Food Post2

As I said…food!  My previous cooking post seems to be the one that creates the most felicity and positive comments among my readers (doesn’t that sound silly?  My readers…ehhh hennhh hennnhh!  All posts from now one will begin with “Gentle Readers.”  You know, except not) and so this post will attempt to recapture that glory.

Brief aside – if you check the comments on that previous post, you’ll see that a representative from the Peace Corps Cookbook recently reached out to me for assistance!  Yeah.  Uh huh!  I’m kinda like a big deal!  Am I that high on the google search return?  Anyway, I’ve taken the intelligent step of forwarding them to a different Volunteer who can actually…you know…cook.  Especially local dishes, which is what they want anyway. 

Anyway, gentle readers, let us return to the subject at hand.  The delightful meal I delighted myself with earlier this week.  I call it…darn I can’t think of anything clever.  Love Fruit Stew?  Sappy.  Tomato Stew?  Unimaginative.  Intergalactic Red Chunky Soup?  I guess it wins by default.

So, like most of my cooking, I didn’t exactly set out with a plan to make IRCS…it just kinda happened.  I don’t make soups or stews that often at all really, but sometimes the overwhelming urge to just throw things in a pot hits me and…well the results can be intergalactically good!

As I let my hands browse through my buckets, stacks, and piles (the equivalent of cupboards in my life here), I realized that all of the things I was picking had a certain significance, though.  And that is how we arrived at this post!  So it's food - with a purpose!

IRCS is, at its base, a chunky tomato based curry.  I trace that basic concept to two people I love very much.  First, my sister Cara!  Cara provided me curry powder and many other wonderful spices.  And even notes about usages to make them less scary!  Unfortunately, I was still kinda scared (and lazy!) so until Ariel showed up (the second person!(not a complete list)) I hadn’t really started to tap that wealth.  But Ariel showed me how easy it was!  Apparently, to use curry powder properly requires a spoon!  And stirring!  You can see why I was nervous to start by myself.

Ariel also contributed the idea of using tomatoes (in this case canned, not ideal, but I’m not perfect) to make things more awesome.   Rice and lentils – good.  Rice, lentils, and some stewed tomatoes – amazing!  

Thanks, Ariel!  You know, for at lot of stuff.  But cooking with tomatoes is one!

The next part goes to my friends here in Pikin Slee who helped me plant my garden, because, remember, IRCS is a CHUNKY tomato based curry.  I don’t just mean stewed tomato chunks, I mean chunks!  Did you say chunks?  I SAID CHUNKS!

To provide some chunks I used…HOME GROWN EGGPLANT!  The green leafys are Tajawi and they cook kinda like spinach – good for you, tasty, and good to thicken something up or whatever – but THEY ARE NOT CHUNKS!  So you need the eggplant too!

For those of you following along at home, remember that you have to cut up the eggplant and Tajawi before you throw it into IRCS.  I like big chunks too, but we want lazy big chunks (who wants to make a million tiny slices?  Not me, that’s for sure!)  not crazy big chunks!  Crazy big would be like if you didn’t cut up the greens at all.  Yeah – it’s not recommended.  Did actually try it once...or twice.  Once might have been coincidence.

So soaking the eggplant and ‘wi and then cutting it up is your first step.  Well, actually picking it is.  Well, actually planting it I guess.  Clearing the ground?  Finding a hoe??  Being born???  Where does it end?!!!  Right here – just cut it up.  Don’t cut yourself!  Let’s just call this the beginning of PHASE ONE!

After that, toss it in your big pot (I’m assuming you just have the one, like me!) with a little oil, a little water, and a little salt.  My eggplant has seemed a bit bitter recently (I have no idea why.  Do you?) and so I’ve been cooking it a bit crispier.  That means I let it fry a bit more and steam a bit less.  So a bit more oil and bit less water and I leave it uncovered.  Saramaccans also tell you that cooking something uncovered lets the bitterness escape.  I don’t know if that’s true, but it is interesting!

While that is doing its thing on the stove (don’t forget to turn the gas on!  And light it!), go root around and find your can of tomatoes.  If you have real tomatoes and want to stew them first or something, good for you fancy pants.  If you’re like me, go find your can.  If you are really like me, you may not have the best organizational system so there may be some rooting around and some dust and stuff like that…so that gives the vegetables a minute to wiggle around and cook down a bit. 

Then go to your protein bucket (if you don’t have one, you should.  Protein is important!  Duh!) and whip out your good ol’ textured vegetable protein.  Thanks here goes to Ariel – Thanks, Ariel! - who introduced me to any number of non-meat proteins.  Not that I would have been scared of these slightly dog-food looking bits otherwise…but I probably won’t have cooked with them!  And thanks to Peace Corps Medical Officer, Doc, for making sure we knew where to buy them in Suriname!

Now you can do your TVP any number of different ways, but this time I’m guying to toss it right in with the veggies – are they cousins?  Is that mean? – and let it steam/fry/marinate/whatever.  It will certainly get done enough and it becomes just another…CHUNK in the INTERGALACTIC CHUNKY TOMATO SOUP. Toss in a healthy handful and stir.

At this point, it’s time to really start stirring things in.  I’m extremely good at that, which may explain why my cooking over-emphasizes this technique.  When food doesn’t quite taste right, I generally answer by adding another different spice or ingredient.  When in doubt, I’ve been known to just throw Barbeque Sauce (it’s capitalized because it’s great) on something and stir until it became edible.  So when I say good at “stirring things in”…well I guess it depends on your definition of good.  Anyway.

Here’s the devil’s row for this dish.  Oil and salt already happened (not too much, let’s be healthy please!).  Soy Sauce because I LOVE YOU MOM.  Siracha (sp?) because it’s great and a little spice is awesome.  Listerine is for later and just completely ignore the other stuff.  Oh, and I think I forgot to take a picture of Ketjap Mannis – it’s kinda like a sweet soy sauce…idk.  I threw in a spoonful because I thought it might also help reduce the slight bitterness of the eggplant.

So stir in all of that or whatever and by then phase one should be pretty much complete.  TVP is done enough and well flavored, vegetables are cooked down but still chunky, and hunger is mounting so it’s time to hit…

PHASE TWO

To be meal, food need 3 thing.  Protein.  Starch.  Vegetable.  Me keep things simple.  Me not gourmet, gentle reader (mispronounce when you read, please). 

So you could say that this food is already pretty close to meal status.  Still needs starch, but whatever.  Much bigger whatever is that it is still WAY FAR AWAY from being INTERGALACTIC RED CHUNKY SOUP.  It’s getting intergalactic and it’s got chunks, but where is the RED and the SOUP you might ask?

It’d be silly to ask because I already told you to get your can of tomatoes.  Seriously.

Now it’s time to crack that bad boy open an pour ‘er on.  And here we get another shout out for Mom.  About three years ago I had an interesting conversation with an older, married coworker of mine and we recognized that one of the most important changes in a man’s life is when the Woman of the House, in whatever sense that means whatever it means, changes from Mom to someone else.  We aren’t going to follow that thread anywhere right now, we are just going to agree that Moms are pretty important.

And my Mom gave me possibly my most important tool that I have out here!  My smile?  Maybe, but I’m talking about my CAN OPENER!

Dude, it’s key.  I don’t eat canned food super often out here, but it’s still about a million times more often than I did in the States.  And given that that is true for most people around here, you’d think they’d have good can openers.  WRONG.  You can barely find one in this country.  So my momma sent me one from home and let me say - Thank you, Momma!

Also, you might notice there is a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figure on that hook also.  Thanks for that go to Gordon and Harrison I think.  Thanks guys!

So, presuming that any of our gentle readers following along at home also have a mom who loves them, whip out your can opener and your smile and get it going!  If you don’t have both of those, you should have thought about it sooner – by the time you get that can open with your knife, those lovely chunky bits might burn!  Hurry up!

So pour in the tomatoes and then let it all do that magical thing called simmering.  Simmering is key.  I’ve heard.  Admittedly, I mostly just use it to get all the water out of my pasta so I don’t have to drain it…but I’m kinda lackadaisical.  I learned that word from my 6^th grade soccer coach!  Also, no pasta involved here.

Once you have simmered suitably (I don’t know what that means.  Ask someone who is a better cook) it’s time for the final piece of meal.  Starch!  Here, again, my momma gets a Thank you! for providing me with an alternative starch approach.  Couscous!

Couscous is wonderful and has the advantage of kinda cooking instantly – so I didn’t have to use another pot to cook rice or something separately and I could just (say it with me if you want!) STIR IT IN!

I just used all of the box that was left, but I don’t recommend that for you at home.  You should probably measure or something – there might be more left in your box than there was in mine.  And, yes, if you were very sneaky you might have noticed it amounted to about half of a blue cup in that picture of Devil’s Row that I put somewhere above.  Did you scroll back?  Admit it! Do you have a blue cup?  I guess you’ll have to figure something out if you want your IRCS to be like mine!  And mine was tasty, so you do.  Trust me.

So toss it in, stir it up, let the whole thing hit a boil again and then cover it, turn it off, and don’t forget to turn off the gas too!

Give it a while, and then take a look.  If you did it right, it should look something like this!

Spoon it up and sit down to enjoy!  And thank you to my friends from Pikin Slee that made the table where I get to sit to eat it!  Maybe a good book from friends – Thanks Mom!  Thanks Saffers! – and you have yourself the real meal they call dinner!

And if you made your IRCS right, don’t you worry.  You’ll be a member of the clean plate club without a doubt.  Thanks for reading!

And thank you to all of you that made this meal possible!  Whether you got a specific shout out for the food part or generally made it possible through being a positive part of my life, you have my gratitude for all your love and support – past, present, future.  Thanks!  Later!

So, wow.  I’ve been here for a year.  It’s a long time and made longer by the fact that I am not yet closer to the other side – a year away from home, but not yet a year as a full-fledged Peace Corps Volunteer.  In any case, it’s been a good year.  Not easy, but generally life isn’t and it isn’t that much fun if it is easy at all times.  I’ve learned a lot and grown (stuff besides fungus and vegetables, too!) and those can be painful processes.  But as Master Jeon has been known to say, there is good pain, bad pain, and crazy pain. 

In this first year here, there’s been some of each of the first two and fortunately none of the last!  But without a doubt pain has not been the primary feeling out here.  This is great.  It is not perfect, but it is great.  I live in a world that I help to enrich, palpably, just about every single day.  And it is a world so different and beautiful and vibrant that it defies description.   Not always comfortably so, but I didn’t come out here looking for comfort.  Those are very good things to be part of – things that are deeply enriching for me as well.

So, a year in, I’m glad to be here.  But man do I miss the people and activities that make America home.  Thanksgiving, Passover, Ariel’s black belt test and the TKD Semi at Cornell right now (Yay!  Go Ariel!), her 21^st birthday, two weddings, two babies (well that’s looking ahead…) and who knows how much other stuff.  It’s a daunting list and those are things I’ll never get back.  But you can’t go through life focusing on the opportunity cost of doing something big and dynamic and different.  So I’m sad to miss those things.  It’s really tough to not be a part of some many things and lives that I love.  But this right now is too important part of my life to regret it – I’m having a great time and knowing what I gave up to have it just helps me get that much more out of the experience.

But giving up stuff is never easy and so thank you to everyone that has helped me.  Everytime somebody thinks of me – with an email or a text or a message or a letter or a package or a visit! or even just a mention somewhere – it makes me feel good and like I’m still a part of everything that is important to me back home.  I’m not out here to leave anything behind.  So much of it I’m desperately trying not to!  I am out here trying to add something meaningful and new to what I have.  And, I have to say, it’s working – through no small part thanks to you!  Just reading and thinking about me helps, too J

Positive life changing events aren’t always easy to find and I’ve been pretty lucky to date.  So I do not feel sorry for myself that I am having to work hard for this one.  Hard is hard, of course, but I guess all of the above boils down to the fact that, at this moment, it feels worth it.

But some days are tougher than others, that’s for sure!  And when they are, I dive into some of the things that remind me of home and the people and things I know and love and it helps.  Economists from Andy, chocolate from various Saffers and Delahanty’s (or sisters formerly known as Delahanty!), home decorations from said sisters – stuff like that.   So thank you again, for that stuff and the many other messages and post cards and all of it.  It is great and I appreciate it!

Of course, there is one other thing I miss tremendously that is almost impossible to answer while living as a Peace Corps Volunteer.  Food!  Oh man I miss some of the food!  You all know that and it doesn’t help that I am a somewhat…lazy and sub-par cook.   I could do more to rectify my pain on that front than I do, admittedly.  Ooh!  Thanksgiving loaf!  Thanks, Cara!

But anyway, this week I cooked a meal that kinda captures all the stuff I’m talking about in this post.  Building on the past and the love, support, and wisdom of my friends and family and the things I am gaining here to make something in and of my life that is better than either by itself.  And so, you will find, in the next post, a description of that!  In a slightly different, tone J

Parallel Universe

Is it quantum physics?  I don’t know, but I live in an alternate universe.  It’s parallel…though what does that mean?  Why don’t we say it’s perpendicular?  I guess because there are parallels…ah well whatever.  It’s good to be home, absurd isn’t it?  I live in a hut in the jungle.  It’s hot and dusty, the power comes on only intermittently, there’s no water, I poop in a hole, and most of all no one actually calls me by my name.  At yet somehow it is home and I got a smile on my face as soon as I got to Atjoni to get on a boat to come here.

I was sort of dreading coming back.  I’ve been so busy in the city and I don’t really have anything to do here, right now.  I have ongoing stuff (youth group requires thought, English doesn’t) and stuff that I have submitted that needs follow up (lampesi’s, solar lanterns, ginger juice, Entrepreneurship training), and some work to do to prep for Camp BILT (that’s what I have dubbed the Boy’s Camp – Boys Improving Lives Together.  It’s not as good as GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) but it’s better than BLOW or nothing). 

So with not a lot to do back here, I wasn’t that excited to get back to grubbing in the dirt after all my fancy living in the city.  You know, playing in Excel, going to meeting, standing in front of people and speaking about things with certainty.  Oh and showers, water, internet, AC.  You know, fancy people stuff.  It was kind of a letdown after all that and so the exhale kinda caught me hard, but as soon as I hit Atjoni I felt better.

It was fun wandering around other parts of Suriname (I’m finally really starting to think in Saramaccan – that sentence had to be translated out of it as I wrote it) and reminding myself that I do actually like wandering around within minimal structure.  I’m not as conservative or risk averse as McM started to make me.  I had a lot of fun negotiating our way through French Guyana and what not.  But it’s cool how nice it felt to return to the Saramaccan River where you face all those challenges…but on your home turf.  It’s far from easy, but at least we speak the same language.

Oak Hill and my parents, Ithaca and Blair Street, Ariel – these are…centers…that make home.  It’s weird how my little hut has made that list.  It helped a lot that my parents and Ariel have been here.  Even so, though, it’s so much more of a home than my house in the suburbs with a yard and a two car (2.5) garage.

It’s all in what you make of it and how alive you are while you are there, I guess.  

In other news, I know how to thatch a roof.  Isn’t that odd?  I’ve helped do it two or three times now and I could probably do it by myself (you need several pairs of hands, but you know what I mean) – passably at least.  I mean it’s just ridiculous.  People missed me here.  They really did!  And they took me back in after being gone for almost a month near instantly.

This is the first community I’ve really felt a part of, I think.  I mean, TKD for sure – Cornell and Chun Ma.  Even Violin to a lesser extent when I was young, but those are both centered on something so I count them slightly differently.

It’s a weird path I’ve walked to end up here.  The only thing that ties it together is that I’ve always tried to make a positive difference in other people’s lives and, when I’ve known how, to leave things better than I found them.  It’s taken me to sweaty practices, steamy dance floors, over-cooled offices, giant warehouses, and now the jungle.  Who knows where I’ll end up next.

I would not be content helping people thatch roofs all my days, but it’s a good reminder of what is important and valuable.  What I value myself for, in terms of being a Peace Corps Volunteer, and what my community values me for have a lot of overlap, I would bet.  But I’m learning that there are things I didn’t think to value that they already knew.  Like being a good neighbor.  Or a present, positive, community member.

I’m not at all upset I was gone for a month – I did good stuff, for me and for the community – in part because of how easily I fit back into the village.  I’m not upset by anywhere my path has taken me so far.  But I’m definitely trying to learn from these things about what’s important.  And therefore at what I need to aim in the future.

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!

Doings Doings Doings.

After my parents left, the busy-ness just kept on keeping on.  I'm not one to sit idlely by...well you know except for all the time I spend sitting around - but it isn't idle! It's cultural exchange!  But there hasn't been much sitting around recently anyway, so there it is.

It's just been super busy.  Let's see what all has happened, not in any particular order...

I had a Peace Corps training!  It was only a week long, but it's kept me in the city for almost a month.  I have had sooo many meetings and things and doings and goings on.  The training was focused on technical stuff as well as some standard safety and security style things.  And, in more exciting-ness, one of the days was almost entirely led by me and a partner in crime (another Volunteer)!

We gave led a day long training segment on Income Generating Activities - or more usefully on how you can help people in your communities that want to start a grow a business.  So we taught people the basic skills you need to evaluate a business idea, come up with a basic accounting system, a basic marketing strategy, and talk vaguely intelligently about business stuff so you can begin a business plan or meet with a bank or other potential funding source. 

It wasn't super intense, but it was detailed enough that people actually left with an understanding of what really goes into a business plan.  Or how you actually do a break even analysis to figure out when and how your business will make money, what your price point is, stuff like that.  It was doubly fun because, although I'm far from an expert about any of that stuff, it felt pretty good to be reminded that my soft skills BA in BS background hasn't stopped me from actually learning to do some real things that are actually useful - and involve basic math!

One of the other things that I've recently had going on is a Ginger Juice Business that my 6th grade class has started as part of our Youth Group.  So I've been going through a lot of this similar stuff with them and it provided a very helpful real life example several times in the class.  Ooh!  Also!  I pretty much free styled an Excel spreadsheet doing a real backoftheenvelope style break even analysis for a fictional rice mill business scenario the group came up with.  I miss Excel.  I know, it creeps me out too.

So I actually wrote a grant proposal for the Juice business while I was here too - submitted to a local Rotary Club.  Collaborated on a grant proposal to introduce solar lanterns.  Wrote another grant to start a new womens/business group in my village producing arts and crafts.  And wrote an infrastructure project grant to get my village those lampesi's. 

Of course, none of those have actually come to fruition yet or anything, but man oh man have I put out a lot of words and asked for a lot of money over the last few weeks!  Which is fun.  I quite enjoy trying to get free stuff.  And when it's for a good cause, I enjoy it even more.  I'm far from an expert grant writer either, but I'm definitely getting some practice in it and I think I'll have a fully justified resume bullet by the end of my two years out here!

All this professional-style work and time in the city - both during my Two Week Tour and this recent bout - has made me really think about what I want to do next.  It's something I've been trying to think about and figure out for a long time and it's just plain difficult.  One of the hardest parts of doing something are figuring out what to do...as any kid on a summer break afternoon well knows.

Increasingly, I'm leaning against MBA school.  It still feels like a waste to me.  It's a way to refocus your career on something new and if I still don't know exactly what that is - why spend 6 figures to do that?  Having a Masters in general, and MBA specfically, and a degree from one of the schools I would probably end up at also specifically, would open a lot of doors so it's far from off the table.  But I just don't think I want to do it.  Not sure yet.  We'll see.

But I do like trying to get free stuff.  And I do like operations and management.  And I do like trying to make the world a better place.  I also like having a lot of control of my way of doing things, which points towards being part of a loose structure or one of my own devising.  So something that combines at least a few of those would probably be ideal.  I've started to look more seriously at disaster management stuff - for the government or some NGO.  Event planning and fund raising for some NGO would also be pretty cool.

It's early yet to be developing specific leads, but I'm definitely spending time thinking about it.  It's scary to think that I just kinda appear back in the states in 15 months.  I'm pretty sure I'd prefer to appear in NYC or DC, but I'm also pretty sure I'd prefer to appear somewhere near Ariel.  A couple of assumptions there, but whatever.

So not sure.  And not that far away from when I will actually have to start sending out applications to things again.  Can't escape it forever.

I don't exactly want to go back to a cubicle, but there's plenty of stuff - like those excel spreadsheets - that I do actually enjoy that happens in cubicles.  So I'm not fully against it...but I'm certainly learning that I was wrong in what I said to McM years ago in my first full tilt job hunting bout.  I said that I like problem solving and people and it didn't really matter to me what the problems where and what the people were doing.  It was about the approach and the process, not the widget.

Turns out the content matters more to me than I thought, so that's going to play a much larger role in this next go around. I'm interested to see how it turns out.  Preferably with a higher salary than Peace Corps!  But also with a higher world-bettering quotient than generic corporate too.

My Parents Come to Suriname

And so, indeed, they did!  A shorter visit than Ariel's and a bit less action packed - or at least fewer destinations and events crammed in - but very welcome nonetheless.  My parents are always a welcome and positive presence in my life and their love and support means the world to me.  More than that, I'm lucky to even be friends with them in a way that makes hanging out on in a thatch roof hut in the middle of the jungle a fun visit as much as a welcome reunion.  I guess I'll refrain from any comparisons to condiments, in this case.

In any case, everything went quite smoothly.  My mom managed to make friends, unsurprisingly, with approximately half of Air Suriname and so they flew through customs. They had a much easier time than Ariel, with all the visas and whatnot. Funny how 1. Being in America and 2. Calling ahead can really help smooth things outsometimes. Of course, calling ahead often is made much easier by being in America, but good on them in any case! It made it nice and easy, though they made it out way faster than I expected!

So I basically left my parents playing scrabble in the airport for 45 minutes waiting for me to pick them up at midnight...whoops! Sorry! Fortunately, they didn't seem to mind too much. They do love scrabble, as do I!

So it was a nice midnight drive back to my friend Jose's house - he was gracious enough to let us all stay there, which was really awesome. To thank him, and because they are just generally friendly people, my parents brought Jose several gifts from America. They also brought stuff for me. And for John - another volunteer whose mom is now friends with my mom because of the ways of the world, which is cool! So....they actually brought way more stuff for others than for themselves. Look at the Delahanty family making the W shine!

Annnyway, Jose got a hummingbird feeder and some cheap American wine that he missed from his boyhood, John got some winter clothes (hiking trip in southern South America), and I got all sorts of wonderful loot! Ariel was the only present I needed for Christmas, but all the stuff my parents brought sure didn't hurt and was awesome! We didn't part all those gifts until later, we actually just kinda went to bed!

In the morning, we did the walk around Paramaribo. We didn't really do the hardcore touristy stuff - just the Saramaccan touristy stuff and the main arts and crafts store. They got to see the market and the main Saramaccan street, we bought lots of kosus and other good cultural stuff, and they had a good time hanging out at the Peace Corps office and meeting the gang.

And that was only the first day!

I don't really remember what we did the second day...but I know we prepared to go out onto....THE RIVER!  I managed to secure us a decent wagi and my mom the front seat, so off we went towards the Jungle, come Monday.  Instantly, of course, my Mom was best friends with the driver.  Turns out he speaks pretty good English - why didn't I know that?

The boat ride also went well.  The river was high and the weather decent, so we saw a few rapids and maybe a bit of rain but really no issues at all.  And so we arrived.  Nothing can truly prepare you for Saramacca, at least I don't think so, but my parents have now experienced it and shared it with me.  It's a really cool feeling to be welcomed home into some place so foreign to people that have helped you make a place home for most of your life.

We had a good time sharing the daily life of a Peace Corps Volunteer, though as they can attest - it's kind of difficult to share the daily life of a Peace Corps Volunteer!  I have methods, madnesses, and any number of other systems that I have evolved through 8 months of living and contemplation (and a life time of being full of odd ideas and BS)...and it turns out those don't always work for other people.  It's no different than any bachelor pad, perhaps - idiosyncracies in sync with my own.  Some rough edges are smoothed over, some are only smoothed over to my eye and maybe not someone elses, and some I've never bothered with because they don't bother me.  But they might bother you!

I admit those kind of things make it easy to step on each others toes - hard not to do in a house as small as mine actually!  And that is of course where it is different.  My systems aren't just bachelor pad - they are JUNGLE bachelor pad.  I do my baking on my front porch bench because it keeps ants down.  I'm weird about keeping food covered because my roof poops.  Do I have as good a reason for...any number of other things...nope!  And even if I did it might not be obvious for you to figure out the reason or the rule after only a day!

Because of how used yout get - and have to get really - to solitude and the routines it takes to handle that and all the normal tasks of life in the jungle - it can make one somewhat crochety.  Yes, I said it.  I am one step closer to my ULTIMATE GOAL.  I hope to be a crotchety, dirty old man as soon as possible.  Nothing creepy or mean, mind you.  But hopefully I will attain the wise valued status of someone who is looked to by many to dispense wise statements in eye-roll inducing terms.  Is that too much to ask, I ask?

Anyway, it makes it good to get out of your routines and travel around, have visitors etc.  Everytime I do, I learn something about myself or about how to make a little improvement to the way I live.  For example, I realized I am needless wary of having to wash an extra dish.  It literally takes 10 seconds and I have to walk to the river anyway.

I have perhaps wandered far afield, but that's what happens when you take so long to put up posts.  Still, I was glad to be able to show my parents a good time - and a part of the world, and their son in it, that they would never experience otherwise.  And having your parents around is humbling in a way that is just plain good for an crotchety young man like myself!

Peace Corps, and maybe the lifestyle of the jungle in general, lends itself to time to think and good conversations when people are there to have them.  We had many of those and that is the true core of any visit.  At the same time, it is also very exciting to show people things they have never seen.

Walking the village with my parents was so much fun. Tiring as hell, repetitive, and hot - but still so much fun.  It's a place where I am still learning how to act and react and seeing them do the same is fun for all of us and offers new experiences that are also fun for everyone.  Though sometimes just tiring.

Beyond all that, though, I really liked how my parents got to really share the Peace Corps experience.  Ariel had this too, in some ways - seeing a traditional ceremony, cooking with locals, assisting with my English class and my Youth Group - and I'm glad my parents were able to get it as well.

First, was one of the first nights in the village.  The money I helped get for my Adult Education Program finally transformed into actual school supplies in the village.  By luck, my parents were there on the day that we distributed them to the students.  It was a really cool night.  Speeches, singing, pictures - and just an overwhelming amount of gratitude and, more importantly, motivation to continue pushing development in the village.  Not just for me, but for the students. 

I was doubtful about the decision to spend the bulk of the money on school uniforms right up until I saw the way the Adult students received them.  It really does mean something to them - something real and inspiring, for them and me.  It's a testament, really, to the Peace Corps model.  I never would have chosen to spend money that way, but I listened and I facilitated and I helped sell it so we could buy them.  And it was the right thing to do.

I am really glad my parents got to share in that event, to see the fruits of a small, but somewhat formal project and how the system is supposed to work and, everyonce in a while, actually does come together for some magic.

They also got to experience the other goals of Peace Corps.  One evening, my Dad and I decided to go wash in the river while my mom stayed back at the hut.  Dad and I ended up spending 30 minutes or more working out with the kids, doing ourselves proud as Chun Ma TKD instructors, lemme tell ya.  It's so cool how some things translate across everything.  One of those are how a positive adult male role model can motivate and teach something to boys.  With a few pushups, situps, and whatever else, we impacted a group of kids.  Was it a big impact?  No.  Did we spread peace and friendship and move a few lives for the better, in no matter how small a way?  Absolutely.  That's what this is about and it was so cool to share that with my Dad.

At the same time, my Mom managed the same thing completely on her own on the porch.  We came back to a chorus of young children singing and dancing the Itsy-Bitsy Spider with my mom.  It's the same thing again - an adult doesn't have to have anything, language or otherwise, to be a positive influence on the children, and maybe I should just say the people, around them.  You just need your own positivity.

That's getting pretty mushy, but what can I say - I am sort of a Peace Corps Volunteer and I don't hug trees so...However you say it, it was really cool to see my parents fitting into that.  They are role models and positive influences in my life, and it's really cool to see how quickly that can translate into being a positive impact for others - no matter how foreign the situation.

It's something worth digesting further, I think.  I was really glad to be able to share that with them.

Anyway, there was other fun stuff.  The Butterfly Farm (live butterflies, paintings, pin ups, live snakes and turtles, and so much more!), the museum, the "this is my son" stance my mother learned from an old Saramaccan lady, but I'm going to go ahead and end the post there. 

Thanks for reading.

A Two Hour (Week!) Tour

So Ariel came and went (boo!), and the same with World AIDS Day (awesome, but it comes back! I hope Ariel does too!) and that left me with a vacuum of about a month and a half until My Parents Come to Suriname. In some ways, a longer spread might have been preferable, but both visits went awesome overall so I’m not going to second guess anything. But in the mean time…

I spent some just re-establishing myself and my patterns in the village – some hanging out, some teaching English and whatnot, and mostly just trying to catch my breath. However, it soon became apparent that there was too much going on to have much time for that!

It was coming up on Trimester Report Season – yes, your read it correct, Peace Corps, like pregnancy, works in trimesters. Not even JFK knows why (as far as I know). You fill out a report, talk about what you’ve done, basically try to put some metrics on Peace Corps so that we have something to show to Congress and whoever else is looking for the money it takes to fund us. Makes good sense to me.

We also had a 2^nd draft of our Community Diagnostic Report due. This was the exercise we went through during the first 3 months in the village to help us learn our way around and form a basis for communicating with outside organizations, future volunteers, etc. Updating it…doesn’t make as much sense to me at this point after being in the game for a while. The thought process was very useful, but everything gets re-written so hard to fit different grants and organizations’ needs that having a general document to use as a base doesn’t really help. Nobody wants to read a 10-pager on your village. And since there isn’t anyone coming after us…won’t do Peace Corps folks any good. I was told it was a good legacy to leave for our village to use in the future, but there are no plans to translate it into a language that my villagers use (or that the majority of organizations that will remain here after Peace Corps leaves use – I’m talking about Dutch) so that didn’t fly super well with me either. So yeah. I did it, but wasn’t excited.

What was very exciting, however, was the need to actually get started on that Boy’s Camp I’ve talked about a bit!

A lot of uncertainty about money, timing, etc (we are trying to do a lot of camps here) meant that we had a deadline to turn in a general project description and a basic budget to the Peace Corps office by right around the time all that otehr stuff was due. That caught us a bit by surprise, so my working group hadn't really met to talk through/plan/begin as much of the process as we probably should have. Which means I went into go-mode.

I had a template budget from the previous camp I helped out with and another group working on similar stuff, except with girls, so we were all bouncing around making progress. I started making phone calls, working in excel, just generally going after it. But then, we ran out of electricity in my village. And the solar panels at the museum where I usually sit to work (and charge) also died for awhile.

Soooo...I decided it made sense to go to the city a bit early. I actually finished most of the budget in the village on battery (amazing limited resources can focus the mind), but with everything going on I headed in.

And woah. It was a busy two weeks! It was a long, long time in the city but I made good use of it. Pictures were uploaded, budgets and reports and whatnot were written, I attended about a million different meetings and different attempts to beg for money about different things. And man did I put in a lot of work on Boys Camp! Including! Coming up with a name and sweet acronym like GLOW (Girls Leading Our World). Guys Leading would work, but I worry about confusion if it's all the same...but BLOW sure doesn't work....ended up with BILT. Boys Improving Lives Together. Brilliant right? Right?? I didn't here any better suggestions, ok?

So it was a good time, but a looooonnng time in the city. I enjoy the city and the chance to live a very different life for a bit. At the same time, the city is just so jarring...I feel ADD and over caffeinated all the time - even though I am not really either. I don't know why it is, maybe just over stimulation and over access? But either way, it's good to stay a bit in practice at "real" life, whatever that means. Meetings, spreadsheets, selling, buying, pants - you know, stuff like that. I do all that in the village too, actually (well, not the pants), but the cultural context is so different. I like to stay flexible.

Fortunately, the heat and the way this whole Peace Corps thing works definitely does that. It was a good two weeks, but that's all I'm gonna say about it.

Talk to you again shortly.

Evan