Week 4: May 19-25

Of pizza and ice cream

Guyana, the land of many waters, birds, bugs, animals and various plants. In coming down here I was terribly excited to go to South America for a number of reasons. One of them was because there is such a diversity of life down here. I couldn't wait to explore all that there was to be seen.

This week, I finally had my time to reflect on how much life surrounded me. My feet were unfortunately trapped in shoes as I thought about the lives surrounding me, about how the Earth felt beneath my feet. (I explicitly mentioned my feet because I used to think about these things often when wandering around barefoot, feeling the Earth beneath me and visualizing the spread of life beyond what I can imagine.) The air filling my lungs tasted sweeter, more precious. I visualized how many other lives were sharing the same air, giving me perspective. In every moment we are part of countless networks; it grows overwhelming to think on them in detail. Similar to how it is too much work to think on the complexities propelling people to where they are now, regardless of how interesting it is, and how much we want to know. It would be exhausting to constantly be aware of everything around you. But, I'd be lying if I didn't admit how much I love the occasional change in perspective. I don't mean the obvious change in perspective being that I came down here to Guyana, but more the day to day perspective shifts. Point of view is a game of mind over matter, of being delusional enough  to think you see good things, whether or not they're there.

This week began like many others, with training, but, as you may be able to guess from the title, we received  some rather pleasant surprises.

Education Volunteers went to Georgetown on Wednesday to visit the National Center for Educational Resource Development(NCERD) and got to hear from some of heads of education about goals of Guyana and some test results showing where students are currently at. I shouldn't say the results surprised me, because I know we as Peace Corps volunteers are here to help fill a need for trained men and women, but the levels of proficiency were not what I expected them to be. The levels of comprehension and fluency are definitely struggling, which is unfortunate to know so many students across Guyana are struggling with literacy, but it does excite me to a degree because I know I will have a lot of opportunities to make a positive difference. After we went to NCERD we headed over to the Peace Corps office for our remaining sessions. Many of the volunteers were mentioning things they missed, like pizza. Pretty much everyone agreed that pizza is wonderful and is quite missed, as much as we love the food here. As we were getting a lecture from Jade(A GUY 25 volunteer), Tiffany(our education trainer) surprised us by bringing us pizza! It was so great. They also had candy for us. After training that day as we were leaving for hinterland, our driver stopped at Brusters and let us get the finest ice cream. I was so happy. I love ice cream. It pretty much makes everything better.

Tuesday included a whole day at the school in which Kelly and I were able to teach about plural compound nouns. It was also the day for planning our challenge week here in Laluni. The education volunteers are supposed to come up with a lovely project together for what we could do to help the community here. The discussion took waay longer than I expected because everyone had their own ideas of what we should do.

Wednesday was not particularly noteworthy. We went to Red Grounds and has sessions all day. We got back late and got a ride from Kelly's father.

On Thursday I spent the morning in the school. Within that morning I spent the first part downstairs in 4th grade as per usual. About an hour before school ended for that day(it was a half day so teachers could go to an in-service which was far away) I saw the head master(HM) and asked if he wanted me to help out upstairs a little bit. I got the chance to actually teach two subjects on the fly to two 6th almost sevenths graders.

That afternoon we spent time hanging around in Laluni. Health volunteers were promised to go to the water park on Thursday afternoon just to have a fun day off. Tiffany, the education trainer, said she was trying to arrange the field trip for all the education volunteers as well. As you may be able to guess, they did not arrange transportation for education folks. We could have arranged transportation for ourselves, but we're technically not allowed to leave our training sites without each volunteer having members of their host families with them. So, the six of us as hinterland education stayed here in Laluni. We instead decided to go to Rasta country with Eben and Kathrina. It was fantastic in its own way, just different from the water park. The best part was when Kathrina's host sister came in: "Do you want some coconut water?" We all said yes. "Let's go get it." And we walked over to a tree and chopped down some coconuts. By we, I mean Eben. He also got to hack open his coconut to drink while Kathrina's sister opened the others for us. It was quite wonderful. Nobody there liked the coconut jelly, so I started eating the unwanted jelly, but soon realized that I cannot eat 4 coconuts worth of jelly, no matter how much I love it. Rasta country, aka the far away section of Laluni which kind of isn't really part of Laluni, but sort of is, was quite beautiful. Very serene and relaxing. Kelly, Eben, Kathrina, and I enjoyed sitting out on the deck catching a breeze.

I never thought there would be the day when having a cone of ice cream was a bad thing. This Sunday I learned how wrong I was.

In Georgetown, just walking around, I got more than my fair share of attention. "White girl, beautiful, snow white, tall girl, sexy, white meat" etc. (Side note: Peace Corps said people  would call us white meat and I'm actually really amused that I finally got called white meat. I'm used to people shouting some stuff at me in Colorado, so the only big difference is how often I get shouted out here. I do rather stand out.)

Anyhow, in my trip to Georgetown this weekend, my host teacher/cousin, Priya took me shopping and we went to Brusters which has the best ice cream in the land. I got a fantastic waffle cone and two scoops. I didn't think it'd a big deal to walk around with it, little did I know.

People asked to share, and then asked why I don't want to share. They followed me around putting their faces really close to my ice cream and again asking to share. Definitely a cultural difference. In retrospect, me walking around getting shouted at for carrying ice cream is hilarious, but at the time  I was rather shocked. Priya laughed at me the whole time. It was great.

Although, amid all this craziness I did manage to acquire two Guyanese styles shirts(since my professional shirts don't meet their standards), another towel(since I only brought one), and a pair of taller socks. I feel significantly more prepared to take one whatever's coming at me.

Friday we went to Redgrounds again and learned all together. It was quite excellent.

The highlight of the weekend was our community engagement event. We spread the word throughout the week that we would all gather together and explain what we, as Peace Corps Volunteers, were here to do. Most of the people who came initially were children. Michelle read an awesome poem she'd written about all of us meeting our host families. Kelly spoke for education volunteers about what we're here to do, and Andrew spoke for health volunteers. We got a volley ball which we donated to the community since they really love playing volley ball and are excellent at it.

We had Frozen playing inside most of the time and children could come back and forth between being inside or playing games outside. I spent the whole time playing games outside with children/ watching other people play with children. It was a blast.

According to Matt we had around 75 people who attended. That's an amazing turnout, especially considering how remote Laluni is. I was overjoyed.

I also learned to play the game Salts(this might not actually be the title, but I'm not sure.) It involved a lot of running back and forth, then standing still and trying to reach other people. It was really fun.

A feeling of belonging grew from this experience. I felt included and integrated into the community. I'm hopeful my future site will be as welcoming as everyone here in Laluni has been. I'm really going to miss it here when I have to move on. Everyone has been so friendly and accepting. It will be hard to leave these amazing people behind. But, I am really glad I've gotten to meet them, to make those connections.