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!