Currently, we're sitting in the Peace Corps office, waiting. We're about to embark on our HVVs or Host Volunteer Visits where we visit a current volunteer for a week to see how they live their lives. I'm (Tim) off to the south-west side of Guyana, near Brazil, while Chelsea is heading to the northeast, near Venezuela. It's a pretty exciting time, but also a little nerve wracking. From what I’ve heard, my volunteer lives in a mud hut with no electricity or running water. Moreover, the rumor is he rides a horse to work, or at least used too. It is going to be a completely different experience than I would ever think of doing. So on one hand I am really excited to spend a week in this remote site, but on the other I’m nervous at how it will all play out. But I’ve always told myself that I did not join the Corps for a pleasure cruise.
These past few weeks have been interesting. We have to balance a heavy training schedule with integration into our community and host family. In training we have started visiting health centers and schools to become familiar with the system and actual practical work that we might be doing when we reach our permanent site. In the schools, there is definitely room for improvement. There are some wonderful teachers who really care about their job and their students, but there are many teachers who don’t have incentives to even come to work or just don’t care. Both times that I have visited schools teachers have been absent and the students are left to their own devices because there isn’t a reliable network of substitutes in Guyana. Interestingly enough, I am working in a very professional school and I have heard that other schools have it worse. I am looking forward to using what I have learned at HSHMC to encourage teachers to incorporate creativity in curriculum, new literary strategies, build student self esteem and empowerment, and bring new classroom management techniques to the classroom.
Chelsea has had her own experiences in the health centers and is learning that the focus on preventative health care in Guyana depends heavily on access to resources. When a regional hospital is nearby the smaller, local health centers are stocked with sufficient supplies and staff. However, most of the remote villages lack even basic medical supplies like gloves and immunizations. The doctors and medex are knowledgeable in the most common issues among their patients, like diabetes, hypertension, and common respiratory and GI issues, but Chelsea was surprised to find one doctor who couldn’t recommend any treatment for a man with a kidney stone. The Doc had sent the man to the regional hospital to have an ultrasound and when he returned with a confirmed stone, she prescribed him pain meds and told him that since it was small they couldn’t do anything about it. Due to her unfortunate previous experience, Chelsea was able to recommend to him that he drink lots and lots of water and cranberry juice and give him her sympathy as he waited for it to pass. We both have a lot of work to do here in Guyana, mainly in terms of education, both in health centers and schools and are happy that we are here.
Jobs aside we’re learning so, so much about Guyanese culture. This last week and tomorrow we joined this heavily spiritual culture celebrate not only their “Republic Day” but also an Islamic holiday (The Prophets birthday) and a Hindu Holiday called Phagwah which is the beginning of the Hindu season of spring. All three days are recognized by the government as bank holidays, if you will (businesses shut down). Apparently there are 13 recognized holidays in Guyana where there is no school and business can close if they want. Notably, two holidays are Islamic, two are Hindu, and two are Christian. Then, of course, there are days like Independence Day and Mash (Republic Day) and others which we haven’t experienced yet. It’s a great hodgepodge if colors, celebrations, and spirituality.
We had a great time on Republic Day looking at floats created within the coastal communities (one of which, Chelsea would like to note, was a giant black penis wrapped in saran wrap to promote AIDS awareness), dancing, and spending time with our families and other PCTs. We even had a talent show this Friday last where many of the Trainees showcased their talents, and let me say we are a talented bunch! It was real good fun.
But I grow long winded, we still are working on the picture situation, but will definitely post some pictures when we get a chance. But until next week when we both tell of our HVV adventures, we hope everyone will be well and keep hope alive!
As we hurtled across the Essequibo river, the widest in Guyana, on our bumpy, splashing speedboat, we wondered what our host family would be like. Guyana is such a diverse country, in terms of the types of people and geography, that your experiences can vary depending on where you are. Mainly Guyanese people are either Indian or African or native American Indian by descent. Within these racial differences, Guyanese adhere to a diverse range of religions, mostly Hindu, Christian and Muslim. Your experience of a “traditional” Guyanese family would vary depending on what their socioeconomic status was and where in the country they lived. With all these factors unknown to us, we had a lot to imagine as we whizzed by islands on our 45 minute speedboat journey to the coast.
By now of course, we have been living with our host family for four nights. They are amazing people. We live with an Indo-Guyanese family in a small village on the Essequibo coast. Our family is big, busy and welcoming. They have hosted one Peace Corps volunteer before so they have been through some of the hilarious adventures of teaching us how to live in this wild country. Our host mother has three grown sons. She and her youngest son live with us in the house. She runs a general store out of the front of the house. Our brother works at a bank as a small business loans coordinator and is a very active volunteer at the local branch of the Lions club. Our yard is connected to a back house where the middle brother lives with his wife and two young girls, ages 6 and 3. They are busy people as well. This brother has his own business selling fowl, like baby chicks and such, and birdfeed and his wife works at a large appliance store in a neighboring village. The oldest brother and his wife live a few houses down the road from us and he also owns a business in transporting and selling farming supplies. Because our family is so industrious there are always people coming into the yard to do business. It has been, and will continue to be, a great way for us to be introduced to the community.
Our Guyanese family is doing a great job of teaching us how to adapt. They answer all our questions and bring us out with them when they go out on business or leisure. So far we have met many neighbors and know our way around the coast fairly well. Our host mother is teaching us how to cook, mainly she is teaching me, Chelsea, since women do most of the cooking around here. But Tim gets his butt into the kitchen too. Our mom makes great Indian food. So far I have learned how to make chana (spiced boiled chickpeas), chicken curry (with a whole chicken that I was shown how to prepare by chopping it up with a machete) and saada roti (a puffy bread type item). I don’t know how to spell any of these things and my success when I cook them by myself next time is doubtful. However, it is really fun to learn. We have both been shown how to do our laundry by hand. Even though we have a washing machine, it is unlikely that we will have one in our own home so we have to learn how to do it by hand for when we go out on our own. It is hard work but results in nice, clean smelling laundry when we pull it off the line.
In addition to the in-house learning we’ve learned many thing via the Peace Corps. We’ve done intensive cultural studies on the Guyanese including their etiquette, social norms, and gender roles. The lessons are too many to mention and we’ve only been here a little over a week, but needless to say we’ve also focused sustainable project development and integration in to the community. The Peace Corps has also provided us with texts to support their in-class learning, and I think we have more on the way. I (Tim) am super excited; I love books and I love learning new things and community development is definitely something I’ve never tried my hand at.
Last Saturday (the 13th) our host mom took us for a walk around the community. We met so many neighbors, and everyone is so welcoming. We’d go to house after house sometimes being invited inside where they plied us with food and drink and other times we’d just sit and “gaff” (or chat) out by their main gates after we were introduced by our host mother. It is a wondrous culture and everyday we’re learning something new.
But, of course, it is not all stuffy studying (not that I’m complaining) we’ve had so many experiences and one happened “just now” on Valentine’s Sunday.
We woke early Sunday morning after a great night hanging out with our middle brother, his family, some friends, and another PC Trainee. We were laying in some hammocks, taking some breeze, with a mug of coffee in one hand and the other behind our heads, watching the eastern sky turn from orange to blue, when our middle brother came out from his house in the back. The night before he’d mentioned he might be going fishing next morning, and with nothing planned we said, “Sure, sure.” So he came out front and queried if we were still interested. As the Peace Corps recommends, we accepted the invitation as another chance to learn about Guyanese culture.
After making some calls our brother organized the trip with his uncle, who is taking care of another PCT, to come down to the trenches away from the beaten path. We piled into his big yellow truck he usually uses for deliveries of his feed with Chelsea, his wife, and him in cab, while I was in the open truck bed with his two daughters and a cousin who is visiting in town from Trinidad, where he works and lives presently. We made our way down the Public Road and picked up the other Trainee and some more cousins then turned off of the road to the rice fields in what we call here the back dam.
Field after field bumped by. Some were green with vitality, while others were dead and fallow. It has been a bad year for rain, so many fields aren’t blooming as they should, but this did not subtract from the beauty of our surroundings. Coconut trees lined the border of the fields, twisting and turning on their quest to find the sun (not a hard quest here in this country). Cows pastured and long-necked, white birds perched in the verdant paddies. Dragonflies whirred in our wake sometimes coming in swarms, other times only few buzzed behind us. A pall of dust, kicked up from our truck, only enhanced the magnitude of the scene. By the time we’d finally arrived at the end of the road I was covered, head to toe, in wondrous white particles (Chelsea just said I looked filthy).
We walked to the edge of the trench, which, like the fields, was low on liquid. We picked our way through bushes and razor grass and then began to fish. Well, us white kids watched, while our host families used the nets to capture fish. They pulled up a variety of Guyanese local fish, including a pirreye, or piranha (not edible, in fact it will try to eat you), some edible fish, which will no doubt be on our plates any day now, and we even snagged a small alligator in the net but it swam away before we could get a good look at it. After some time the fishermen forgot about the net and just jumped in and began fishing with their bare hands, feeling the water for the fish, then, when they’d get one, they’d toss it to shore where one of the little ones picked it up and tossed it in the bucket. It was an experience and very impressive.
Another great experience we were lucky enough to share with our host family was a Hindu holiday at their church, or mandir, celebrating the original form in which the god Shiva appeared to mankind. We had planned ahead to join our youngest brother and host mother last Friday, the 12th. So, when we got home from school they had laid out some appropriate Indian garb for us to wear. Both of us looked pretty dashing in our bright, colorful outfits. We spent the evening chanting and singing in Hindi and, later, enjoying a snack of fruit, puri and sweet rice with the rest of the devotees in our community. We felt really welcomed and it was a nice way to relax and spend some time in meditation and prayer. All in all it was really enjoyable, I am sure we will go again sometime in the rest of our two month stay here.
In the next few weeks I imagine we will be really busy with work but there is a national holiday coming up next Tuesday, the 23rd called Mashramani, or Republic Day. Most PCTs plan to head out to a nearby lake for some swimming, water sports and learn how to play cricket. We are really looking forward to it. So, we will try to get an update up sometime after Mash.
We miss you all at home and hope that all is going well. Let us know how things are or just send us an email or letter, old snail mail style. We’d love to hear an update from home. Sending lots of love!!!!
We are strangers in a strange land, but we are learning.
Since the minute we arrived at Cheddi Jagan International Airport in Guyana we have been in training. Our mission: to integrate into the Guyanese culture enough to accomplish the three main Peace Corps goals: to use our skills to help Guyana meet their needs for trained manpower, to help promote a better understanding of American culture abroad and to promote an understanding of Guyanese culture in America.
Guyana is an amazingly beautiful country. Our first view was spectacular. As we descended from the sky, a large river loomed into view, snaking through the hazy, green jungle. The airport, so minor compared to those in States, rose to meet us with its open arms. We shuffled off the plane and the heat was such a relief from the blaring cold of New York. But then the humidity smacked us full on; and it was only 7 in the morning.
The staff and some current volunteers of PC Guyana met us at the airport and escorted us to a nearby resort (a.k.a. a popular hotel with a man-made lake, a destination spot for water activities) where we immediately began our information sessions. Many of our trainers are from Guyana so we have to traverse the Guyanese accent (think Lady Cleo) and catch on to Creolese (basically grammatically improper English). Some of our favorite new sayings are, ‘Small up’ which means ‘scoot over and make room for me’ and ‘walk wit’ which means ‘bring along/take it with you’, as in “Always walk wit your water bottle so you don’t get dehydrated”. Sorry Dad, we will probably return with very poor grammar.
Yesterday and today’s lessons included Safety and Security, Water Safety (we had to show we are competent in the water by putting on a life vest and floating, kayaking, and swimming a few meters. It was truly hilarious to watch, as many of our trainers did, the 35, mostly white Americans splashing around in three feet of water), Medical Orientation (where we got shot up with yellow fever and rabies and were issued malaria pills), a tour of Georgetown, and an overview of the schedule for our two month training. We also opened a Guyanese bank account and toured the PC Headquarters in G-town.
Tomorrow our community based training begins. We will travel, by bus and speedboat, over the river and through the jungle to the Essequibo Coast. There we will meet our host family!!! Although we will miss the A/C here in the hotel, we are excited to begin orienting ourselves to the real Guyana; the Guyana where, they say, we have to wash our own clothes by hand, cook our own meals (with our families of course) and interact with Guyanese other than our trainers and the staff at the hotel.
We are very tired but we are writing this blog in our hotel room before we turn in with the hopes that we will have a moment tomorrow to upload it when we stop by PCHQ before heading to the coast. We don’t know when we will be able to post again, or when we will be on Skype but we will keep you posted. The good news is that phone service here is fairly affordable and if we get a GT&T plan we can text any AT&T people in the U.S. We probably won’t do this for the next two months because we are waiting to see if our permanent site has satellite service.
Oh, and as a matter of business, if you plan on sending us any packages please write us an email first so we can give you tips to get it to us with ease. PC staff told us all packages are inspected and we have to pay tariffs on any items inside and there are ways to make this process easier, so email us ahead of time. Thanks!
Now we will say goodnight, which as we found out only after much confusion, is also the common way to say ‘hello’ when you are passing someone on the street at night in Guyana. So ‘goodnight’ and goodnight.
We woke up this morning around 5am and said our good-byes to San Diego. Our dearest friend, Emily, drove us south down the 5 and waved at the concrete complexity of the freeway system and said good-bye to Clairemont Mesa and Pacific Beach. We nodded farewell to the 8 and to Sea World, and blew a good-bye kiss to the San Diego downtown cityscape.
Officially, our Peace Corps adventure begins.
We felt quite foolish lugging our bags through San Diego airport. We had our travel backpacks on our backs and our personal bags on our fronts. We each had a rather large duffle in our right hand, and I had my guitar in the left, while Chelsea had a heavy bag of books in hers. Shuffling through San Diego Airport we checked in and meandered to the gate.
The flight was fairly uneventful filled with fitful naps and crinked necks, but eventually New York came into view and we landed quite softly.
Again, we gathered our things, ridiculously looking like tropical campers in 30-degree weather, then made our way through JFK airport. We took a train to the front of airport then took the shuttle to the hotel. On our entrance to the hotel other volunteers spotted us immediately. The bags were a dead give away! It was great to finally meet some of our future companions face-to-face and our excitement swelled. It is definitely real now.
Our room is pretty spectacular with its king sized bed, flat screen, and computer desk. However, I am not too attached to it because we’re only here for one night. I will mention though, that our fellow PCVs are pretty awesome. We’ve met about half of them so far after the first evening where we had to fill out paper work, get H1N1 shots (our arms are still throbbing), and get our stipends for the first few days. We’ve talked of our possible jobs, of our expectations and anxieties, and simply about ourselves in general. It has been pretty surreal experience, but one I am eager to continue.
We have so many more days with all of these volunteers and we’re looking forward to them. It’s our last night in the States, but I am not sad. I am ready to move on to our next adventure. We have been planning and talking about the Peace Corps for so long now, that it will be a pleasure to describe our moments in the present, rather than future tense.
Happy Monday! For Mr. Tibbs and I, this Monday is a little sad since it is the first Monday that we are not there at Health Sciences High and Middle College to see your smiling faces. As we sit in Starbucks, preparing last minute paperwork before we leave for our Peace Corps service in Guyana, we imagine all the students and staff at HSHMC are finishing up fourth period, going on with their teaching and learning in the normal HSHMC fashion; like a family, with all the joy and drama that families normally have. We were inspired to write a blog directed especially to you to say how much we will miss you and also thank you for all the good times.
When we applied for the Peace Corps, neither of us were working at HSHMC, so we didn’t know that we wouldn’t just be leaving a job, but a family. Through all our experiences as teachers at our wonderful school we have had so much fun, learned so much and become so close with you. It is much harder to leave than we imagined but it is not in our nature to quit something we started over two years ago. We wish we could take you all down to Guyana with us, hidden in our suitcases. However, since that is impossible, what we will be taking with us are the lessons you have taught us, memories we have made together and the knowledge of how much you support and care for us.
At HSHMC we have learned how to be better teachers because of our students. You were so honest, sometimes brutally so, with us about how you deserve to be treated and how we can best facilitate your learning. You showed us that it is okay to be the kind of teachers who get to know their students on a personal level. You have shared with us so many stories of your lives and we feel blessed to have gotten to know you. We hope that you will continue to share your stories with us, especially you seniors who will be going off to college (we want to know what your future holds).
Thank you all for the amazing memories. Though there are too many to recount, we are especially grateful to have shared in a range of fun times with you. The first annual HSHMC play, Taming of the Shrew, was hilarious, amazing and such a blast. We know that this year’s play will be just as, if not even more, awesome and we will miss experiencing the production of it but can’t wait to see the DVD when we get it in the mail. We will always proudly remember our summer school Government and Economics classes. You guys have such great ideas, are so smart and will be excellent entrepreneurs in the future. You blew us away with how much money you raised for breast cancer awareness at the Movie Night and HSHMC Bazaar. We loved being a part of so many wonderful field trips with you; crying at the Museum of Tolerance, cheering for Team Tibblets during the first four days and rallying for UCLA at the USC/UCLA volleyball game. Believe it or not we have enjoyed reading your essays, correcting your tests and urging you to do your best, even when you would rather eat a slug than go to Academic Recovery. Each one of you has such amazingly unique talents that you bring into the world and we know that if you continue to uphold the pillars of HSHMC in your life you will go great places and do great things. We are very proud of you. You should all be wildly proud of yourselves.
And to the staff of HSHMC, everything we needed to say about how wonderful you are has been said in all of our rock speeches. You guys are rad! You are inspiring educators, super people and have become some of our best friends. Basically, GO TEAM!
We don’t know what the future will hold for us. Two years is a long time. Some of you will be graduated and moved on from HSHMC but we sincerely hope we can keep in touch. And for those of you who will be in San Diego when we return, we can’t wait to see you and catch up on all our adventures.
So, goodbye for now. Keep in touch. We love you and are so grateful for all you have given us.
Acyonyms to Know (Because the Federal Gov't loves their letters)
PC- Peace Corps PCT- Peace Corps Trainee PCV- Peace Corps Volunteer PST- Pre-Service Training Guy22- Guyana Group 22 (the groups of PCVs we are a part of) PDM- Program Design and Management (a training conference)
