Staycation!

So I'm really going to mix my time sequence up here and talk about 2 separate adventures at once. Atjoni is the primary point of entrance to the Suriname River - it's the port where all the boats launch from and it's got electricity and restaurants and government offices. In short, after 3 weeks upriver, it's pretty much heaven.

I went there for the day with a guy who is quickly becoming my primary friend here - his name is Edua (Edward with out the -rd). He is building a new house and I have helped him for a couple of days here and there, so he asked if I wanted to come to help him buy and bring back cement. When you are a Saramaccan, you basically only have to buy 3 things to build a house. Cement, nails, and gasoline to run the generator - everything else you need you either have, borrow, or take from the jungle.

Edua cut the wood himself, made the stone for the foundation with river sand and leftovers from other projects, but to make the floor he had to go buy 12 bags of cement and Atjoni is where you have to go. Now, each bag of cement is 100 pounds, so this isn't light work. But for the cost of loading and unloading 1200lbs of cement, Edua treated me to a beautiful man date.

It started with boat hopping our way down the river so we didn't have to pay with the trip. It turns out Edua owns a piece of a boat, so we just had to find it in a different village and jump on.

Once we got the Atjoni, we helped the other boat that had gotten us to that village unload some things and then paid for the cement. While the store was preparing the cement, we settled in for a couple cold beers and hot food prepared by other people! Baami!

Baami is the best dish in Suriname, so far, and I had been hankering for some - this worked out perfectly. It was lovely. I also may have bought a couple bags of oreos. Like I said in that other post, for some reason Suriname is tweaking my sweet tooth hard. I miss chocolate and cookies.

The clif bars my mom and a different friend sent me a running low, but they are the best thing ever. Oreos keep forever and are wonderful. I've been making banana bread, but it just isn't the same without chocolate. I've heard that milk chocolate spoils quickly, but dark will keep for quite a while. Oh yeah.

So between the beers, the baami, oh and some barbacue chicken (yes there was barbacue chicken! It was wonderful!) Edua probably spent $30SRD on me. Not a bad wage for throwing 2400lbs around. And a lot of fun hanging out with him and just getting out of the village for a day.

I think these little staycations are going to be important. A lot of the other volunteers are big on city trips and I can see that - Paramaribo is a surprisingly good city, especially by my incredibly relative standards now - especially if you need to re-supply. But it's a full day of travel each way and $300SRD round trip. When you go, you are probably going to stay for at least 4 or 5 days. And I think, from the sanity point of view that many people take, I can hack it without that.

It's just a lot of time away from the village during this relationship building period and that day in Atjoni was a great re-charger for way cheaper. Last week (I'm writing this 2.5 weeks later, sorry), there was a going away party in another village on the river for the volunteer I stayed with during training. That was another nice staycation. An hour in the boat, a weekend eating good food and speaking English, and you've got a great re-charge to keep you going with out all the time and expense of a city trip.

So I think that' s going to be my goal. Stay out as long as my food holds out and use the time that others spend travelling and in the city to do more of the work here (and there is a lot that some other volunteers don't have, since this is one of the biggest villages Peace Corps is in and also I'm the first volunteer so I'm breaking new ground) and also just to explore the country and other villages.

We'll see how that changes over time, but at a month in that sounds like a plan. Speaking of exploring an 'cations, I'll be open for visitors after October. It's a bit expensive to get here, but it's cheap and fun once you are here and there are a lot of adventures to be had and beautiful country to see. So let me know if you want to stop by!

Laters, my friends.