Boom Boom there goes the Mini Bus

A couple of posts back I talked about the experience that is a mini bus, and I figured since this will be a daily occurrence it might be good to give you all a better mental picture of what these dare devil rides consist of. There are three different types of mini buses, which are called Boom Boom, Corkball, and Slingshots. Boom Boom buses are tricked out, no seriously, like what you would expect Snoop Dogg to show up in. The buses have nice rims with incredible photo-realistic art of poster girls on the inside of the buses. Most of the buses have different color lights that flash at night and some even have a small disco ball, so that maybe for just a few minutes you feel like you are in a club. The music they play is well…hysterical. Let’s see, a typical play list sounds some thing like this; 98 degrees, Celine Dion, Toni Braxton, Shakira, some sort of inappropriate chutney song talking about rum and girls, Britney Spears, Lean Rimes, some religious church song, an American Idol song and then Bob Marley or some reggae Creolese song. The music is blasted so loud you practically have to scream at the top of your lungs to get the “conductor” to stop at your location. Corkball buses are a bit more modest. They are not really “tricked out,” they have all the seats in pretty good condition, they have regular yellow or white lights to be able to see at night, instead of graffiti art featuring fairies and butterflies (oh yeah I didn’t mention that before) they have quotes such as “Only God I trust, all others must pay cash,” and they play music at a much lower level with a more focused 90’s pop play list. Slingshots, as I am sure you have already figured out, are the least nice buses and most of the time are missing a bench of seats, have no rims, breakdown on the side of the road pretty often and have no music. In other words, they are just a few more oil changes away from the junkyard.

Mini buses ride up and down the main street (really the only street) all day long and to stop them you have to stick out a finger pointing to the ground. Of course by using this method you never know which bus you are going to get. Once you get on, there is a “conductor” which could be a small child, a man, a woman, a grandma, etc. that opens and closes the bus door, collects your money and calls to the driver to stop at your location. But remember me saying that you practically have to yell to get the conductor to stop at your location, well I would say that 2 out of every 5 times they forget your stop and miss it. So they either will back track for you or make you get off a few meters past your stop. The tricky thing about conductors is that they love to rip you off, especially if you are white. We call it paying the “white tax.” Since there is no place that posts the fares for distances, you have to guess and often times have strong words with the conductor or driver about the correct fare, especially if it’s a location you have never been to and don’t really know the fare. Oh and they love to say that the fares change due to gas prices being raised, but once again there really is no way of knowing. This happens to Nate a lot more than it happens to me, I don’t know if it’s a gender thing or the fact that Nate is really white and well, they cant really figure out where I am from, so I have a bit more leeway…or so I think.

The interactions on the buses are probably the most interesting, but before I talk about this, I think its important for me to explain how reckless mini bus drivers are. Drivers honk at any and every person standing on the side of the road whether you have your finger out or not. Since they’re paid based on how many people they can deliver in the least amount of time, they drive as fast as the bus can go, which depends on the bus. Slingshots can’t usually go any faster than 40 mph, but the Boo Boom’s…well I have actually never looked at how fast they are going because well…what’s the point, if things are blurry when you are driving pass it you are probably going too fast. They also love to drive on the incoming traffic lane and pass one another. I feel like they are in a race that just never stops and the fastest mini bus I guess wins…who knows. Now add some cows, dogs, sheep running across the street and just for the hell of it throw in some rain and you have got yourself a real dare devil obstacle course. Exciting…right?

Back to social interactions on the bus; “smalling up” is a necessary survival tactic on mini buses, this means trying to get as small as possible so that instead of fitting 3 people on a bench, like the engineers intended, you can fit 8. “Doubling up” is also tons of fun, especially when 2 or three people sit on each other’s lap. I refuse to do this, I rather not be able to breathe because my face is smashed up against the side of the window than have someone sit on my lap or vice versa. And to top this incredible adrenaline rush ride of a lifetime (sarcasm), people love playing the uncomfortable staring game, which consists of staring at you like you have two heads for the ENTIRE ride! But trust me, its getting easier, well on days that I get a slingshot bus.

Till next time.

Photo updates from our site in Mabaruma

Hi all! We're back from Region 1 and it was awesome! We'll be living in an Amerindian village named Mabaruma. We flew there on a small 13 seater prop plane, rather than take a 24+ hour boat ride. The purpose of our visit, which was from last Sunday until today, was to check into our site and start getting acquainted with the area. We were able to see our house, which is actually bigger and newer than our condo in Gainesville. I'll post some pictures of that once it's finished and we get settled. (Mabaruma view on the left)

The plane to Mabaruma.

The airstrip in Mabaruma.

Right off the plane we met up with another PCV who showed us around. The day we arrived was a huge holiday called Phagwah, which involves spraying water on each other and then throwing stain powders to celebrate the beginning of the spring season.

The culprits that powder-spanked us.

Post Phagwah... and yes it stains the clothes permanently.

Our first day we took a hike down the hill to a waterfall where we saw monkeys. Mabaruma is awesome and we feel so lucky that we got placed there. Ilana's job is at the hospital and will involve maternal & child health, while my job as a teacher trainer is at the Department of Education, which allows me to travel up and down the rivers to the different schools.

On the way to the waterfall.

The waterfall we walked to from our house.

One great thing about our site is the number of other development workers and VSOs (volunteer service organizations) that are placed there. We met a Canadian family: Judd and Karen Wickwire and their sons Jake and Zach who are just all kinds of awesome. Judd is a pilot who works to med-evac people from the region while Karen home-schools the boys. They own a boat and invited us down the river with them. They also provide internet in our village for a small fee. Thanks Canada.

Mabaruma has a population of roughly 800. It's situated on the ridge of large hill surrounded by rainforest as far as you can see. There is one avenue that runs down the spine of the hill and it's straddled by huge rubber trees.

"De Road"... the only road, straddled by rubber trees.

The view down the northwest side of the ridge.
Ilana next to one of the rubber trees.

Straight... up... jungle.

Right now we're back in West Demerara for another 3 weeks to finish our training and get sworn in on April 13th. We're happy, healthy, and safe and really excited that we have such an awesome community to look forward to in Mabaruma.

Guyana Snapshots

Liming (Guyanese for "chilling")

At training learning about breast feeding.

Talking to home.

Grillin it.

Gaffing (Guyanese for "talking") before getting sent to training.

Guyanese money... 200 Guyanese dollars to $1 USD

Making chicken the old school way.

Melting faces.

A sari given to Ilana by our host family's neighbor.

It was alive and trying to flip over (phone for scale).

Eslyn and Aaron, our first host parents, making a broom from a palm frond.

Strangers in a strange land.

This week, PC brought us back into Georgetown for the Counterparts' Conference, which is where we find out our site placement (where we'll live and work for 2 years) and meet our counterparts (the people who will be our co-workers and liaisons in our new community). We PCTs happily loaded onto a bus bound for Georgetown... land of air-conditioning, hot showers, net-free beds, and walls that go all the way up to the ceiling. We were also excited because it was the first time we'd all be together since the training groups had been split up between West Demerara (coastal/urban) and St Cuthbert's Mission (remote).

Our giddy anticipation of hotel amenities was soon tempered by the realization that our destinies would soon be revealed. What part of the country will we be assigned to? What are the people there like? What amenities will my house have? Will I be safe? Who will live near me? What will my job description be? Will I get along with my counterpart? Will my skills be used? The answers that many of us had been waiting months for (years in our case) would all be revealed and all we could do was wait.

We're number 1.... no really, we're going to Region 1.

After all the stress and anticipation, I’m happy to report that Ilana and I have been stationed in a community named Mabaruma in Region 1, which is in the far northwestern corner of the country. Ilana will be based in Mabaruma Regional Hospital at the level of a regional administrator (her specific job description is yet to be determined). I will be working for the department of education as a teacher trainer and student counselor. We’re very happy that our work experience was taken into account and that the level of our positions will give us the best chance to build capacity here. Everything we’ve heard about Region 1 sounds awesome… a hilly pristine jungle, only accessible by boat (22 hours) or plane (1.5 hours). It’s home to Shell Beach, where 4 of the world’s 8 species of sea turtle come to nest. It’s also apparently walking distance to Venezuela, although the border is disputed between the 2 governments because of disparate claims to the oil offshore.

The PCVs in country have been an invaluable resource…. And sometimes their advice has been the only reliable source of information. We were told on arrival that the first 2 months of training and living with a host family will be one of our greatest challenges. They were right. Many PCTs feel like our adulthood has been stripped away. In the States we had jobs, money, a car, control over what you eat, when you go to bed, where you live, what your job is, etc. Here we’re truly strangers in a strange land.

We can't wait finally see where we'll be living and working for the next 2 years. Thanks to all of you who have sent letters and packages... it's really great to feel your support.

Much love,

Nate

Watch out Top Chef...

One month in…

One month living in Guyana and half way done with our pre-service training, we encounter things we used to take for granted every single day. Some of these realizations really make us reflect and shake our heads in disbelief while others make us laugh out loud.

Expert knowledge. In developed countries you can find expert knowledge in almost every single field imaginable. If you don’t know something, need something repaired, or need something explained to you there is someone who knows the answer and you never have to wonder if what they are telling you is accurate. Now of course you always get a second opinion and you do your own research, but 9 out of 10 times you are confident that information being relayed to you by an expert is researched, tested, peer-reviewed and accepted in that person’s field. In developing countries this is not the case. There is a lack of expert knowledge and the reason most of time is because the country suffers from “brain drain”. We have encountered this on a daily basis and have a better understanding why programs such as PC exist in developing countries, such as Guyana. However, it’s still shocking when you hear the most expert people make statements that are blatantly untrue, especially in the realm of health. Now, I think it’s important to understand that in the case of Guyana just one generation ago the majority of the people in this country were indenture servants for cash croppers. This means that there access to research-based health information, all information for that matter, is a recently new development. It is overwhelming and frustrating, to say the least, when you hear, for example, a medex or nurse tell a patient that breastfeeding is just as effective as any other method of birth control to prevent pregnancy.

On a lighter note, things we used to take for granted include: not needing ninja skills to get out of a mosquito net in the dark and then quickly apply repellent to ward of the swarm of mosquitoes while making your way to the bathroom. Needless to say, I have an internal struggle every night to decided exactly how bad I need to use the bathroom and whether it can wait till morning. Screens! Yes, Screens. I don’t really understand why none of the houses have screens because it seems like such an easy, cheap and effective solution to mosquitoes and the need for a bed net. However, every time we ask this question we get looks of bewilderment, like if we were suggesting we all live under ground to avoid the mosquitoes. Washing machines. Every volunteer I know complains about having to wash clothes by hands and that they never realized how much they took a washing machine for granted, blah, blah, blah, but with my midget clown hands it is practically impossible for me to ring out clothes without having a huge puddle of water at my feet when I am done.

Of course, the experience of living in South America is well worth realizing all the things we take have taken for granted and truly appreciating the simplicity of life.

We have already had some great cultural experiences such as eating “Seven Curry,” which is a Hindu dish that consists of seven different types of curry that you eat off of a huge leaf with your hands as a way to celebrate the life of a deceased friend. Riding on a mini bus, which is a huge cultural experience in itself. These small buses are crammed with about 30 people (the capacity is 15), blast American music, while zipping around town. If you are lucky you may even get to share the bus ride with poultry. Shopping for food strictly in an outdoor market and buying fruits that you have no idea how to eat, because they don’t exist back home. Everyday we either eat or learn how to cook something new (I am a Roti expert now) and on great days we actually get to cook something from home (this has only happened once, but it was glorious); I even learned Nate’s hidden talent of baking bread from scratch (it only took him 5 years to share this talent with me). It was incredible, and now he will have to make it every week for the rest of our life. Maybe that’s why he never shared this with me before, smart man!

Till next time

The Guyanese Appendicitis Diet...try it!

Our host family, Khan and Debbie.

The street we live on, New Road.

Three weeks, 10 pounds, one belly button ring hole sewn shut, and three incisions later I am finally adjusting to the Guyanese way of life. We have moved into a village called Vreed en Hoop (sp?), which apparently is Dutch for “Peace and Hope”, though we haven’t been able to confirm this. We are living with a host family that consists of a middle age East Indian couple who love, I mean LOVE, American 90’s soft rock and just blast it almost every day. Classic! We live in a modest two-story house that consists of a concrete bottom, a wood second story and an aluminum roof. We bathe with a bucket every night, but have to make sure we bathe between 5-9pm, because the water that is piped into the house shuts off between 9pm and 6am. They have a small kitchen with a gas stove that they cook a lot of Indian food on. We are becoming pretty accustomed to the diet, which is carb-heavy and lots of veggies fried in oil. We eat almost no dairy and rarely have cold drinks, but that surprisingly is easy to get used to. We eat fresh fruit in the morning and try to eat the fruit that the birds have picked at because they are sweeter (it’s true). I have no idea if birds pick the sweetest fruit or after a bird picks at a fruit is becomes sweeter, but it works every time! Any fruit with bird holes in it are noticeably sweeter than no bird-hole fruit. For lunch we eat sausage, which as you can imagine is not the same thing as it is in the states. Sausage or chicken is Hot Dogs and if you want chicken you have to ask for “pluck chicken.” Needless to say, we have eaten a lot of hot dogs thinking it would be chicken. Healthy, I know! (can you sense the sarcasm). Dinner usually consists of sautéed veggies, deep-fried fish or chicken or something curried, and rice or roti, which is a flour tortilla-looking thing. My favorite meal thus far is Dahl Puri (split pea soup) Roti (baked flour tortilla-thing) and Fried Okra!

Our host mom in front of our house entrance
(we are the last house of 4 in a row)

We sleep under a mosquito net and apply bug spray likes it cologne and live among geckos, huge beetles and tons I mean tons of small frogs. To be more exact I have about 7 to 8 small frogs join me for my daily bath. They jump out of the pipes, buckets, and my toiletry kit and scare the living crap out of me (ironically they also have giant toads called crapos). It’s like I am showering in a herpatarium fun house every night.

On the weekends we go to what in the States may be considered fast-food, but here is a special occasion restaurant in town called “Chesters” to drink beer (in which they put ice!) and eat fried chicken and french fries. This is a very special night out. Not a lot of people can afford to do this, actually on our PC salary we cant afford to do this, but our host family is very generous and has treated us to this taste of home. I am surprised at how quickly our perspective has changed in just three weeks, and how an outing such as this is such an incredible treat!

Typically village road

During the week we go to our training site all day, which sometimes can be very mundane, but its nice to get out of the house and be with other people our age. On Tuesdays and Thursday Nate works in a primary school and I work in a small health center that is comprised of an outside seating area and one exam room. The clinics here are not very sanitary, have no confidentiality or record-keeping policies in place, and have very little to no resources. The Medex here, even though they are educated at the Georgetown University, practice a lot of “bush medicine”. For example, when I started getting pains in my side the Amer-Indians believed that my “womb” had fallen and tried to massage it “back up.” Of course I quickly put a stop to this and explained to them that I understand what a womb is and that it had not fallen down. This occurs even in the more urban areas, for example a man came into the clinic because he had stepped on a nail and had infected his foot. The nurse had advised him that for future occurrences such as these, he should put hot wax in the wound to limit infections. Once again, I quickly jumped in and tried to explain to the Medex why this may be more harmful than helpful. Nate is in a school, were they literally put the kids that they think "can't learn" in a room and leave them alone, just because they didn't pass one standardized test. Most of the kids are not at an appropriate reading level, but the headmistress and headmasters are more concerned about the teachers' handwriting on the board. Nate already got in trouble for mixing capital and lowercase letters on the board, while he was teaching a lesson! Priorities are very different here but we see lots of potential for our skills to be useful.

As weird as this place seems to us, we seem even weirder to them. There are a lot of funny mistakes we make on a daily basis, which makes us feel like walking jerks. Let see, people don’t bless sneezes and stare at you like you just farted when you do, we try and use clean language like “freakin” and that is even worse than the “F” word, we never order food correctly no matter where we go (e.g. having a cashier scream at us “Use in” or “Take Away”) and we are constantly wearing shoes when we are supposed to be barefoot and vice versa. Little reminders like this every day tell us that culture is so much deeper than food, language, and music.

Till next time.

Getting our groove back

It's been said that when life gives you lemons, you need to paint that s--t gold. While gold paint is in low supply down here, we are looking at our recent adventure as a learning experience and we're thankful that our life here has begun to normalize.

We've moved out of the Windjammer hotel in Georgetown and the decision was made not to move Ilana and I back into the remote training site right away in order for her to have a chance to heal closer to medical resources. We're currently at the coastal training site and living with a new host family... who's awesome. I'm prohibited from giving too many details (for security reasons) but they're a younger East Indian couple who are psyched to have American guests to spoil.



Some differences:
-Aptly named "mini buses" are used for all transportation.
-No privacy since the walls that divide rooms don't go all the way to the ceiling.
-Different house pets include tree frogs, geckos, huge black beetles.
-Sleeping under a mosquito net takes practice (i.e. don't sleep touching the net)
-Shower with a bucket and before 9pm since the water cuts off.
-All the food, even though it may go by the same name (e.g. breakfast sausage = hot dog), is not the same.


Some things we miss already:
-Privacy
-Cheese
-Wine
-Beer
-A prompt and corruption free postal service
-Anyone who is reading this post.... REALLY miss you guys!

Some things we like:
-Hammocks
-Roti (Indian baked good)
-All the fruits and veggies... Whole Foods eat your heart out.
-Everything is super cheap (15 min mini bus fare cost $.30)
-The generosity of the Guyanese

Right now our day to day involves taking a mini bus to the training site, the distance varies for every trainee. Our host family cooks us breakfast, packs a lunch, and teaches us to cook Guyanese food for dinner. Since all the volunteers in Guyana are either health or education promoters, our training sessions are a combination of group discussions/lectures and breakout sessions that focus more relevant to out areas. We all have practicum sites in the area (schools or clinics) where we get the opportunity to get experience doing what we do in Guyana. Part of our training also involves doing a mini project at our practicum site, for which we get a $10,000 GUY budget (roughly $50 USD).
The biggest complaints of the volunteers so far have to do with cultural differences like food (everything curried), no privacy, being treated like little children by our some host families, and the realization that all your issues could be resolved by simply requesting to go home.

We're very happy right now, feel very safe, making news friends, and looking forward all that is Guyana.

Much love.