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.