1-11-11

I love this date. It’s not quite as cool as 11-11-11 will be be, but it is pretty close! Anyway, I really wanted to post something on this date, I have this weird obsession with numbers, I suppose, but I might as well take the time to update you on what’s been happening so far in this New Year!

First, sad news. The hard drive on our Mac has finally crashed.  However, since we recently received an external and some system software we are able to run our computer from our external drive. So it’s no longer a lap top, but more of a desk top. No matter. We lost some photos too, but we also got this other pretty neat software that can reconstruct lost files, even from a digital camera! We haven’t tried it yet, but with luck it will all work out. So all in all the damage to our hard drive isn’t a travesty.  We may even be able to fix it when we visit home in April!

HOME! We are extremely excited to spend a good slice of April hanging out with our families and wonderful friends. We will be leaving Guyana on the 8th of April. We will be in Oxnard from the 9th-18th, Santa Cruz from the 19th-28th, and Portland from the 28th-3rd. We can’t wait to see you all!!!! But until April rolls around, we have some awesome projects we’re working on.

The New Year started with a bang! Maybe  it’s too soon to start making jokes? But there was a grenade that exploded in Starbroek Market in Georgetown. It’s about an hour from us, so it doesn’t effect us too much. But worry not, it looks like it was an accidental explosion, so our lives are not in mortal danger.

Anyway, what I was getting too before I tangented was our projects. My current project is designing a student “Author’s Fair” for Region 10. I want to promote literacy through the use of creative writing. I’ve spoken with my counterpart and she is all about it. We’ve created flyers, an application, and a letter to send to schools. There will be 3 age categories (8-11; 12-14; 15-17) and two genre categories (poetry and short story). Students will submit the stories by Feb 10, we will judge them, and then present prizes for the winners during the week of Feb 21-26 (the week of Mash). Moreover, I’ve already spoken to the Linden branch of the National Library, and they’ve opened up their space to display the winning entries through that whole week! It’s really cool. And I feel really supported by my immediate community. Another awesome thing about this author’s fair is that it will based around the national holiday of Mashramani (Mash). Mashramni is an AmerIndian word that means “relaxation after hard work.” It’s a celebration of Guyana being a Republic, and it’s a very bright time of floats, colours, and costumes! Best of all it was started in Linden in the 1970s! So I am hoping this author’s fair will allow students to get in touch with their own roots and create wonderful stories and poems about it. Likewise, the Mash theme for this year is “Showcasing our culture. Sustaining our pride,”  and the entries need to be based around this theme, so even more reason for these students to look into their own past for material. One of the most pertinent things I learned in teaching school back home was that when students see themselves (their culture) in the curriculum they pay more attention to education. With luck, they will see themselves in this activity and be inspired.

In terms of my professional development project, I have finished writing my teacher’s manual (85 pages later!) and I am looking into grants to try and get it printed up and distributed to the teachers I am going to work with. Filling out the grant forms allowed me to see this project with new eyes. I have a definite structure and focus now, which is always a good thing!  I will write more about it a little later, as time progresses. I am also still helping Peace Corps out by assisting them in writing session plans for the incoming trainees! And I get to be in town at the end of this week to finish the job! 

Chelsea (along with Sara) is working on some cool projects too! She is working in tandem with the Guyana Red Cross to get this programme, called “Be Safe”, started in the Linden area. Basically, this programme is a unique way to educate young children (grade 3 and below) about the different forms of abuse (unsafe touching, domestic, verbal, physical, etc.).  The Red Cross is donating child friendly kits to be used in 11 local school. The kits are wonderful because they use a puppet, visual aides and the same facilitator (so the kids feel comfortable with her)  for  the 6-week course. Chelsea has arranged for 22 people (teachers and nurses) to be trained in how to lead the programme. Then, after the training the teachers and nurses will work in pairs to hold a “Be Safe” session with their selected class.

As mentioned, Chels organized a 2-day training for 22 different nurses and teachers. She had to create and hand out applications and information to 6 different schools and the 5 health centers! And she has gotten them all back, filled out! So now she needs to speak with the person in charge of the Health sector in region, double check the venue and the snacks and then she is well on her way to training the Be Safe facilitators! It is a mega-project, because even after the training she will be monitoring and evaluating her facilitators and holding weekly check up sessions. Hopefully it will all work out. But I am super proud of her.

Anyway, besides the Be Safe programme, she is still helping out at the health center (seeing and counseling mothers about their babies), trying to keep her secondary school health club afloat, and also still working on he monthly TV show. She’s a busy gyal!

All-in-all we’re in a solid place right now. We are happy in our community and feel safe and surrounded by friendly neighbors and coworkers. Not a day passes that we aren’t stopped by someone on the road who knows us to gaff. We’re also really excited to meet the new trainees who come into country on February 15th! It will super awesome to meet a whole new group of volunteers...I mean we’re the old ones now :).  We’re really looking forward to taking some breaks from our community projects in order to help in some training sessions with the “newbs” (I just made that up... I think I played too many online games in my day).

Alright, the show must go on. We’ll update a little later! Lots of love to all!

T & C

Chels and Me on an adventurous bike ride outside Linden.

By the Demerara river outside our town

Cute babies and toddlers that Chelsea works with in the clinic

Yes! I agree with Nursey (Chelsea) that I should only eat fresh fruit as snacks, not crappy junk food!

Sara and Chelsea at the studio recording (and being goobers!)

Can you see the rain clouds rolling in? Welcome to the rainy season!

Happy New Year!!!

I can’t believe it is already 2011. We started this blog a little over a year ago, as we began our adventure as Peace Corps Volunteers. Time has flown by it seems. It has been a year since I said goodbye to my family (the longest I have gone without giving my mom a hug). Tim and I were reading over the first blog we wrote in 2010 and it seems like so much has happened since then.

In 2010 we:

• Said tearful goodbyes to the teachers and students at Health Sciences High and Middle College

• Flew to Guyana, South America for our Peace Corps service

• Endured a grueling 2 months of Peace Corps Training

• Lived with a large, generous Indo-Guyanese host family

• Ate roti, curry, fried plantains, cookup, pepperpot, wild meat (bush hog, labba and iguana) and drank superb Guyanese rum

• Moved to our site in Linden and made our house feel like home

• Traveled the wild variety of Guyana; savannas, deep jungles, river villages, bustling cities, crashing waterfalls and majestic mountains

• Swam with sea turtles in the beautiful blue waters of Barbados

• Held educational sessions with teachers and students on communication, nutrition, teaching strategies, HIV and STIs, literacy,

• Weighed and measured hundreds of babies and consulted mothers on healthy child care

• Read over 50 books

• Learned to play cricket

• Watched almost every game in the World Cup Football tournament

• Ran, walked and exercised more regularly than ever before

• Made tons of new friends

• Enjoyed thousands of phone calls and Skype dates with family and friends

• Received 12 care packages with amazing goodies

• Wished we could have attended the 6 weddings and births of 3 babies in the lives of our friends and family back home

Then again, although much has happened, it seems like not much has changed. Tim and I are still deeply dedicated to our mission of service here in Guyana. We have survived 11 months of our 26 month commitment and look forward to the next 15. We have some exciting projects in the works and have a feeling that time is going to fly by faster than ever. The next group of Volunteers comes into Guyana in February and we are excited to welcome the newbies and help out with their training. Then in early April we are spending 25 days in the USofA! When we come back from our visit home we will  join the rest of our PC group at our week long Mid Service conference and then only have 11 months left of our Peace Corps service. We look forward to having some visits from some family and friends sometime near the end of 2011 and getting to share with them this wonderful country that has become our home.

Tim and I are looking forward to another year in which we continue to be surrounded by amazing people and experience life’s joys and mysteries together. We feel truly blessed wish the same happiness and blessings for all in the new year!


Chelsea’s New Years Resolutions: keep working on not biting my nails, learn to type using the home keys and get faster at typing without looking, learn how to french braid my own hair, live in the present every moment with compassion and love.

Tim’s New Years Resolutions: continue exercising regularly, write everyday for at least an hour, communicate more often with my family, take physical, mental, and emotional risks without hesitancy or regret, love life and live for the present.  

Much Love,

T & C

A Belated Christmas Message and Photos

Whew! So far this holiday season has been a full one. There have been people over at our house constantly. We had 3 volunteers come down last week to spend Christmas with us, and then a few days ago two more came from out of the bush as a nice little surprise. Moreover, Chelsea and I attended two weddings one on Christmas Night, and the other on Boxing Day night (Dec. 26). Work has been fairly slow since it’s the holiday season and schools are out on vacation still, so we’ve been “showing our face” , “gaffing” a bit with our co-workers and then heading home to hang out with our guests. Anyway, this morning the last two guests that showed up left to Town to run some errands, but we will hang out with them tomorrow on New Year’s Eve (or Old Year’s Day, as they say here) and then head back to Linden to ring in the New Year.  It’s been really great having all of these friends here in lieu of family. They are all a great support and I think each one of us benefited from each others company. This blog will mostly be pictures from our Christmas experiences, weddings, and even a little photo shoot that was did at this abandoned aluminum factory a few blocks away. I hope you like them.

And we wish you all a belated, yet happy Christmas, and a wonderful and prosperous New Year! 

Some of my co-workers showing Pre-Christmas spirit.

Our buddy and fellow PCV Chris Olin is sharing some Christmas music with us.

Our X-mas tree from Sara's Mom!

Presents under the tree!

Tony and Sara anticipating the gifts.

PRESENTS!

LAUGHTER!

ASTONISHMENT!

HAPPINESS!

Marcus getting ready for his white elephant exchange.

A priceless shot.

Who doesn't need placements? Yeah Chelsea stole them during the game. :)

Megan W, stoked about her key chain. Plus I like the second camera in the shot.

Secret Agents?

The Linden 4

X-mas dinner. A piece of home out here in Guyana.

One of the weddings. A lot was going on there.

Wedding food!

You making eyes at me?

Part of our photo shoot. For more pics you can look on my Facebook account.

Chris being Dirty hairy.

This place has been shut down for about 30 or 40 years.

I love the sky and this angle.

Another part of the Factory.

This was the second time we went with our friends the Quinlivans. This is Paul's Hero Shot.

Another section of the factory

A view of Linden from above.

The Demerara towards G-town.

Yeah. This is where we live.

Ziggy emerges to say "Hi" to Paul and Sa'Sa

Rasta Ain't too pleased with Sa'Sa, but Alyssa is real happy.

SA'SA

Some barber shop white gyal.

Paul waves to some kids across the way. 

Happy Holidays!
T & C

The Run

Yesterday, was the first day of winter (Happy Solstice). The shortest day of the year...and it was 95 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat baked the asphalt roads and hardened the red clay pathways. Blue skies were prominent and, with picture-perfect precision, white tropical clouds painted the firmament. It was a typical day in Guyana.

However, I did have some adventure in the cooler hours of the morning. I woke early, even before my alarm. The orange face of my cell phone glowed 4:15 AM and I was wide awake. This morning I planned to run to this mined out area we visited on Thanksgiving. Not knowing how long it would take to get out there, and since it was a weekday, I took my awakening as a sign that I should begin the run as soon as possible. I jumped out of bed and got ready.

A mined out area in Linden on a typical Guyana day. This is where I wanted to run too.

As I went into the road, I noticed the moon looked different, but dismissed it since it would be behind me for the entire first half of the run. The journey past the hospital, towards Watooka, was uneventful.  The darkness was thick. No lights lined the road and I’d left earlier than usual so I had no idea when the sun would rise. It was a little frightening. Then, I saw a dog come towards me. I slowed my jog and eyed him. He wasn’t having any of it. As he passed me, he quickly turned and began barking at my heels. I walked away. Slowly. The barking stopped so I snuck a quick glance around, and made sure he was well on his way. I took up my jog again.

I passed the last tree on the road and kept going. The darkness enveloped me like Death’s shroud.  I turned left towards some larger houses whose second story windows glowed like beacons. I jogged at a snail’s pace because I couldn’t see the ground in front of me and had no desire to twist my ankle. I’d been this way before, but it was much lighter last time. The first house on the left, a Bauxite executive, had a guard. I noticed him leave his guard hut when he heard the crunch of my shoes on the gravelly road. I would be suspicious too on such a dark, ominous, early morning. My legs kept pumping. I had a keen eye for dogs, travelers, and other sketchy things.  I was almost at the end of the block where the road turned to dirt and trees loomed on each side of the pathway when two dogs came out to the road and began barking furiously.

I turned around. Not today.

As I made my way back I spied the moon looking like a queer quarter moon, but I could have sworn it should’ve been full.  It looked odd: bright white on top, utter darkness on the bottom. Regardless of appearance, it followed me home, watching over me like some demigod. At one point, I slowed. I walked. Perplexed. But then quickly picked up the pace again as home inched closer.

The moon from my veranda after I got home.

I got home early, around 5:30 AM. I was out for about 50 minutes. Chelsea was just rising and then went on for her morning walk with Sara. I got on the computer, read some e-mails, and found out why the moon looked so peculiar. It was a lunar eclipse and by happenstance, because I awoke extra early, I was able to catch the spectacular sight.

I feel this story is a representation of our Guyanese experience thus far.  There is darkness because we don’t always know where we’re going, but we take these tentative steps towards the known, yet unknown. There are dangers lurking in the darkness, not just the physical dangers from being a stranger in strange land, but other dangers like failure and being let down. However, being aware, cautious, and knowing when we need to turn around and start from the beginning are skills we have to cultivate to be successful. Similarly, we have to have a thick skin and look at the little things to measure our success (I was up at 4:15; I still tried to run; and still was out for a fair amount of time).  Which leads me to my last point: the lunar eclipse. We have no idea what each day will bring. Sometimes there are these awe-inspiring, beautiful moments where it’s like “Yeah, we did that,” and we brush off our shoulders with a charming smile. There are times when new people from our community approach us and tell us how our actions, or our talks, or are seminars changed their behavior in some positive way. There are other instances where we hear from a third party that someone else, a person who may have simply been another face in the crowd, has taken our suggestions and are acting on them. Those are the marvelous moments. Yet it is not always honeybees and butterflies. There are tough times too. But we need to overcome these nadirs and move on. However, the question that begs to be asked is: will I look back upon these years as a waste of time?

Absolutely not.

Some other photos:

Christmas Kitties! Happy Holidays all!

Another shot of a hot Guyanese day. This is at Vreed-in-Hoop near Town.

When you want to travel into the interior, don’t try to travel from the interior.

Oh the lessons we learn....

Tim and I were wildly excited about visiting our friends, and fellow PCVs, Paul and Alyssa, in their remote site called Monkey Mountain. We had planned for months to visit this week. The plan was to take a mini bus down the road for 6 hours into Mahdia, where there is an airstrip that flies into MM. We knew we could fly into MM from G/town too, but the plane tickets were much cheaper leaving from Mahdia and we didn’t mind the long bus ride to save a little cash. So, we loaded up on Christmas gifts for our friends, things they can’t get in their site (eggs, bread, cheese, wine, a warm blanket and some of our favorite books) and hit the road.

On the bus ride down on Tuesday, Tim and I talked about how excited we were to get out of our urban site and see the more rugged side of Guyana. Paul and Alyssa told us about many hike we would take together to visit waterfalls and other beautiful vistas in their small, Amerindian village. We were so excited to visit with our friends, who we rarely get to see outside of Peace Corps conferences, due to their remoteness.

Arriving in Mahdia felt like entering the wild West. It is a small mining town and I imagine the, ‘get rich quick and to hell with the consequences of my actions’ attitude that seemed pervasive in the community is similar to what the California gold rush must have been like. At least we were greeted by another PCV, who has spent almost two years living in this outpost town. She greeted us with wonderful hospitality and let us spend the night before our scheduled flight the next day.

Wednesday is when all the best laid plans turned upside down on us! Although we arrived at the airstrip in time with money in hand to pay for our flight, the airline had packed the tiny prop plane full of goods and left no seats for paying the passengers, us! So off flew the plane to Monkey Mountain, packed with beer, rum and mattresses for the villagers for Christmas, and Tim and I stayed flustered on the ground. We spent the next 6 hours on the airstrip, trying to finagle with pilots, airstrip coordinators, airlines in G/town via phone and Peace Corps in the hopes that we could somehow get another flight and make it to MM that day. I won’t go into all the sad details but, needless to say, nothing worked.

We were told that there was a flight going out on Friday though, could we wait in Mahdia until then? Tim and I were discouraged at first. Would the 2 pounds of green beans, tomatoes, carrots, cucumber and cheese we had brought for our friends last until then?Could we extend our trip and make it back in time for Christmas? Or should we chalk it up to a loss and head back to Linden? Well, after an encouraging work from Paul and Alyssa, we decided to stick it out. After all, we had come this far, why turn back now. And, as Paul said, “When Guyana gives you lemons, turn them into pears!” (Not quite sure what he meant by that but it cheered us up and we held out hope that the next day, Thursday, we could book a plane ticket leaving Friday and still enjoy our mini vacation with our friends.

However, when we went to pay for our tickets on Thursday the airline representative in Mahdia told us that there isn’t any flight leaving for Monkey Mountain until Monday! What!?! I thought for a minute he was kidding. But, no, that was the truth. Unless we wanted to wait until Monday, stuck in Mahida, sleeping on Ryan’s extra mattress on the floor, and rapidly running out of money so we wouldn’t even be able to buy food over the weekend, we didn’t have a choice but to head back to Linden.

So, this morning we woke up at 3:30 am and crammed back into a minibus, bumped over the unpaved roads back home, feeling like we had failed. Well, we try not to think about this adventure as a failure. More like a mission UN-accomplished. We tried to fly out of a remote town, to visit our friends in an even more remote town, during Christmas time, and things didn’t work out.

Can we glean any lessons out of this debauched travel attempt? I think so. In Guyana, it is not advisable to try to fly out of small, rural airstrips unless you have to. If you have an  option, book a ticket through Georgetown and pay for it in advance. That way you will be guaranteed to get on the plane before they pack it full of stuff instead of people. We can also apply this lesson to travel in general, when you are trying to get to an off-the-beaten track location, plan on getting there from a busy transportation hub. Even if it seems like you are saving time and money by taking the road less traveled, the road less traveled often leaves you stranded. Also, walk with more money than you think you need, just in case.

The Sock Monkeys getting ready to go to Monkey Mountain. Their first outing in Guyana!

Waiting for the bus outside Linden

At a rest stop, I make a friend! Yay monkey!

Waiting to cross the river by ferry, almost to Mahdia

On the ferry, almost there

Rain on the E'bo river

Trying to get on the plane

This is as far as the Sock Monkeys (and Tim and I)  got to Monkey Mountain. The darn air strip in Mahdia...