point and I’m headed somewhere that doesn’t know me, doesn’t speak English, and doesn’t have anyone or anything I’m particularly familiar with. Yeah. Reality.

My village is called Pikin Slee (Peeky See) and it is huge. Peace Corps estimated it at 700 people, but it’s got to be over 1000 at least and it’s one of the bigger villages on the river. Without roads, sidewalks, cars, or English 1000+ is big, trust me. It’s also a nice mix of a traditional and progressive village. They follow traditional practices, but they have a school and a clinic and the only Saramaccan museum in the interior. Electricity from 6PM-11PMish, a nice soccer field, and several good corner stores (picture something between a hotel front desk store and a small, old timey general store). They also have a tourist camp, so they see outsiders relatively often.

It’s where I’ll be for the next two years, about 6 hours from the City. My two primary contacts thus far are some Rasta guys that are at the core of the community organization that runs the Museum and also sells woodwork – sculpture, furniture, etc. They, and the village, are very happy to have a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) since they have been asking for one for several years and it sounds like the people there like to get stuff done. So it’s exciting from that perspective.

At the same time, it is a terrifyingly huge place. They know they want a PCV, but they’ve never had one before so they aren’t entirely sure what that means or how to treat one now that they’ve got me. A lot of conversations start with me knocking kids out when they run up yelling “Baka! Baka! Dollar! Dollar!” and I yell back in Saramaccan that they need to have better manners, call me by the nickname the village gave me (Slee Pai, which roughly means Brother of Pikin Slee), and that I’ll be living with them for the next two years. Jaws drop.

Setting and managing expectations is going to be a huge challenge in Pikin Slee – neither party really knows what to expect at this point and just by the pure numbers it is going to take a long time to get acquainted with everybody. As a PCV my goals are to help the village with projects that help them develop themselves and to learn about their culture while teaching them about America – there is a lot to do on all those fronts and people are excited about all of them. I just have to keep from getting overwhelmed, because it is so big and new to all of us. It’s a challenge I’m looking forward to, but it is definitely going to stretch my definition of work. More on that shortly!