Bonjour, French Guyana

Whoa, hey there!  So I just got back from my 2nd short vacation of my Peace Corpsin' career, and let me tell you!  It was fun!  It was a 5 day or so trip with three Peace Corps Volunteer and one friend of a friend that is now a friend who showed us all around French Guyana.

After a Peace Corps training, much grant writing (oh!  And Boy's Camp Planning!  Forgot to mention that in my last post!), and general doings on, a short vacation was much in order.  And it was awesome!

We left the city the day before my birthday (thanks to everybody that sent me birthday wishes!) and went out to a Amer-Indian village where another Volunteer lives.  The road to get there is terrrrrible.  And the driver that took us was evvvveen worse.  Wow.  I have done some terrible things to cars, but...wow.  I mean we were just destroying that car on potholes, mud, and worse.  Wow.

We made it to Michelle in record time, though.  We were planning to take a more sedate (and cheap) public bus, but it's so much cheaper that it is quite literally a mob scene to get on.  So, after standing in the middle of a rain storm for about an hour waiting to get on...we failed.  People were literally throwing bags through windows to get on.  You basically try to get on before people get off and arrange to immediately take someone's seat as soon as they stand up.  It's a bit hectic.

So that didn't work out and we ended up in a car.  Which was fine but OH MY GOD THAT CAR'S POOR ALIGNMENT!!!  And I know what I'm talking about on that front, let me tell you!

The Amer Indian village was really cool, as is Michelle of course, and it was really amazing how different it.  It's really an entirely different culture.  More spread out, sedate, private, shy - not African, not Maroon, but some how more Western.  Maybe because of the 24 hour electricity and roads?  Or the personal space?  Hard to say.

Either way it was cool to expand my travels within Suriname and see a very different part of the jungle.  Michelle's experience there is so different.  The kids are quiet and disciplined.  Adults are reserved and closer to an American understanding of polite.  Woah.  You know.  Woah.  I'm not at all upset to be in a Saramaccan village instead - I like the chaos and the energy - but I am a bit jealous that she can have 5 kids in her house at the same time as 4 volunteers and we are able to carry on a conversation!

From Michelle's we grabbed a boat and crossed the river in Europe, one step removed.  French Guyana.  It really was kinda like France.  It was a cheap and slightly weak European country, or an expensive and incredibly clean and nice version of Suriname - if you felt the need to make such comparisons.  The infra structure is better (water and electricity everywhere, real roads, better education) and that's a big difference.  The other larger difference, in terms of the feel of the two countries, is just that...white people and foreigners aren't noteworthy.  They are used to Westerners that may or may not be tourists - wandering around all the time, because they are actually part of France!  Do you know with which country France has the longest border? Brazil!  Bet you wouldn't have guessed that out of this context!

So it makes it interesting to visit when you are used to Suriname.  No one is looking at you, coming up to you in English or Dutch, asking you, judging you, whatever they might 'ing you.  Some of that is also the French background, I would bet - but either way it was refreshing! 

So we crossed the river, after some incredibly weak Customs, and found ourselves in St. Laurent.  St. Laurent is far from a jewel of the French countryside but when you compare it to the border town on the Surinamese side, Albina, it is a little sad. It just has a different feel.  Like you are in a slightly underdeveloped corner of a developed place instead of the reverse.

From there, we made a fairly long drive to just outside Korou - that's where our friend and host Julien lives.  Julien became friends with a few previous Volunteers and hosted them on a French Guyana trip last year.  They had a good time and so he extended the offer to other Volunteers and we took him up on it. Julien proved to be an epic host, chauffering us around (without asking for any gas money, by the by) and showing us many hidden gems of the country side - and just generally showing us a good time.

That night, we went out for fancy crepes with a gang of French nurses we randomly made friends with (Julien got a date with one for after we left out of it.  Nice!) and then wandered around some of the clubs and bars of the town. 

Did you know that French Legionnares really exist?  And they do all kind of look like Jean Claude?  It was eerie.  They were nice enough though.  My top foreign military bar experience remains in China with Andy (I wonder where that picture got to...), but hey these guys bought us drinks so I won't complain.

It was a late first night and relatively expensive, but still fun to experience the life of the Westerners that come to work, live, and play in French Guyana for a year or two.  Korou is the home of the Space Center and so there are a lot of foreign professional types.  We'll get back to Space in a bit.

All in all, it was a pretty good birthday-day!

On the 7th, we packed up and met up with an old friend of Julien who for some reason had insisted that Julien bring us by his house for a pre-Easter lunch.  I think it was to expand his international bragging rights, because man could this guy cook!  A retired shrimp fisherman, he served amazing shrimp, pork, rice, potatoes, salad, and bread - all in some amazing combination of indonesian, caribbean, indian, and french style.  Wow.  We ate so much.  We had to take a food coma break before we could leave.

After that, we decided to go swimming.  Why?  Why not!  We knew we would float after a meal like that!  And it's always fun to swim in the sea off a different coast.  In this case, the water was pretty dirty - it was a pretty woody/sandy beach and it had been raining very hard recently, but still.  Good times.

We then set off into the jungle to one of the hidden gems of French Guyana.  It's called Cacao and it's a Laotian village in the middle of the FG jungle.  Yes, even they have a chinese-run store.  How did they (the Laotians) end up there?  I guess it has something with picking the locally unpopular side during the French piece of the Vietnam War.  Somehow, a larger population of Laotians was evacuated by the French and a chunk of them was given a chunk of jungle and given a chance to make a new life for themselves.

Which they did!  It's a vibrant little village and very starkly different from Suriname.  Even though it is incredibly isolated and a completely different culture from the majority peoples, the road to get there is smooth, you can drink the water from the tap, and the electricity is always on.  In a way it's surprising that that is surprising but it is from what I'm used to now.

We stayed at a great hammock camp in the village - dinner and breakfast included.  It was incredibly simple, but just a beautiful, peaceful setting.  A romantic weekend must if you lived in a FG city a couple of hours drive away - I think how Julien found it.  The owners are a Frenchmen and a Laotian who run it together with other Laotian family members in the village.  Interestingly, except for a narrower nose, the Frenchmen looked a lot like my Dad.  Same build, coloring, and hair, and face structure (except the nose).  New there was some Norman blood in there, right.  De la hant!  Ahn Hanh Hannnnh!  Anyway, it really was a beautiful setting. 

We continued on the next day for a quick border crossing over to Brazil.  This was back to a bit more of what I am used to - isolated, poor, and subpar infrastucture.  But very friendly and nice.  It looked like how I pictured an urban Peace Corps experience before I was a Volunteer.  It was a vibrant village - kids playing soccer, people walking around talking to neighbors, not much going on but plenty to do. 

But, it just so happened that we got lucky and there was a band in town that night!  So, we found ourselves at something between a club, a street party, and...well I guess that was about it.  Whatever you want to call it, it was fun!  We got street food and non-Parbo beers and hung out at the dance for a few hours.  It was a surprisingly fun time, just hanging around in the middle of nowhere with some nice people.

We didn't stay in Brazil long, though, and by the next day we were back in the deep jungle of French Guyana.  We were on our way back to Korou, but we decided to stop for a hike into the rainforest to see a place called the Rock Savanah.  It was about an hour hike through beautiful jungle along a path that was part creek, part sand, and all mud.  You go up and down in elevation several times until you start to just go up, and then suddenly the forest opens out into a huge rolling savanah of bare mountain rock.

It's sudden and surprising and beautiful.  There's no transition, it's just suddenly the bare shoulder of the mountain.  Steep and not alternatively, but always rolling and leading you up, it was a very beautiful piece of geography.  And it was framed by the back drop of all the jungle and it's canopy around and below us.  Because of all the rain, it was doing that amazing steam mist that rises from the trees and makes the entire world look like something out of a dream.

We were drenched in sweat, mud, and rain by the time we finished the hike, but it was well worth it.  We decided to celebrate when we got back to Korou with massive, wonderful, Hamburgers.  Ahh street food, I love you so - especially when you are there in many varieties!  All of them were big, greasy, with eggs and bacon and veggies and whatever else you can imagine.  I had two.  Both were doubles.  It was glorious and a great end to a good day.

That night, we slept at a much more basic tourist camp than we'd been doing recently.  Everywhere we went was just hang your hammock style, but this one lacked a floor, walls, electricity, staff, etc.  So it was kinda just a open air shed, actually.  It's redeeming characteristics were 3.  One, it was very close to where we needed to be the next day (and Julien was getting understandably tired of driving so much).  Two, it was super cheap and we were running low on Euros.  Three, it was right on the beach.  Once we brushed the sand off our feet and out of our hammocks, we fell asleep in sea area and the sound of the waves.

We were down to our last day and we knew how we were going to spend it - at the Space Center, where Julien works.  He's no rocket scientist, but he's plenty smart and plenty nice and he took very good care of us.

We were signed up for a free tour of the facility and so we spent most of the day being shown around by French tour guides in a big bus with dozens of other tourists.  Of course, it was all in French so it was a bit difficult to follow, but we still had a great time.  It was cool just to see what people can dream and build and do.  The scale of human accomplishment is truly awesome.  We didn't get to see an actual launch - so that remains on my list of things I'd like to do - but we saw a lot of the facility and several videos and everything else about them.  So it was a great final day.

Of course, the fun wasn't quite over.  As previously mentioned, Julien had a date that night so he found us a ride to the border on a local Craigslist rather than taking us himself.  We were a bit apprehensive, but that changed when a nice BMW rolled up and announced he was our ride.  Young fellow, nice guy, good driver, but wow.  We FLEW to the border.  He wasn't nearly as reckless with his car as that other driver I described before, but man did he drive fast.

We still got to St. Laurent just as dark had fallen and we didn't really have the money to spend the night.  So it was a our goal to get across the border and over to Michelle's again with the money we had left.  And so Evan went into negotiation mode.  I really do enjoy it.  It's just plain fun, but somehow I know it isn't the same in English and in America.  Arguing about actually small numbers in a foreign culture in a foreign language is fun.  It's a contest and if you do it right it's a friendly one.

With the boat guys, I did it right.  We were swarmed as we got out of the car, but I managed to keep it relatively controlled.  Got our bags on the boat, got the guys to agree to take us directly to Michelle (not the normal drop off spot, but just a bit farther down on the river bank), and all for only 25% more than we paid coming over when the whole trip began.  A 25% premium was cheap because it was night time and we were asking them to go further.

But, unfortunately, my Negotiation Prof's words proved all too true - it's not over until the check clears and there is no lawsuits.  Midway through the trip, they decided that the money wasn't enough to cover the trip.  In particular because they were running low and gas and consulted another boat man who backed them up that I had put one over on them to get them to agree to the number I did.  Hey, man, they agreed!

Admittedly, it was super low.  Either way, they agreed to put us down at the normal spot at the agreed upon price - which was definitely fair and I wasn't sad.  I asked them to help us find a Taxi and off we went to Michelle's.

And then the same thing happened!  The guy agreed to 25!  And then as we went, he said 30...and then 40...and then 50.  30 would haI ve been fair and I was prepared to go there, but by that point it was clear he was a bit...off...and he was threatening to drive off with our bags in his trunk.  So we settled on 40 and sent him on his way.

It was exciting and slightly negative, but really I had a huge amount of fun with it...especially the part where he and I were arguing full out - me with my foot in the driver's door to keep him from sitting down and driving away...or when I was complaining to his wife (who was also in the car) and asking her why her husband was trying to rip us off.

In short, it was full on haggling in the way that just doesn't quite happen in a flea market, and I love that kind of thing.  I like negotiating - in the haggling sense and also in the way of figuring my way around obstacles.  I like making do, making it happen, whatever you want to call it.

Anyway, we spent a good night at Michelle's and then went to an Aucan village were another PCV friend, Kate, lives - Aucans are another tribe of Maroons, similar to Saramaccans but different.  It's a relatively large and developed village, but it sounds a lot less...neighborly than mine.  It was cool to see Kate and see a different village, though.  That whole border area is entirely different and I really enjoyed seeing a different part of Suriname.

And then we were back in the city!  And that was that.  A great trip.  I really enjoyed French Guyana.  And I can't wait to do more in Brazil.

Bye!