Our first Eco Hostél Visitors

We finally had our first set of official visitors and it was glorious. Last week Nate’s parents, Karen and Charlie, made the trek from Florida to not only Guyana, but to Region 1 to see us for eight days. They arrived on a Friday morning and spent the whole week going on multiple hikes, joining us at work, seeing how we live, cooking and even doing wash by hand.

At Hosororo Falls

River Community "Imbotero"

Monkeys on our river boat trip

Nate and I woke up especially early on Friday and walked to the air strip to see them get off the plane. Due to sheer excitement we arrived at the airstrip 45minutes early and waited anxiously for the sound of the plane. Once it landed, it was a pretty surreal experience seeing our family getting off the tiny 12-seater prop plane. They kept telling us they couldn’t believe how far we lived, considering it took them two days, one car, two planes and one mini bus into the jungle of Guyana to see us and stay at our “eco hostel.” Once they arrived we spent the rest of the day talking, opening all sorts of goodies they brought us and giving them a quick tour around our community. The following days we went on hike to a small waterfall were we had lunch, took them on a 6 hr boat ride on the river where we saw some pretty impoverished areas, monkeys, scarlet ibis, and snakes and then swam in the river, went to an Amerindian home and parched coffee, which means we took raw coffee beans and roasted and grinded them, (let me tell you that that was the best coffee I have ever had, hands down), we went to the market on multiple occasions to see how we get our food, went to a Christmas concert at the secondary school, which was an experience in itself, had a Birthday bbq for me on our car-rimmed grill and went out to another community Whitewater where we visited an even more remote volunteer while getting their first real taste of Boom Boom mini buses.

Aunti Lizzy parching coffee

Nate grinding some coffee

WhiteWater Village with PCV Emily

A Jingle Bell item at the Christmas Concert

B-Day BBQ

We also brought them to work with us to give them a little taste of what we do on a daily basis and introduced them to more people they will ever be able to remember. Each night we cooked big meals, which usually were Guyanese in nature and spent hours talking about…well pretty much everything. On their last day here, they treated us to some fried chicken and appetizers we bought at a little shop and Coke Zero which we happened to find and consume immediately. (They were also excited to drink something that wasn’t water) The week flew by of course, but we enjoyed every second of having family with us and having the opportunity to share all the things we talk and don’t talk about in our blog. There is even some talk about them coming back to do some outreach medical work next year. Saturday morning they flew back to Georgetown and spent the day with our host “mom” Debee. They got to see where and who we lived with for 2 months while we were training and got to eat some of her awesome chicken curry.

Saturday for us was a rest day as we had two upcoming days of celebrations. Sunday we attended an engagement party for some Guyanese friends. Though I think they missed the boat on what an engagement party is supposed to be. They understood it to be where you propose. A few hours into the party they stopped and had a small ceremony were the groom passed around the engagement ring for everyone to take pictures and then asked for her hand in marriage, which apparently is really uncommon here. Most people live with a partner for years and eventually, if ever, get married and have a ceremony. So engagements are not done here. The groom had lived in the states, Brooklyn, and had heard of an engagement party, so they wanted to have one. It was interesting to see how they interpreted an American tradition. Even with the “lost in translation” moment, the party was a blast. We stayed out till midnight, which ABSOLUTELY never happens here. The following day was my birthday and the volunteer I spoke of before that lives even more remote, Emily, came out to celebrate with some dinner and drinks. Nate for my birthday bbq the week before had baked me the most incredible carrot cake. He had all the ingredients flown from town (real butter and cream cheese) and made it to share with some fellow volunteers and his parents. It was incredible and an awesome birthday gift (which was a mostly a surprise).

Even more incredible is that there was some left over cream cheese icing and on my real birthday my lovely husband baked me cinnamon rolls from scratch and put the remainder of the cream cheese icing as my second birthday cake. It was melt-your-face fantastic. He also cooked some quesadillas (since I really miss Mexican food). After dinner and dessert Nate, Emily, another volunteer Dutch and I went down to the corner rum shop and had some beers. Again we had so much fun that we didn’t get to bed till 1am. Two big days and that’s just the beginning. We will be leaving Mabaruma for two weeks to spend Christmas with our host “mom” Debee and then off to Barbados for our 3 year wedding anniversary and New Year’s where we will be meeting Nate’s brother and four of our closest friends. And if things couldn’t get any better, my parents fly into Guyana the same day we get back from Barbados to spend one week with us.

Ravi and Ravenna's engagement party

Happy Holidays Everyone!

Till next time.

HEAT! HEAT! HEAT...Movie Night

So remember in my last blog I mentioned that I ran a club with an awesome name and that we were hosting a movie night soon as a fundraiser...well this past Friday we had our first one. Club HEAT hosted a Christmas theme movie night, which means we watched Ernest Saves Christmas, not my first choice but the kids loved it. We had a total of 30 kids attend and made a profit of $8,000 GYD, which is equivalent to $40 USD! We sold popcorn bags for $.50 and charged $1 for a seat, and we only spent $900 GYD ($4.50USD), so our profit margin was great.

Prepping the popcorn bags.

My club members were very proud of their successful event and the kids seemed to have fun doing something on a Friday night. Most of the kids that attended are from the dormitories. These kids live at the school during the term, because they live to far to travel each day on the river. They normally don't have anything to do, so I think we may have started a little monthly activity for the community.

We even had a community vendor come and sell additional snacks.

Till next time.

Our Thanksgiving in Guyana

Lizzy (World Teach), Ilana (gorgeous), Emily (PC), Kristin (PC), Inga and Fiona (Project Trust)

Ilana and I shared Thanksgiving with about 25 other foreign volunteers for various organizations (World Teach, Project Trust, Wings for Humanity, Peace Corps). Some folks who do med-evacs for our region were able to fly in 2 turkeys from Georgetown...  sadly they had to die to fly.  

Suzanne (World Teach), Judd (Wings for Humanity pilot), and our turkey friends

 Everyone brought different dishes to contribute. We made the biscuits and Mom’s famous Magic Cookie Bars, which were a huge hit.

We even had a big hairy local special guest join us for desert. A face-sized tarantula appeared on the ceiling as we were finishing the meal. Springing into action, one of the boys who lives in the house caught the beast and brought her down for all of us to enjoy. Do I smell a new tradition in the Echevarria-Stewart house?

Didn't you mother ever tell you not to play with tarantulas at the Thanksgiving table?

Hey Alex, you want to come down to Thanksgiving next year?

A Day in the Life of Ilana

A while ago Nate wrote a blog post labeled “A day in the Life of Nate,” so I figured I would finally do a day in the life of me. So let’s begin this exciting journey. My days begin and end much earlier than in the states and if you know me and know how much I love to sleep you would be surprised that sleeping in is 8am. I know, crazy right? So on a typical work day I am usually up by 6:30am at which point I decide if I want to work out, prep dinner or clean. I would say that my week day morning routines have quite the variety and I switch it up almost every day. On days that I decide to workout I do like Nate described pretty accurately as a prison-style workout, which consists of either a yoga routine, a resistance band workout and on especially energized mornings I do a P90X routine. On days that I want to clean, I sweep the floors of all the dead critters from the night before, yes at night moths, flies, and all sorts of other small beetles magically die and land on our wooden floor that also collects and absurdly large amount of dust, there is also gecko poop and on really awesome nights bat pee, once I sweep, wipe down surfaces of small bugs I help Nate make breakfast and begin prepping dinner for the night, which can mean soaking beans, cutting up onions, sunning okra (it makes it less slimy) and making a list of any missing ingredients we need to buy at the shop. Nate and I usually have coffee and fruit or some egg dish and talk about what our days have in store for us. At around 8am, I get dress, Nate leaves for work and I finish little odds and ends, which usually is pumping water. Pumping water is not as hard as it sounds, I am not literally hand pumping water, I plug an extension cord in an outlet and wait for our bottom tank to be pumped up to our upper tanks until they over flow. Pretty simple, yet stressful if it’s the dry season, since our only source of water is rain water. On a side note, rain water is painfully cold, especially on a raining day. I feel as though I am 6 years old again, because I dread I mean dread showering every day and complain about it. You would think I would plan better and shower when the sun is still hot and I am sweating, but nope I wait till about 7pm every night when I am no longer sweating and do not look forward to a cold shower.

The Mabaruma Regional Hospital

Once I leave for work, which is usually around 8:30am I always go to the hospital and open up my office which I share with the statistical clerk, well only when we have one employed. My schedule really varies from week to week, depending if there is an event, I am doing a health talk at a school, I am traveling on the river to do some research or health talk or I am working on a specific project. For example, about a month ago Nate and I and a team of about 6 other Guyanese and volunteers spent 5 days on the river doing surveys at all the schools in the sub region to find out what the most common disabilities are in the schools and what resources teachers have to serve and teach these children. As you can imagine there are no resources for teachers to work with the SEN population and two very interesting findings were that there are absolutely no physically disabled children at the schools, even though we see them at the hospital and children who live on the river are 3 times more likely to have a speech impediment or developmental delay. My theory on why children are more likely to be developmental delay on the river is because of isolation. Some of these river communities have the population of five; yes I wrote that right…five. A community is one family and there is not another soul for miles, I mean miles, and they don’t have a motor boat, just a paddle boat. So some of these children don’t see other children there age until they enter school at age 4. Imagine! Ok back to my weekly schedule. Every Tuesday I work at the Maternal and Child Health Clinic with babies and pregnant mommies. I also do a health talk about family planning, nutrition and hygiene on less hectic clinic days. We also have clinic the second Wednesday and third Friday of each month, don’t ask me why these are the days that the clinic is open, it just is. Not that you can’t get services any other day of the week, but no one seems to come to the clinic other than these specific days. Monday afternoons I run a health club that is named Club HEAT! Club HEAT means Health & Environmental Activist of Tomorrow. Like the name? Yup I came up with that. Brilliant, I Know! Club HEAT always has some sort of project or activity going on, so that occupies my time. This month we did a Cleanest Class Competition, and at the end of this month we have about 4 activities for World AIDS week and then we are doing a fundraiser, which will be a movie night at the local resource center for the kids. The admission is $.50 US to sit on the floor or $1US to sit in a chair. I think we will be showing a x-mas movie. I will write a blog post about that when it happens. Most days I work from 8:30-4:30 and on Fridays it is an early day, which means work only until 3:30pm, freakin awesome!

Dental Hygiene talk with nursery children.

Asking the kids to show me their Pearly Whites

River Trip. Notice the stand alone house.

My friend Dexter working infant clinic.

A busy clinic day.

Evenings! Well at least once or twice a week on the evening we do our laundry, which usually takes an hour to an hour and half, and then we make dinner (which usually is very elaborate, since everything is made from scratch) and watch either a show or movie on our computer. Other nights we use the internet at our jobs or down the way at the Canadian family’s house and then make dinner and yup you guessed it watch a movie or show on our computer. Friday nights are Pizza night! We make everything from scratch, of course not the cheese, which is white cheese; though recently we have figured out that white cheese can mean white cheddar or mozzarella. We never know what it will be, until we take our first bite. Fridays is also cocktail nights, so we buy some rum or vodka (that’s all there is) and make ourselves a little cocktail and talk while swinging in our hammocks.

Weekends have a pretty set routine. Saturday is market day in the morning, cleaning and doing our laundry and the afternoons we usually read, go for a walk or hangout with other volunteers. Sundays, we have brunch with some other volunteers and then hang around the house. Some weekends there are “Games” and we go to those or we go to a swimming hole. Nothing too exciting, but it keeps us entertained. So there you have it. What a week in my Peace Corps life is typically like.

Nate at a river school. I just really like this picture.

Till next time.

Amerindian Heritage Weekend Celebrations

Last weekend, Nate and I celebrated Amerindian Heritage with three days of wild meat, pageants and music. So let’s start on Friday. A couple months back I was speaking with my supervisor and he had mentioned how difficult it is for people from the river communities to get up to the hospital, due to cost and time, and once they were at the hospital they had no idea what services were provided by the hospital. So we brainstormed on an idea of how to bring services to the people while making them aware of the services offered. Yup you guessed it, a health fair. So once we came up with the idea I began coordinating the fair through the Amerindian Heritage Committee in order to make it part of the celebrations during the month of September, which is Amerindian Month. So Friday was the fair and all in all I would say it was a success and overall a good start. We even got some media coverage on the local news station and on a night-time local TV health program, and my article about the event was published in The Guyana Times Newspaper.


It was the first-ever health fair of this magnitude in my region and I helped coordinate it with the Ministry of Health, Pan-American Health organization, Guyana Responsible Parenthood Association, which is Planned Parenthood’s international branch down here, (I just can’t stay away) and the Dental school. We had eight departments outfit their own benab (that’s Guyanese word for Tiki hut) with a banner to advertise their services and privacy screens to allow persons to visit the booth of their choice without pressure. Once inside the booth, screenings such as malaria smears, TB tests, diabetes screenings, HIV tests, dental exams, vaccinations, and family planning consultations were provided. Additionally, each booth educated their visitors with a brief presentation, brochures and posters and had giveaways like toothbrushes and toothpaste that I got donated. I also worked the large educational tent and provided hands-on demonstrations on hygiene and sanitation. Did I mention I got the whole event paid for by the Ministry of Health, pretty cool! Over 250 people attended the fair, and every school from my community bought multiple groups of children. It definitely brought awareness to the community; though I wish more adults would have attended to get screenings, but hey it’s a start.


Following Fridays kick-off event, we had two days of festivities I didn’t have to plan and could just enjoy ::Sigh of relief:: Saturday night was the Amerindian Pageant that lasted for 5 hours (yes the pageant), needless to say if Nate and I don’t ever see a pageant again, I think we are good. But it was cool to see some traditional dance and eat and drink Amerindian food. We ate pepper pot, which is a stew/soup like dish made with cassava water with lots of hot peppers and wild meat. You eat the pepper pot with cassava bread which taste and looks similar to Matzo bread but made of cassava instead. We had a few different types of wild meat; it was delicious yet I'm not too proud since some of the meat came from endangered animals. Ok so here it goes, we ate tapir or what they call bush cow (adorable, right?) (really endangered), turtle (kinda endangered), duck (not endangered), and wild fowl (not endangered). So of course which one was the most delicious, yup…the tapir. I can’t help it; it was just was very tender and flavorful.

TURTLE!!!

Anyway moving on…we also got to drink local booze. We had fermented cane juice, fermented corn drink and a drink called Fly (not sure of spelling) but it is made of black potatoes and looks like cool-aid (no jokes please). The events on Sunday were what they call a “games day” which consist of really drunk men dancing like fools and children playing soccer or football and cricket and women selling food. It was held in this outdoor park that has the most incredible breeze, so we watched the games and laughed at the drunken men and enjoyed the afternoon by eating our wild meat and drinking our fermented, warm drink. There is still some more heritage activities this month and we are hoping we can cross the last type of wild meat of our bucket list which is Labba and a local drink called pirwahi (spelling?) which years ago it was made with human spit to ferment cassava. I don’t think they do that anymore, I think? Even though we have already had some fried labba and we hear it tastes different when cooked in a stew, we are hoping to get our hands on both items by the end of the month. I guess we will wait and see.

Till next time.

We caught crabs!

Get your mind out of the gutter…we went crabbing and caught real crustaceans crab to make a delicious meal. Ok, so Friday afternoon while at work one of the nurses calls me over and asks me if I like to eat crabs. Do I like to eat crabs? I responded enthusiastically. I told her that I am pretty sure in another life I was some sort of sea creature because I love anything seafood, especially crabs. So she explained that in the month of August and September there are two types of crabs, Bok crabs and Bunduri crabs that start marching on the side of the marshes when the tides come up. Bok crab are red and a bit smaller and have tiny little hairs all over its legs and Bunduri crabs are really big and blue. So every year she and her family and friends take a bus load of people to a place called Morawhanna and go crab catching. So naturally, after explaining all of this, she could see the excitement on my face and she invited me. I quickly called Nate and told him that today we were to take a half day to go crab catching with some of our community members. He was in. We rushed home and changed into our stained clothes and filled our water bottles up and grabbed a bucket to head out on our crab hunting adventure. As soon as we got to the bus, we got made fun of because we looked like we were ready to go on a safari expedition and had a bucket instead of a bag to catch our crabs. I guess they climb out of buckets and that’s why you are supposed to take a bag. However, after being made fun of because of our bucket, guess what they used…yup our bucket. After a few giggles and exchange of names, we were on our way to Morawhanna.


It took about 45 minutes to get to Morawhanna and we had to get out of the bus on a few occasions to push it through the mud. Nate got douched with mud before we even got to our destination. We were in the middle of nowhere and we quickly started seeing crabs scurrying across the dirt muddy road to the water. The crew of people in the bus, we were about 20 people, crammed in as usual, jumped out of the bus and started running. I literally mean dashing down this muddy dirt road with sticks like crazy people chasing crabs. It was hysterical and extremely fun. We were so excited we forgot to put on our rain boots and started running barefoot in about two feet of mud. Needless to say, we had so much mud caked on our body when we got home that we needed to rinse off before going into our house and had to shower twice before we were able to remove all the mud.


 

We ran/ walked down this path for about 3 hours and dead ended at a river where there was a big boat that had been grounded and abandoned. We cleaned off our feet, well as much as we could, and got to sit on the boat and look at the gorgeous scenery, while our awesome tour guides started to boil a large pot of water on some logs they had chopped down.

 

 

 

About an hour later the pot was ready and they started to throw in all the crabs and cook them. We ate the crabs standing in the middle of jungle. It was kind of surreal. They taught us how to roast the backs and put some salt and raw pepper and eat the insides with cassava bread. It was different, but really good. I am pretty sure I ate my body weight in crabs that evening and that was just day one. We caught so many crabs we still had another bucket full when we got home.
 

 

The next morning one of our neighbors, who also works at the hospital, knew that we were going crabbing and came over to see what we had caught. She helped us clean all the crabs and prepare it to make crab curry. Each crab has a specific way of killing it and you have to scrap the hairs off the legs and brush the mud off the backs. She brought help, so we cleaned and prepped them rather quickly. Later that afternoon, we went to her house and she taught us how to cook crab legs and claws in a scrumptious curry sauce with white rice. We sat on her veranda, that’s what they call a porch here, for about three hours eating our very successful first crab catching experience. They don’t have crab forks or crackers here, so it takes a little longer when you are breaking the shell with your teeth and hands.

Our neighbor said that she enjoyed sharing in our “labor of love.” I would agree with her, it truly was a freakin “crab-tastic” labor of love.

Till next time.