Please Bring Strange Things…

Speaking of "strange things" it was both strange, wonderful, touching, awkward and moving, to join our friends Gasper and Tanzia at church last Sunday and be prayed over by the pastor and whole congregations.

Initiation Song from the Finders Lodge

Many of you may remember one of our favorite poems, we used it on our wedding program, by Ursula K. LeGuin:

Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.
Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps
and the ways you go be the lines on your palms.
Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing
and your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well loved one,
walk mindfully, well loved one,
walk fearlessly, well loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
be always coming home.

For us, this poem is often in our hearts and minds when we embark on a new journey or phase in life. As we prepare to leave Guyana and walk carefully, mindfully and fearlessly into our next adventure we decided to make a list of the “strange” things we believe are important to carry with us from our experience in Guyana and perpetuate in the rest of our lives. Here is our list:

Strange things/idea/practices etc. to bring back from Guyana:

· Exercising daily

· Eating a healthy breakfast every morning

· Making a weekly menu and meal plan

· Guyanese sayings: ‘just now’, ‘shucks’, ‘walk with’, ‘theif/theifed’, ‘real ting’

· Guyanese card games: Rap, Jackass

· Guyanese food: cookup, curry, chickpeas in any forms

· Eating fresh, local foods

· Farmer’s markets

· Making our own iced tea and coffee (not buying it always from Wasteofmoneybucks)

· Making our own fresh juice instead of buying concentrate w/added sugar

· Guyanese/Caribbean music

· Continuing to experiment with making fruit wine

· Exercising with a plan/work out DVD like Insanity

· Hammock time, find a place to hang a hammock inside in our future home

· Continue blogging regularly

· Saying “Good Morning” “Good Day” “Good Afternoon” and “Good Night” every time you pass a familiar face…or even a stranger

· Being more community oriented

Surprises and Farewells

Yesterday evening Tim and I had the pleasure of being the guests of honor of the best surprise party ever! We were invited to For Children’s Sake, an NGO and youth club I worked with often during the last two years, to what we thought was a recording of an educational skit. We were instructed to bring our camera and asked to take pictures of the recording for their social next weekend. Silly me, I thought we were actually going to be working all evening and I was not looking forward to it, to be honest. However, I was SO thrilled and surprised to find what the youth and mentors at FCS had put together for us.

The club was decorated with streamers, fairy lights, handmade posters and decorations, and signs all over the walls with adjectives describing me and Tim (kind, caring, dedicated, inspirational, even sexy!). We were treated like royalty; given drinks, delicious food, cake, snacks and sweets, and honored and entertained by the talented members of the club. The program was thoughtful and rehearsed and it was obvious that the kids put a lot of time and effort into practicing their songs, poems, dances and skits that they performed for us. We loved the original work, along with favorites like a poem by Maya Angelou and Bill Withers’ Lean on Me, we were even treated to some traditional Guyanese folk songs. It was so much fun! I have never had anyone do anything like this for me before and I was so incredibly touched and honored.

I was overwhelmed with gratitude and love for my energetic young friends’. I kept bursting into tears all night. What a goober. Even now words cannot describe how touched I am. Tim said it best when he told the club that all the qualities they said they admire about us, are reflected right back in all of them. They are so talented and dedicated to volunteering as Peer Educators in the community. These youth have so much to offer the world and I have no doubt that they will continue to do amazing things for Linden, Guyana and themselves. I was so glad to have had the opportunity to get to know these amazing young people, work with them, play with them, laugh and cry with them. During my two years in Linden, These folks became my dearest friends and I will miss them so much, just as I know I will be missed by them. Their touching display of gratitude with the super-fun surprise party is something I will never forget. In fact, I know that I will look back on yesterday evening anytime I am feeling down to remember the boundless joy, diversity, talent, energy, potential and love that exists in Guyana, this beautiful country I call my home (for another 10 days that is)……

What a send off! THANK YOU members of For Children’s Sake! You seriously ROCK!

Here are some of my favorite pics from the evening:

Ahhh! So surprised!!!

Then we had a dance party! It was quite hilarious to watch the white gyal awkwardly try to "bruk it duhn"...

Fun was had by youth of all ages! What a blast!

New Faces, New Places

A school mural in Ituni

The weeks are zooming by, almost too quickly. 2.5 weeks left as a PCV, then after that we get a new acronym: RPCV or Return Peace Corps Volunteers!

Last week was, as Chelsea says, a trip and a half. On Wednesday, three Guy 24 trainees came to Linden on their site visit to check out where they will be living for the next two years. It is exciting that PC sent 3 new volunteers to our site! The three are going to be living in our house and one is even assigned to Chelsea’s health center. The other two girls are based out of the hospital and continuing education school. It was a proper reality check as we escorted the “newbies” (as we lovingly call them) around our community. We introduced them to our community of friends, leaders, co-workers and other movers and shakers who have been instrumental in our service here. Every conversation with a community member went something like this:

Us: “These are the new Volunteers who are going to be working in Linden for the next two years, they are excited to work with you and have lots of new ideas and skills that they bring to the table.”

Community: “Welcome to Guyana, we hope you enjoy your time here.” Then they’d turn to me or Chelsea and say, “So you are leaving us just now, right? That is so sad. We are sorry to see you go. We will miss you. You have done so much here.”

It was nice to hear that we are loved and will be missed, but each conversation was an inescapable reminder of our eminent departure. We can't hide from the reality. We're really leaving Guyana. Blows my mind and makes me nervous and anxious, but ridiculously excited.  Anyway, we want to welcome the new (soon to be) volunteers! Ren, Loren and Wendy, we hope you will have an amazing experience in Linden, as we did.

Last week was an action packed week, especially since we visited our dear friend Mark in his community down the road. He lives in a semi-remote village about an hour outside of Linden and, although Mark visits us often on his way through Linden, we had never managed to visit him at his house. We had promised to for a long time and this was one of the last weekends that we could realistically do it. So we left the newbies to their own devices for a day and headed down the road for a quick trip to see Mark. It was a lovely ride through dusty, sandy roads and jungle. We walked around his village, cooked a tasty meal, explored his garden and the wildlife in his yard (bugs, cats, kittens and yummy veggies) and then headed back to Linden the next morning on the early (and only) bus. Upon arriving home, we said ‘farewell for now’ to the newbies (they will be back on the 30^th for a day of transition with us before we leave Linden to spend the last few days in Guyana in Georgetown), then, started the business of packing up our house!

Ituni

We took everything down from the walls and began packing a box of memories and things we want to ship back to America and can’t keep with us on our backpacking trip. It is weird to look around at the empty walls and bookshelves. In general, this is a really emotional time for us. We are experiencing periods of elation at the adventures that lie ahead and beautiful moments with friends in the here and now, but those are mixed with teary eyed feelings of pending separation and anxiety. 

I was talking to my mom yesterday on Skype and I realized that I could look back upon and specifically pin-point experiences that have shaped me into whom I am today. These epic things, and some not so epic, like enjoying camping and the outdoors for the first time when I was 17, traveling Europe after high school, studying in England, teaching, and oh so many little mistakes have all been learning experiences for me. Right now it seems too momentous to fathom, so I can only imagine what sort of lessons and defining moments Chelsea and I have shared during our Peace Corps service that will shape the rest of our future. But I look forward to looking back on them!

Walking the streets. 

Finally! Kaieteur Falls!

Today we finally took the long awaited, much anticipated, yet frequently rescheduled, tour to one of Guyana’s most famous attractions; Kaieteur Falls. Yippeee!!!

We were able to bring our friend, a taxi driver extraordinaire and connoisseur of Tibbs’ home cooking, along on the adventure. James picked us up at 10am and we sped off to Georgetown to catch our plane. At the airport, we met up with the rest of the passengers on the tour and boarded a 15-seat, single prop plane. Yikes! The hour long ride to Kaieteur was spectacular, with sweeping views of lush jungle and fluffy, cotton cloudscapes. Then we were at the falls!

Before we landed, the pilot took us in some heart-stopping loops around the falls, dipping as close to the waterfall as we imagine he was allowed to get. Once on the ground the panoramic views continued to unfold before us. Two excellent tour guides and rangers in the park brought our group to 3 different vantage points where we admired the majesty of the world’s most powerful single drop water fall. We took tons of photos everywhere and even got a glimpse of the rare golden frogs that hide in bromeliads along the trails.

At the first vantage point, the weather started out clear and bright and the sun glinted off the falls and a fine spray of mist created rainbows in the valley below. In typical Guyanese fashion, however, the weather took a turn for the worse. Rain came in from the jungle and doused us (and our expensive camera equipment). At the second view point, the rain was joined by a fog that obscured the falls, making it even harder to take photos. Gerr…. However, we do live in an Amazonian jungle so we weren’t very surprised when the rain had all but cleared away by the time we reached the third lookout.

We spent an enjoyable time sitting with our dear friend James and one of the tour guides, Leroy, marveling at the majesty of nature. Leroy told us the legend of how King Kai sacrificed himself to save his people from starvation by paddling his canoe over the single-drop. The gods must have been appeased by Kai’s self-sacrifice because the villagers lived and Kai is forever remembered through the name “Kaieteur” which literally translates into “Kai’s fall”.

It was a wonderful day, by far one of the best Saturdays we have enjoyed in a while! Now it is time to hunker down, finish our projects and start making real preparations to pack up and head out of our home for the last two years…. WOWO! Hard to believe…

A Happy Holi-day for the Tibbses!

Happy Holi! Happy Pagwah! Today in Guyana, and in Hindu countries and communities around the world, we celebrated the festival of Spring. The mythology behind Holi has something to do with the god Prahlad escaping a demon in the underworld and coming back into the light. Today Tim and I joined the celebration welcoming the return of Spring with color! We joined thousands of Guyanese and PCV friends at the National Stadium in Georgetown to “play pagwah” by throwing colored powder and squirting colored water at each other. After only a few minutes we were covered in colors and hugging strangers with the customary greeting of some powder in the face and a, “Happy Holi!”. We enjoyed good food, music, fun and company. Our sock monkey travel companions even made a brief appearance (we didn’t get many photos for fear that our camera would be pagwah’ed too).

We loved participating in this cultural tradition for the third, and final year, during our PC service. I wonder if we could find Pagwah celebrations in SF or Sac….

All is well here in Linden. We promise to blog more about our “lasts” in Guyana and preparation for travel, school, home etc. next week when our projects start to wind down.

Peace and Love and Happy Holi!

-Chels

Post pagwah powder faces!

Happy Holi!

PCVs heading out to enjoy the holiday. Fun times!

June, Sir Bear, Mamut and Burnie hanging out after the pagwah madness