T Travels: Going Remote and Going 'Mash'ing

I spent most of last week helping out with training for the new group of Volunteers at the remote training site. It was a fun experience for me to get to meet new colleagues who I will be spending the next year with and also get a taste of what a more remote Peace Corps experience would have been like. The training is being held in an Amerindian village about an hour away from Linden (25 minutes up the highway and 35 minutes down a bumpy dirt road, though a swampy grassland rife with giant puddles and pools). During the day I added my input and experience to the technical sessions regarding health topics and Peace Corps policies and procedures. At night I stayed with a family in the village who Peace Corps is renting a few rooms from. They had a large concrete house, still under construction, with an outdoor shower and a pit latrine (fairly common set up in the village). Bathing outdoors and walking outside at night with a flashlight (electricity only comes on when the generator runs from 6-10pm) was how I expected my whole Peace Corps experience would be. After living that life for a week, avoiding the silver dollar sized spiders who lived in my room, I decided that I am grateful for my urban placement.

I came home to my house in Linden and instead of facing discomfort because it is too quiet/too dark/too isolated, the church next door was having a week long, all day long revival camp. So, I stayed up all night listening to shouting, praying, singing and speaking in tongues. This is an example of how some of the challenges between an urban and a remote site in Guyana are different like night and day. In an urban site you have to get accustomed to noise and light at all hours (honking horns, annoying music blasted at crazy decibels, community events that block roads or make noise all day and night). Not so in a remote site, where the sounds of howler monkeys and bugs and birds are your only noise (unless someone has a generator and decides to play the same CD over and over again during parties). In an urban site, we don't know everyone intimately, compared to when I was in the remote training site for a week and already knew the names and family histories of everyone I lived near. In an urban site I have to budget for transportation to and from work and the cost of utilities, in a remote site you get to walk to work but have to budget for inflated food prices and the high price of transporting your goods in and out of your site. Yet in both sites we volunteers face the same challenge of being isolated because we are strangers in this culture. We have to face the cultural problems of domestic violence, alcoholism, and many other social issues that go hand in hand with a poverty. In both sites, the work we do as Volunteers helps our communities live healthier lives. And I came to the realization that if I can do that and still have a flush toilet, then I am a lucky gyal.

On another note, I went to celebrate Mashramani on Wednesday and “mashed” (danced and marched) in the Mash parade in Georgetown, with the Ministry of Health Youth Friendly Services float. It was a ton of fun! I was in a bright yellow jumpsuit sporting a headpiece with a man exercising on it to promote exercise. My day lasted from 7am when I got to the staging place, got into costume and make-up until 4pm when we arrived at the end of the parade route and I was sunburned, sweaty, covered in glitter and ready to pass out! It was a blast to dance with the Peer Eds as we moved along the crowded parade route and celebrated the holiday.

Now I am back home spending the weekend with Tim before he leaves for a week to help in training in the urban site all next week. Hopefully I can stay busy and this month will fly by. Heres looking forward to April 8^th and our visit home! And thanks to all who commented on my previous post about our future. We are still pondering and will continue to take in the wisdom of friends as we figure things out. Much love to all!

-Chelsea