Let me first preface this post by saying that we are so grateful for all the support we have received from our family and friends and all the work we do in our community is really thanks to you. Now, less than 10 months before we close our service, we have identified what we feel is a very important project: the renovation of the Mabaruma Regional Conference Centre (or MRCC). The purpose of this renovation is to create a suitable venue for community activities. In development work, capacity building is the keystone to helping a community and this building would be a big step in that direction.

Mabaruma is a small hinterland community in the northwest part of Guyana. It is not accessible by land from the capital city of Georgetown, instead it is only accessible by air, which is very expensive or by water which is very dangerous and time consuming. Despite the challenges, many aid organizations are present in this region and do their best to supply the area with resources. Unfortunately because of lack of training, many of these valuable resources go unused, programs stagnate, and needy people are left without help. The most common reason that trainings do not occur is because there is not a suitable meeting space. "We", Nate and I, believe that a "meeting of the minds" is an important function of any organization that's interested in finding consensus and making decisions for the future. That's why we feel the renovation of the MRCC is really needed for the development of our community.

Presently the MRCC is in a state of disrepair in that it lacks shelter from the elements, electric current, adequate furniture, adequate ventilation, adequate sanitary facilities, and secure storage facilities. By helping us reach our goal of $9,582.20 you are directly helping the capacity building endeavors of the education and health departments, regional administration, religious organizations, as well as other public service organizations that require meeting space to conduct the advancement of their programs.

Also, it’s a tax-deductible donation! Click Here to help us and our community.

We thank you for your support and hope that you will pass on the message.

I normally don’t post blog postings on the day to day occurrences of Nate’s and my life, and even less about intimate or romantic happenings, but this story I would like to share is mostly for me to remember the details of this night, as our blog is very much a journal of our Peace Corps experience, and also to share how romance doesn’t need to be an expensive gesture, just a thoughtful one. Early last week, Nate had told me that the shop that we buy all of our dry goods was having a family dinner and that they had invited us down after 5:30pm to come and eat with them. I was excited to hear that we were invited out for dinner, because our weekends are often pretty mundane and we also didn’t have to cook or clean a meal. Awesome! Friday morning rolled around and as Nate was leaving for the river he reminded me that I needed to be ready by 6pm sharp to go down to dinner. I wondered why so punctual, nothing ever starts on time.

Nate arrived at 5:20pm and quickly got changed and started packing a bag. He told me we needed to bring our own silverware and plates as this dinner had turned into quite the event and they wouldn’t have enough plates and silverware for all the guests. I was a little surprised that the shop that sells dry goods didn’t have enough plates, but I didn’t think anything of it. I got dressed and as we began walking outside a neighbour of ours called Nate and told us to stay put, he came and picked us up in a car and took us down to the market where the party was supposed to be. Once again, didn’t think anything of it, just thought we got lucky with a free drop. When we arrived at the shop, I saw our wonderful dry good ladies Auntie Joan and Auntie Kay still working at the shop. They told us to go ahead and head upstairs for the gathering. I was a bit confused why the two women who were hosting the party weren’t at the party, but I figured we were just early as usual.

On top of the shop, there is a really nice space that used to be a little restaurant. It is no longer in use, but it still has all the amenities of a restaurant. Nice table, chairs, a full kitchen, fridge, sound system etc. As we walked upstairs I heard music, but I didn’t see anyone or anything set up. I turned around and told Nate, that we must be really early because there is no one here. He smiled and said, “Happy Six Years Baby.” I looked back at the space and then back at him with a very confused look on my face since our wedding anniversary is in December and it’s the end of May, and we have only been married for 3 years. Before I could get any words out, he hugged me and said “Today six years ago we began dating. I wanted to take you on a date today to say that I hope we continue dating for at least another six years.” As we continue walking inside there was a table set with candles, slow jam music playing on the stereo and a few ice cold beers waiting for us to drink. He had set it all up. Our neighbour who picked us up was catering our dinner; he had made chicken curry, roti, fried rice, channa and awesome rum cake. Our dry shop lady’s had given us the space upstairs for the night and even gave us a sweet appetizer of fresh watermelon.

It was truly one of the most thoughtful gestures. It is not often that we get to go on a “real date” here in the Peace Corps, but Nate used our community of friends and neighbours to make a really memorable night. I know I am gushing mushing love stuff, but Friday night will be one of my most cherished memories of Peace Corps with my incredible partner. Thank you for bringing romance into my life, even in the jungles of South America. I love you.

P.S. There are no pictures since Nate carrying a camera would have tipped off the surprise. If you know me, you know I love to ask questions.

Till next time.

Scratch another item off my Guyana bucket list... last weekend I finally got to see an anaconda. Though only 5ft and small by anaconda standards (adults have been caught in our area of lengths of up to 30 feet!!), it still counts.In Guyana they call anacondas "camoodie". Everyone in Mabaruma knows I've been itching to see one since I've been here. A buddy of mine, Terry, has insane stories about anacondas he's seen and helped catch. Once while on his way home he saw a log that someone had laid across the road. When he finally got close enough to inspect the log he discovered to his surprise that it was in fact a 20 ft anaconda that was crossing from trench to trench.

Another story he tells is when he and some other guys caught a huge one (30 ft) up at the river head. A snake that long would easily be about as thick as a medium size tree trunk. Hoping to get it back to market where they'd have a chance to sell it for a significant profit if alive, they were able to tie it up and get it in the boat. Unfortunately, once inside the boat the snake decided it had had enough and began to thrash around, eventually shaking the boat to pieces. Worse, now the men were stranded at the river head, which is 2 hours from the nearest village, clinging to the banks of a river where the know they've just loosed a huge angry snake into black murky water. J Lo and Ice Cube eat your hearts out. Hours later, a man paddling by on his canoe was able to send for help.

My story isn't that badass, but I did have to wade through thigh deep water to get to the snake. I had no idea these snakes had iridescent skin.

Iridescent skin glimmers in the sunlight.Terry and the anacondita.

Thanks to my buddy Terry for remembering that I wanted to see one and for catching it when it was found in a chicken coup during his sister's wedding. Cool guy. For those of you coming to visit us, he's offered to take us on a little trip to his uncle's house who makes traditional bows and arrows... then goes hunting with them.

This man took it, thought about selling it, but then released it by the bridge pictured here because it was too small..

When we first arrived in Guyana, we heard about this pretty awesome three-day event on the border of Brazil called Rodeo. The trip consisted of a 15-hr bus ride to the south-west part of Guyana to see Brazilian and Amerindian barefoot cowboys ride bareback bulls and horses, while feasting on meat on a stick and drinking Brazils famous Caipirinhas. You can imagine how quickly we decided that this adventure would definitely make it onto our bucket list while in Guyana. And here we are a year later and can report back that the hype was spot on, because Rodeo was unlike anything I have ever experienced before.

We started our trip two-days before the first kick-off event which was to occur on Friday night. Together with 11 other Peace Corps volunteers and about 20 other Guyanese, we jumped onto two buses at 8:00pm Thursday night to head out on our 15-hr bus ride. Unfortunately what was supposed to be 15-hrs turned into 20-hrs because we got stuck in the mud twice and had to be pulled out by a truck and our bus couldn’t go up a steep hill due to the weight, which meant we had to get out of the bus in the wee hours of the morning to walk alongside the bus in the middle of the jungle. Mind you there is no road; it’s just a dirt path. About two hours before our arrival in Lethem we stopped in the village of Annai and got our first taste of Brazilian meat and some Suriname beer. We ate our first of many servings of Calabrese sausage cooked in a typical Brazilian churrasco barbecue.

"These are ant hills!"

We finally arrived at our hostel, the Savannah Inn, at around 6pm on Friday, quickly showered and began our nightly festivities. But before we headed to the pageant, which was the kick-off event, we first had some dinner and ate some of the most incredible Brazilian pizza. Who knew Brazil was not only known for its meat, but its pizza too. Unfortunately, the pageant got rained out, but nevertheless we got to socialize with other volunteers and Guyanese friends in a cool outdoor bar.

"Brazilian Big-Boy Beers"

Saturday morning, we woke up and started our day with Bloody Marys that we packed with us all the way from Georgetown- can’t start a weekend in the sun without some Bloody Marys first. Before heading to the grounds we walked around Lethem and did some window shopping, which felt almost surreal, because I can’t remember the last time I went shopping in an actual store (we even tried on clothes!) Lethem looks and feels very different than our site. I am sure it has a lot to do with the proximity of Brazil, which is only a 30 minute drive. Lethem is mostly savannah with some of the oldest mountains in the backdrop. It feels like the Wild West, everyone drives a truck or rides a horse, and wears a cowboy hat and most people speak Portuguese. As you walk around you can almost hear the theme song of the “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” playing in your head. A little after lunch we headed to the grounds for our first taste of rodeo.

"The backdrop of Lethem. Doesn't it look like the Wild West"

"People traveling in Lethem"

"This was the Brazo hunk of the Rodeo."

"Barefoot Vaquero"

We arrived to what looked like a state fair ground with a large rodeo arena where all the riding occurred. The events that took place throughout the two days consisted of bareback bronco riding, saddle bronco riding, bareback bull riding, saddle bull riding, bull roping, greased pig catching, (which we missed) and a watermelon eating competition. All the cowboys or “vaqueros” which is Spanish for livestock herder, as they were called were mostly barefoot when doing all their riding, which I am told is way harder to do. Even though we are in Guyana and close to Brazil all the music they played throughout the day was American country, which I found pretty funny. And not only was it American country, but they played the same 6 songs on loop. Normally this would have gotten on my nerves, but because we were having so much fun it was actually nice to able to sing along to all of the songs.

"Getting ready to ride."

"She was our absolute favorite. Aren't her boots so cute?"

Rodeo finished each day at around 6pm and then the night time fair-atmosphere would erupt. There were all sorts of fair games and bounce houses, cotton candy, and a huge dance party, which Nate and I partook on each night.

But wait I haven’t spoken about the food…oh the food! How I miss thee. Nate and I ate our body weight in meat on a stick in a matter of two days. We had T-bone on a stick, ribs on a stick, chicken on a stick, sausage on a stick and the list goes on. With every portion of meat we also ate farihna, which is powdered cassava that is made into flour that is normally used as a seasoning like salt and pepper. But at the grounds they would add other seasonings to it and put in a cup for you to eat as is. Surprisingly, it was delicious. If you got lucky, some stalls would have farihna that would be sautéed and pieces of dried meat, like beef jerky, would be mixed in. Needless, to say I ate so many cups of this that I made myself sick. To wash down all these delectable meals, which we had probably 6 a day of, we drank Brazilian beer and like I mentioned before Caipirinhas, which is Brazil's national cocktail, made with cachaça, which is sugar cane rum, sugar and lime. I even got to practice my Portuguese, which well…wasn’t great. But I was able to order food and communicate most of what I needed and wanted and was even able to throw in a few jokes. To make an awesome weekend even awesomer, we got to meet the president of Guyana and take a picture with Mr. Ramotar. Nate was psyched about this, as this was one other thing on his bucket list. Big weekend for our bucket list…huh?

"T-bone on a stick!"

"Nate made friends with the Portuguese women selling meat on a stick. Classic Nate."

"Nate bringing me Caipirinhas. What a beautiful man!"

"President Ramotar"

So now a few days later, after recuperating I can say that the 20-hr bus ride was absolutely worth it, though on the way back the 18-hr bus ride back seemed a little less worth it. Funny how that always happens.

Till next time.

Over the last year we have portrayed our experience in Peace Corps and Guyana in a very positive light. We have done this because we are truly enjoying our time in Peace Corps and in our new home of Guyana. But that is not to say that we haven’t dealt with some real issues while here, both related to the difference in culture and that Guyana, even with all its splendour and charm, is a developing country, especially in the hinterland regions like where we live. A few weeks ago, I posted a blog from another Peace Corps volunteer that gave a more accurate portrayal of what daily life is really like. This inspired Nate and I to discuss why we haven’t been more real on our blog and we came up with a few reasons: one- we don’t want to give a negative impression of Guyana, two-we really love our community, and three- we chose to come to Peace Corps, no one forced us. So we didn’t want our blog to be a nit-picking, negative-Nancy forum. But on that same note we do want to share some of our frustrations and discuss some real issues that are not necessarily specific to Guyana, but to the developing world and what we have learned. So if you know me, the topic of my first real-issue blog post won’t surprise you. Yup…you guessed it women and the developing nation. Now I promise you I won’t rant and rave for what might seem like hours, because once you open that can of worms, well let’s just say I hope you have some time. I will try and be concise and objective with my thoughts and give just a few real life stories. Also, what I am going to say here is not going to surprise you and it is certainly not new. Many other organizations, books, non-profits have not only discussed this issue, but are currently working to improve the problem. So here it goes.

When first preparing to come to Guyana, Peace Corps told us that we needed to mentally prepare ourselves for the differences in gender roles, especially if we were placed in a remote location. They explained that it would be taboo for Nate to help in household chores, that men ONLY were allowed to partake in drinking and enjoying leisure time outside of the home, and that people would expect me to have children and would probably consider us baron, due to my age. I thought to myself, “Yeah that will probably be hard, but I am mentally prepared for it, so I will just laugh it off.” Wrong! However, the reason it bothered me wasn’t because we were constantly considered strange, but because those gender roles stem from a place so much deeper than just what each gender is supposed to do but how women are constantly treated and considered second-class citizens.

When we first arrived, people, mostly men, would reach across me to shake Nate’s hand and never make eye-contact with me. When asked to go on an outreach trip, the supervisor of the trip, who was usually a woman, would call Nate and ask for his permission for me to go. I would be considered loose if I went to a rum shop with Nate, don’t even think about me going alone-even if it is just to pick something up for a get-together, and when acknowledged at a rum-shop the person buying the drink would ask Nate if I could have a beer, purchase the beer hand it to him for it to be handed to me. Women are not to speak up and when boisterous, like myself, would be asked to please quiet down because I am “too loud,”- true story.

Most women in our site do not aspire to be more than just a housewife with a primary education. Few complete a secondary education (high-school) and even fewer attend university. And it is absolutely right that there is a correlation between women and education and the size and economic status of their families. A small family is usually comprised of six children, while the largest family I have ever seen was 19 children. When I interview women at the antenatal (or prenatal as it’s called in the States) clinic who has a large family, 4 out of five times they do not know how to write or read and often times the children come from different men. Their main and only duties are those of household duties and many of times the family has very little means to buy food, not because the father doesn’t have a job or doesn’t make money, but because the money is spent quickly on superfluous material goods, such as a TV or generator to play music, that he chooses, or on alcohol (which is the most common expense for men). Often times I try and convince women on choosing family planning when they express to me the difficulty of maintaining their family. But more often than not, they do not choose a family planning option or don’t stick with it, because partners do not allow it, mostly because it gets in the way of producing a large family. Of course there are exceptions, but those women are usually educated and are in a more egalitarian household. But at the end of the day, a woman’s worth is directly correlated with how many children she has.

Now, I am only speaking for remote communities. I do not work in the capital of Guyana, Georgetown, and do not know if it is different, but my little observation says that families are smaller, and that woman are becoming more educated and in higher position. But it is still very common and normal to see a 19 year-old having her first or second baby.

When I am asked why I don’t have children and I explain that I am on family planning and waiting until I am financially well-off, and mentally prepared to embark on the beautiful journey of mother-hood, I just get starred at like I am a bit crazy.

On a daily basis, these types of conversations anger me, bring me down and discourage me. I often want to shake these women and men, and say two different things. Women- “you are strong, capable and your self-worth is not calculated in the number of children. GET EDUCATED, speak to your partner, asked to be included in decisions, and if not find another man that will. Come together and SPEAK UP.” Men- “you all have a mother, so respect your partners, include her in decisions, take women’s opinions and educate your daughters!”

It saddens me when I work with youth and the same standards are being passed onto them. Girls don’t speak up in class, and the ones that do are the promiscuous ones (or so they say), they normally have not thought of doing anything other than getting pregnant (usually at the age of 16-17) with their lives and when I encourage them to think outside of the norm, they laugh. Boys speak up, and nonchalantly express that they want a girl who will give them “plenty babies” and when I encourage them to be more egalitarian, well…they laugh and hit on me.

I will continue to be the outlier here and try in the most culturally appropriate way to show that women are equal. And Nate well…he will continue to wash clothes in front of everyone, despite the harassing and laughing, will continue to ask men and others to acknowledge my presence and will always respond “you can ask Ilana that directly, she is very knowledgeable” or “I will need to discuss that with my wife, we make all decisions together.”

Till next time.

Ready, duck face and all.

About 2weeks ago we celebrated the 9th anniversary of my 21stbirthday (i.e. my 30th birthday). Hard to believe that my 20s areover!

This yearwas way more fun than last year’s birthday, which came right on the heels ofIlana’s emergency appendectomy and moving for the 5th time in 2months. This year Ilana, my personal event planner, diviner of awesome, duchessof details, and partner extraordinaire... planned the pants off this party andone of the best parts was how little I had to do because she outsourced so muchof the work. That might sound funny, but here everything has to be done by handand from scratch.

Back home in the States you might just go to the mall andgrocery store and get the food, a gift, a card, party supplies, a cake and viola...you have a party. Down here we have to be a bit more creative with how wecelebrate special occasions. For example it took 7 days of searching to find 10pounds of chicken. I don’t think anyoneis better at making a special occasion from scratch than Ilana. Thanks baby.

Also, thankyou to everyone who came and made my 30th such a special event. I’d like to wish a special thanks to myin-laws Edda and José for smuggling in those party decorations 2 months ago;Harmony and Travis for making super decadent chocolate-chocolate cupcakes, Lizzyand Suzy for making chocolate-iced old-fashioned doughnuts, Duch for thestogie, Emily for the booze, and Kristin for the devilled eggs.

1 VSO + 2 World Teach + 2 Project Trust + 7 Peace Corps= KARAOKEThirty gotme thinking a little bit, and since I have the time, I made a summary of all thethings I’ve learned in my first 30 years.

0-5: -Everythinghas its place. Food goes in the mouth, poop goes in the potty, crayons go onthe paper, and little brothers go in a half-Nelson. -If you’renice to other people, other people will be nice to you. -Rulesshould always be followed. Adults are masters of the universe, never makemistakes, and all have my best interest in mind. I better listen to them.

5-10: -Otherpeople have needs and wants other than me. I should treat my brother wellbecause he’s the only one I’ve got.-Some peoplewill say one thing and do another. -Teacher’sdon’t live in their classrooms.-My parentshave my back.-Girls are moreinteresting than annoying, but not by much.

10-15:-I’d reallylike to be cool and the best way to do that is to be like everyone else.-Adults makemistakes too. What’s important is always try to do the right thing andadmitting when you don’t. -If I dowell in school I’ll get a good SAT score, go to a good college, get a good job,and live happily ever after.-It’sannoying how my parents always seem to know exactly what to do. -I’m apparently more interested in girls thanthey’re interested in me. Older guys seem to be more appealing to them. Perhapsit’s because they wear deodorant... look into deodorant.

15-20: -It’s notalways easy to tell the right thing from the wrong thing.-I’mbasically an adult, so why won’t anyone take me seriously.-I got intoa good college.... but I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up.-I know myparents have my back, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got everything figured out.-Girls are awesomebut distracting. Deodorant helps get your foot in the door, but there seems tobe a lot of talking on the other side of the door once you’re in.

20-25:-Manymistakes later, the right thing usually seems to be the hardest option. -I’m notsure what I want to do forever, but this job seems like a good start.- I’d like tobe cool and the best way to do that is not to be like anybody else.-Shit, I’man adult. Maybe I should take something seriously.- I’m betterat being in a relationship when I’m better at being myself.

25-30:-I learn alot more from being wrong than from being right. -Valuabledoesn’t mean it costs a lot of money.-The bestfriends are the ones who challenge you to be better.-Hopingdoesn’t accomplish anything. Planning is a much better strategy.-Damn I costmy parent’s a shit-load of money!!!- Wow! Sheis awesome. I need to be the best version of myself to keep this one around.

Can anyonegive tell me what I’m likely to learn in the next 30 years?

Clearly also learned not to take anything too seriously.

Below is a blog post by another volunteer currently serving in Ethiopia. His blog post on what its really like to be in Peace Corps is so eerily spot on yet inspiring that I wanted to re-post it here. I could not express this any better, even if I tried. Enjoy.His blog can be found here.

****I feel as though I’ve done somewhat of a disservice throughout this blog. I’ve painted a picture of my time here that isn’t precisely accurate. I’m an emotional person, romantic, optimistic to a fault. I like extremes and superlatives. I exaggerate in an attempt to draw the reader in, and to make sense of things I can’t make sense of. I romanticize this experience as a function of my personality but also as a coping mechanism. Peace Corps is really hard. So I want to write about the real Ethiopia. And the real Peace Corps experience. That way, if a future volunteer reads this, they understand what to expect, and won’t hate me for only showing sunset pictures and kids holding hands. So what should you expect? Nothing is the best answer. Expect nothing and you will be pleasantly surprised. Every experience is different. My friend Jon lives 80 miles away. Our lives could not be more different. His house has no floor save for the mud it was built on. He is lucky to have power one day out of the week. My sitemate Dave lives 200 meters from my house and our experiences are entirely different. So here are some observations, a look into what I do, and an idea of what your potential service will look like. Peace Corps is defined by a strange dichotomy. Freedom and containment. I wake up every day with a blank slate. I can do anything. I can do nothing. And while the possibilities are only limited by my own imagination, the ability to do as I please is corrupted by a number of social, political, and cultural practices. Case in point: Most volunteers assume they will run to let off steam in their new country. However, running here is a cause of stress more so than a release. You get stared at as a foreigner here. These are stares that know no shame. Stares that you can feel without seeing. They are honest and curious stares, but can crack even the kindest of spirits. But a foreigner in shorts? Running? That is unheard of. Running here means being followed by hordes of children, the last thing you need when trying to let off steam. I want to export coffee to benefit local farmers and provide an organic alternative to the Starbucks mess we have back home. The bureaucratic structure here has destroyed those dreams. Disappointment is part of the PC experience. Doing something like the Peace Corps will be your lowest of lows and your highest of highs. Highs that shatter your previous world views. You will feel refreshed, walk in a forest and quote Thoreau. The lows can last so long that you need a fleeting moment of existentialism just to make it through the rainy season. Well, that, and a ton of movies. You will consider going home. You will count down the days until you leave. You will count up from the day you arrived. “I can’t believe we’ve been here for a year.” “I can’t believe we’ll be here another year!” You will understand yourself, question yourself. Compare where you came from to where you are. I have days when I miss America. I have days when I loathe it. Why do people care about Charlie Sheen and Amy Winehouse? How many marines died last week? How many kids in the horn of Africa died of hunger? I can’t even imagine dying of hunger. When I’m hungry, I eat. But I eat strange food. Ethiopian food is unlike anything else in the world. Sometimes it is delicious, but most times it is very mediocre. Other times, it is so incredibly bad that I consider burning down every plant that grows whatever the hell is in ‘gunfo’ Don’t try gunfo. Universally, Peace Corps volunteers crave food. I have dreams about it. Vivid dreams where I belly flop into a bowl of ice cream off of a hot fudge brownie diving board. Sushi. I have a long distance relationship with Sushi and we are not communicating well. As volunteers, we love to complain. We joke about our poop and our pooping locations. We laugh about smelling bad. We smell bad. We yearn for hot showers. But I think it’s just for show. Any volunteer, more so than food or showers, miss people and places. You will miss friends and seasons. During your service, you will be alone on the Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving. You will miss your family, your really hot girlfriend, and the contextual clues you associate with fond memories. I know what the Chesapeake bay feels like on thanksgiving. I can feel the football, and taste the sweet potato pie. I know what Glebe Park looks like, the green asphalt and the smell of cut grass. You will be stared at 24/7 365. I understand what it’s like to be a good-looking girl at a frat party. Stay strong ladies. You will develop an eerie sense of calm. I’ve spent 75 hours in the last two weeks on a bus. The DMV will be a breeze now. I’ve found new and embarrassing ways to entertain myself. I could watch paint dry and be perfectly happy. One of the great things about Peace Corps is you have a massive amount of time to become a better person. The best advice I can give is to try and do something everyday to improve upon yourself. For some people this is writing or reading. For others it is teaching English or working out. Learn an instrument or paint. Do whatever works for you, but know this: You will stare at the wall. I stare at the wall a lot. I’ve had every thought someone can have. Probably twice. Transportation completely sucks. I just got out of a bus with 12 seats on it. There were 25 people on it. There were two chickens and probably 20 kilo’s of rancid butter. Here’s a quck letter: Dear Ethiopia, It’s ok to open the windows on the bus. I promise you won’t die from the wind. I promise it’s not that cold. Currently, sweat is running down my lower back and into the danger zone. My sweat is sweating. Fresh air is nothing to be scared of. Tuberculosis is. As much as I like saunas and the smell of chicken feces, can we please crack the window’s for 2 minutes? I will love you forever. Yours truly, Michael There is no average day. Last week, my Tuesday was crazy. I had a meeting with the tourism office about making them a website. I taught a man how to make guacemole and tortillas which he will sell in his store. I played basketball, added a layer to a clay oven and worked on the newsletter I am writing for Peace Corps. The next day? I slept in, watched a silly amount of the show ‘Dexter’ and checked my fantasy baseball team while the internet was up. Yeah, I’m cool. There will be times when, despite your pictures of you hugging little kids, you just want to tackle one of them and scream, my name is NOT, “you you you!!!!!, give me money!!!!!!” In America we ask for the time. Here, we ask for the month. It’s the most obvious difference. The pace of life here is slow, methodical, cyclical. Everything takes a long time. If you aren’t a patient person you will become one. Life here is completely different. It is another world, lost in space and time. It is hard, and the little annoyances can manifest themselves into a black cloud. They certainly will, but it is important to make note of the small victories and the little moments. When I open my eyes I am reminded of why I am here. Just when I think a kid is running up to me to ask me for money, she tells me that she loves me and blows a kiss. But then I get on a bus and start crying. I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere with a busted engine. It’s getting dark, I have a chicken in my lap and personal space at this point is a distant memory. People are yelling into their cell phones, begging me to speak to them and take them to America. Oh and the only food in the town by the road is Gunfo. Remember in times like this to take a deep breath. Peace Corps really is a roller coaster. An exhilarating and scary ride that completely sucks and totally kicks ass. And when you are feeling down, just remember to go outside and let Africa save you.By: Michael Waidmann****Till next time.

Adult Mash was yesterday and it was glitter-tastic! We started the afternoon by assembling the three floats, Education, Health and Admin at the bottom of the Mabaruma hill. Each department had its own elaborate costume, music and band (which is the group of people behind the float that dances). Nate was part of the Department of Education’s band and I was part of the Department of Health’s band. We began by dancing up the hill to the Recreational park, which is normally just a 20 minute walk, but because we stopped so many times to dance and be judged it took about 3 ½ hrs. Needless to say, we were exhausted by the time we got to the park. Once at the park the three floats were judged and then we had food and all the drinks you can imagine provided for us. Education won first prize and health…well we came in last place. Once the prizes were given out, we danced and drank into the wee hours of the night.

Getting glittered up.

She was the band leader for Admin

Our Mash is a very small production of what happens in town. In town the parade lasts for 5-6 hours and there are thousands of people and hundreds of individual and group costumes. You can barely walk in town on the day of Mash, because people from all over the country come to celebrate.

Education's Float

Admin's Float

Health's Float

Today, we are still finding glitter all over our bodies and house, even though we have scrubbed and swept at least a few times. I am sure we will continue to find glitter in places we didn’t even think could get glitter-fied. We had a blast. Maybe next time we will venture into town and see the real deal.

Till next time.

A year ago, the Gainesville Sun wrote an article about Nate's and I crazy idea of joining the Peace Corps. I think in the article they even said something about us selling all of our worldly possessions and taking a leap of faith.

Well...one year later they have done a follow-up story on our adventure thus far. I think they did a great job at capturing our life here and most importantly our relationship, which makes it all worthwhile. Anyway...here is the article. Enjoy!

Till next time.

Normally I only post blogs when we have cool cultural experiences to share, but this week has been an abnormally super-stellar week, so I thought I would quickly share the reasons for my glowing attitude, since days, especially weeks, like these don't occur on the regular. First of all, on the 15th of Feb. we celebrated our one year in country. Can you believe it? Time flies when you are in the bush.

Ok, so this week we got to travel out of our site and spend it in Georgetown to train the new volunteers. Even though Nate and I were apart for a few days, I got to visit my original host family in St. Cuthbert's. They hadn't seen me since I was medically-evacuated. It was pretty surreal to be back, but super enjoyable. Then Nate and I met up to spend two nights in town which meant hot showers, eating pizza, burgers, cheese and drinking wine and watching TV in Air-conditioning! Can you say SCORE?

But the coolest thing is that this week Nate got published in Guyana's national newspapers, the Starbroek News and the Chronicle, due to his incredible work with adult literacy in a small Amerindian village in Region 1, Tobago Hill. He also published his first article on our friend's, Mike Jones, NGO's website, Open Equal Free.org. So freakin proud of him.

And on a small personal note Nate and I were featured in a Valentine's day article in The Alligator, which is my alma matter's newspaper. So yeah it's been a good week.

Till next time.

On February 2nd, Nate and I celebrated Children’s Mash. Mash, which is short for Mashramani, is an annual festival that celebrates Guyana becoming a Republic in 1970. The festival, usually held on 23 February – Guyanese Republic Day – includes a parade, music, games and cooking and is intended to commemorate the "Birth of the Republic". The word "Mashramani" is an Amerindian word which means "the celebration of a job well done". It is probably the most colourful of all the country's festivals. There are spectacular costume competitions, float parades, masquerade bands, and dancing in the streets to the accompaniment of steel drum music and calypsos.

In our village there are two versions of Mash, children’s mash and adult mash. Children’s mash occurs early in the month and all the schools in the region compete in five categories which are Calypso, Dramatic Poetry, Dance, Physical Display, and Costume. It’s a day-long competition and the first place of each category goes on to compete in the country-wide competition later in the month. Nate and I not only were able to attend children’s mash, but we were asked to judge two categories each.

The Judges Table

Nate was a judge for Calypso, which is original song-writing and singing, and Physical Display, which is gymnastics. Impressive gymnastics! Your heart skips at least a few times in each routine, since there are no mats or any sort of protection and these kids get really high in their pyramids.

Calypso Competition

Physical Display

I judged Dance and Dramatic Poetry, which I think next to seeing the awesome costumes these schools put together with just glitter, wire and paper, dramatic poetry was my favourite. The theme of this year’s Mash is “Mashin with Pride, Keepin We Traditions Alive.”

Dramatic Poetry

Adult mash will occur at the end of the month (it’s a wee bit more colourful…wink…wink) and Nate and I are hoping to participate in our respective departments float….and yes we will both be decked out in glitter!

All the Awesome Costumes!

Till next time.

Noemster and Ilana making a postcard.I can honestly say, without a hint of exaggeration, that ourrecent trip to Barbados was the BEST vacation that I’ve ever had and I knowIlana feels the same way. It’s hard to put into words just how awesome it was. To try to use a simile, if this vacation hadbeen a concert it would be like if Led Zeppelin played a reunion show for yoursurprise birthday after finding out that John Bonham hadn’t actually been deadthis whole time he’d just been gone working on his masterpiece, a whole newkind of bacon that gives you a 6-pack,slows aging, and prevents cancer.... it was like that.

Barbados as a whole was extraordinary. With a population ofonly about 300,000 it’s small enough to feel like a community. It is also verydeveloped: extremely clean, potable water from every tap, electricity all thetime, and everywhere we went the people were super nice (even outside touristhotspots).

Ilana and I arrived 2 days earlier than everyone. We spentour 3rd anniversary at the Butterfly Beach Hotel, which was reallynice. The hotel was not crazy expensive, right on the ocean, walking distanceto a supermarket= awesome. We definitely experienced a period ofadjustment going from remote Guyana to Barbados (hence the reason we dropped aserious wad at the supermarket our first night (mostly on salad ingredients,cheese, and wine (ok and bacon))).

Then, they came. Some might say we had our cake and ate ittoo. Others might say it was like watching a cake ice itself, cut itself up,then dance it’s way onto your fork. First Noemi, sweet sweet Noemi. Then Alexand Cat, glorious. Then, about an hour before the New Year began, Drew andHibby (is there an emoticon for holding back a tear?). Again, I’m havingtrouble finding words.

I got a little excited to see the washing machine.

About what transpired from then, it is only fair to say “holy$@%, that was the best $@^*%@^ time of my life.” We laughed, we sang, we gaineda combined weight of 14 pounds (just Ilana and me). I literally woke up eachmorning saying, “man, that was the best dream....” and then I’d realize it wasreally happening.

'Nuf said.Activities included: going to beautiful beaches, snorkellingwith sea turtles, going on a pleasure cruise, swimming in caves, taste testingrum, karaokeing, mini bussing, and eating delicious food the best of which wasprepared by Ilana and Drew.

For those thinking about going to Barbados and interested inthe details of the trip, this is what we found worked well for us:Staying in a 3 bedroom condo in St Lawrence Gap (called theTerraces), close enough to bars that it was walking distance, but far enoughthat it wasn’t loud. Thanks to Noemi, our card-carrying travel agent superpal,for finding it. I think my compatriots would agree that the condo made it the best vacation2. Were able to take the mini bus to Carlisle Bay, where youcan snorkel with ship wrecks and turtles. We also did a 6-hour catamaran tourthere that was this** good. We used a crew called Jammin and would highlyHIGHLY recommend them.

Pleasure cruise.We went to Oistins Famous Fish Fry Fridays to on a Friday, butwere happy to discover that it’s better to go on a weeknight because there werealot fewer people. At the pier right behind the fish market you can take theguts of the fresh you just bought and feed it to sea turtles for free. We gotin and swam with them there too. To the northern parts of the island we went to a beachcalled Sheba Bath that looked right out of a James Bond movie. Also went toHarrison Cave and Animal Flower Cave.Rum tour close to Bridgetown is fun if you love Mt Gay rum,but it’s not actually where they distil it. For that you have to go to adifferent place up the island.

Animal Flower Cave. Thanks to our friends for coming and seeing us in Barbados.We look at the photos often and say that was just one of many awesome vacationswe’re going to have with you guys. Alex, it was ok to see you too I guess. Ourplan of joining the Peace Corps to get you to buy us an iPad has finallyworked. Didn’t see that coming did you? Gra

*Works better with “legendary”. **As good as the blacked out parts from Hang Over but on aboat.



Coincidence or Barbados love bubble magic?

Well…Mother Nature you tried, but I am sorry to inform you that you failed. My parents arrived in Guyana on January 7th, and despite the enormous amounts of rain we were able to make it out to Mabaruma, even if it was two days later than planned, and show them what our day to day mostly consists of.

Echevarria’s-1, Mother Nature-0…

After returning from our kick-ass trip from Barbados (Nate will be posting about these glorious 10 days) we were quickly welcomed by my mom and dad who arrived the same day as us. We spent the first two nights in Vreed en Hoop were we trained prior to moving to Mabaruma and introduced my parents to our host mom Debee and the rest of the clan. We commemorated our reunion, yup…you guessed it, with an awesome bottle of wine my parents brought us and finally made it to sleep at 2am after all the excitement of seeing each other began to wear off. The next day we caught up and our host mom cooked my favorite Guyanese meal for them to try and then that night my parents treated us all to dinner at the Brazilian Restaurant. That night we had an impromptu little party, were my mom showed our Indo-Guyanese friends how to dance Puerto Rican reggae (this was just one of the many times my mom showed Guyanese how to dance Spanish music). Needless to say, they now ask me on a daily basis when my mom is returning to Guyana to dance with them, because they don’t see me dance and well they like her better. Haha! Thanks MOM!

We spent the remaining two days trying to get out to Mabaruma, but since our air strip is a dirt road and there are no lights, the rain was too much for us to fly. So we were forced to stay in Georgetown for a few more days. But because my parents are awesome and brought multiple bottles of wine and tons of snack goodies, we spent those days just catching up drinking and talking.

We finally made it out to Mabaruma and only had a few days to show them the highlights of our village. We showed them the market, went for a day-long hike to the falls, played pool, went out to WhiteCreek and cooked some Guyanese food, walked around our village and introduced them to about a hundred people, we took them to our jobs and gave them an idea of our daily work schedule and lastly we went to a rum shop, where yes my mom danced again, but this time it was Salsa. My dad spoiled us by cooking almost every meal and giving us a break from the kitchen, and then as quickly as they arrived they were gone. Bummer. We didn’t even get to show them how we do our wash (wink…wink). I think they figured if they kept us occupied they would leave before we would realize wash needed to be done. Smart.

Our holiday season was epic. Between having both sets of parents come visit us, not only to Guyana but all the way out to the middle-of-nowhere-Mabaruma, as well as having five of our closest friends travel all the way to Barbados to spend new year’s with us, well I don’t want to get too mushy, but we feel soo unbelievably lucky. Thank you Thank you Thank you. Thank you for not only coming and seeing us, but also for bringing us sooooooooo many goodies, loving us and then making sure we got to see, eat, drink and do everything we have missed this last year while we were with you.

Karen & Charlie, Edda & Jose, Alex, Cat, Hibby, Drew and Noemi WE LOVE YOU!

Till next time.

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.

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.

Lizzy (World Teach), Ilana (gorgeous), Emily (PC), Kristin (PC), Inga and Fiona (Project Trust)Ilana and I shared Thanksgiving with about 25 other foreignvolunteers for various organizations (World Teach, Project Trust, Wings forHumanity, Peace Corps). Some folks who do med-evacs for our region were able tofly in 2 turkeys from Georgetown... sadly they had to die to fly.

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

Everyonebrought different dishes to contribute. We made the biscuits and Mom’s famousMagic Cookie Bars, which were a huge hit.

We even had a big hairy local specialguest join us for desert. A face-sized tarantula appeared on the ceiling as wewere finishing the meal. Springing into action, one of the boys who lives inthe house caught the beast and brought her down for all of us to enjoy. Do Ismell 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 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.

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.

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.

So I know its been a while since I have written a blog entry, and well the reason for that is I have been busy (really, I swear) and also I wasn’t really sure what new things to write. It’s interesting…once you have been living in a place for awhile, life becomes more normal and the less you think that your life is exciting, even if you do live in South America in a remote community. Of course that feeling is two-fold, you finally feel settled and accustomed and you can exhale, but on the other hand you are settled and accustomed a.k.a. “a bit more boring.” So let me see if I can update you all in what I have been up to.

My days at the hospital are pretty busy, I work with almost all the departments on some sort of capacity building or marketing project, I am putting my Public Relations major to good use. You probably are asking, “Marketing? In a developing country?” Well, the type of marketing I do is a bit different. I would call it more “community relations,” were I do projects to raise awareness of certain issues or educate the public on the services the hospital provides and their usefulness. For example, in the next month I will be planning a health fair at the market as a way to educate all the people that come from the river on the services available to them. Like the dentist and the importance of brushing your teeth, that if you fall and hit yourself you can get an x-ray to see if a bone is broken, and that getting your eyes tested can determine if you need to wear spectacles (they call glasses, spectacles here, adorable, right?), etc. Also, it’s a great way to do health talks on water hygiene, washing hands, food storage, family planning and malaria, some of the bigger issues here.

I have also been working extremely close with the rehabilitation department and working with children with disabilities. This past week Nate and I planned a weeklong training for teachers and community health workers (CHWs) on “deaf culture and education.” We other Peace Corps volunteers, one who is deaf, do some trainings on sign language and deaf culture. Even though the sign language was a huge hit, I think what hit home the most was having the teachers and CHWs see a person who’s not held back by his deafness. They just couldn’t get over the fact that a person with a disability could be a teacher. We had people come from around the community and ask to see the deaf guy, as they so delicately put it. And when we introduced him, without hesitation they would say, “No, he can understand me and speak, he is not deaf, you are lying.” Since the volunteer who came could read lips and speak, they were shocked. Unfortunately, any person who has a disability here is thought of as not capable of doing anything, so it was great to show them the opposite and even give them some skills to try and advance the children with disabilities in their community.

But even though we are busy with all these projects and when we have a successful program we are thrilled and feel on top of the world, there are more hard days than easy ones. I remember being in graduate school and sitting in on some of my international health classes, and thinking the solution for all the problems in developing countries is just education. Just educate the CHW’s, teach them and the problem is solved. Wrong! It is way harder than that. First of all, it takes at least six months for people in your community to start not seeing you as a weird outsider or just another volunteer that is here building their resume. And I sometimes wonder if some people will ever stop looking at me in that manner. Then it takes the next… well I actually don’t know how long it takes for people to buy in to your ideas. And if they do buy in there just never seems to be an end to how much training and follow-up it takes to make a sustainable change, unless the community takes an active approach. And on top of all of that, the resources are way limited and well sometimes you feel like you are moving a huge boulder to the top of a hill all by yourself.

I know, I know…this is nothing new. Any person, organization, volunteer, non-profit, you name it, has felt this way before if they have ever worked for a cause or a vulnerable population. But you just never really understand how hard it is, until you are doing it. Don’t get me wrong, I love the challenge and I hope that something (however small it is) sticks when I leave, but that’s the thing with development, you just never know. It’s true what someone once told me, that doing development work you will never experience a time when the highs are some of the highest and the lows are by far some of the lowest. The worst part is that the lows just come out of nowhere and slap you in the face! But like my loving and very eloquent husband says, “Baby when life gives you lemons, paint that shit gold!” And so that’s what we will continue to do, even on the hardest of days.

Till next time.

Hi all. Sorry it's been so long since our last post. Things have been getting pretty busy. Almost a month ago we departed for Georgetown for the 3 month reconnect conference where PCVs meet up to share what we've all been up to at our sites. It was really great to see everyone and hear all that they've been doing. It was also really nice to sleep in an air conditioned room without a mosquito net, take hot water showers, shop for supplies to bring back to Region 1, and eat food that other people prepared and then cleaned up. Another definite highlight was getting to spend some time with our host mom, Debee back in Vreed en Hoop.

After the reconnect conference week, Ilana and I stayed out another week. I was participating in a solar energy training and she was networking and working out some logistics for getting some resources for us in the future. The solar training was awesome, I think I learned more in 3 days at that workshop than I have in some semester-long college courses. Before I barely understood how any electrical appliance worked and now I feel confident that I could meet with a client, design a solar energy system to meet their needs, buy the components, install the system, and teach them how to maintain it... after only 3 days!! Thanks to the facilitators Jermaine, Robin, and Duch. Definitely a skill I'd like to develop more.

It was really nice to come back to our home in Mabaruma. I'm sure there will be some more adjustment surprises in the future, but we finally feel like we're getting things figured out. Living is way easier now that we know simple things like knowing who sells the best eggs, who to talk to when the roof leaks in the middle of rainy season, the phone number of drivers who can pick up a stranded friend at the airstrip, etc.

We've also had some exciting work developments. As you know Ilana recently had an article published in 2 out of 3 national newspapers in Guyana highlighting an event she coordinated to improve awareness and services for people with disabilities in the Region. Yesterday we found out we received funding for a week of training on deaf education and culture. We'll be able to fly out 2 specialists from Georgetown to facilitate trainings for teachers, children, and their families.

I'm also proud of another project that I just got approved, $2 million GUY ($10,000 USD) to improve adult literacy in Tobago Village. That will be enough to fly and accommodate a trainer, conduct training for literacy facilitators, purchase and ship adult literacy materials, and fund the implementation for the program for at least 1 year. Very exciting!!!

Well that's the update. Below is a video advertisement for a sweet little Eco Hostel in Mabaruma. We've seen it and I would strongly recommend it to anyone thinking of coming to visit. It's only $0 per night! Check it out.

Mabaruma Eco Hostel from n8stew on Vimeo.

This just in...The event we hosted in Mabaruma was also picked up by another national newspaper, Kaieteur News. They featured it in a full-color, full-page spread in the Sunday edition.

So remember about two months ago when I talked about persons with disabilities and special needs education, well last week I helped coordinate my first event in Guyana with the purpose of drawing positive awareness about persons with disabilities and to give the community an opportunity to address the needs, learn the history and celebrate these individuals in Mabaruma. The three-day event consisted of a march to draw awareness and two days of physicals for persons with disabilities that live in river communities. This type of event was the first of its kind in our community and I would say it was rather successful with 90 people attending the march. We started the march Tuesday morning at a shop down the road from the hospital and marched through the center of the compound to the recreational park with thirty-five children and adults with disabilities from five communities, their families, hospital and education staff, Peace Corps volunteers and community members. Once at the recreational park we had a one-hour ceremony that included an address from the rehabilitation assistant, a musical performance by the one and only Nathaniel Stewart (he is a musical icon here, if you didn’t know), and a finger-painting activity for all the children and adults that will soon be displayed at the hospital.

Following Tuesday’s event, I helped coordinate two days of physical examinations for children and adults with disabilities, that included an eye test, dental screening, vaccinations, physical exam with the doctor and a rehabilitation assessment. Twenty-seven children and eight adults were screened. This was the first time many of these people had ever stepped inside of the hospital, let alone received a full work-up. It was touching to see some of the adults so excited to receives glasses so that they could see better. One 35-year old man with Downs Syndrome had a fractured wrist for two months and didn’t even know it. But since he couldn’t move his arm due to so much swelling, we took an x-ray. Come to find out, he had two small fractures in his wrist after slipping on some mud. Once we set the bones, we were able to put it in a cast. Success! One young boy with cerebral palsy was fitted for a wheel chair and will now be able to move around and not have to be carried everywhere. Just some of the more memorable stories of the week. It was really great to see the staff at the hospital come together and help a very underserved community access medical care. After, three days of running around and dealing with all the hiccups events usually have, especially in a developing country (coordinating transportation was hell), I was extremely pleased with the outcome of the event. The icing on the cake is… I wrote a press release and Nate took some snazzy pictures and we submitted it to the national newspapers of Guyana. Guess what, one of them picked it up! Nate’s picture and a section of my article were published in color on the front page of “Stabroek News” nationwide newspaper. One event down, who knows how many more to come!

Does this look familiar?

It's the picture from the newspaper article. :)

Till next time.

Celebrating with our tasty treats... notice Ilana's homemade banner. Jealous? It's been my mission for that last few weeks leading up to the 4th of July to build a grill. Last Saturday, just in time, I found the most important component, a car rim, and put it in place. We would have a BBQ chicken feast on the 4th!

Car rim + chicken wire + zinc roof + recycled rebar = GRILLMy Guyanese spatula.

And feast we did... through the combined efforts of us and some other American volunteers, we had a complete American spread: BBQ grilled chicken, Buffalo fried chicken, Mac' n Cheese, zesty cabbage and cucumber salad, potato salad, chocolate cake, a cooler full of ice and choice of beverage (a truly beautiful thing).

How do you schmorgezborg?.

Our fireworks display.

How's my form Jose?

In the states I would consider Nate and myself, “Foodies”. If you are not familiar with this term, let me elaborate a bit. A “Foodie” is someone that loves food, I mean LOVES food and all it represents. They appreciate the color, taste, and texture of the food. They are concerned about where the food was produced, who produced it and how it was produced. They are obsessed with trying to combine different flavors (savory, sweet, spicy, etc.), and read cookbooks on their free time. Days, weekends, vacations are surrounded around food and where to score the best local cuisine. Food embodies different sentiments and for a “Foodie” celebratory events and seasons all have their own flavor. They are also constantly trying to learn how to take any meal and recreate it from scratch, with the occasional twist. Ok I could keep going, but I think you get the gist. So like I was saying before, Nate and I are “Foodies,” and since we have recently found a lot of time on our hands, cravings for all sorts of food we can’t get down here in Guyana, and a plethora of raw ingredients, our newfound hobby is cooking.

So I know a question on everyone’s mind, is what do we do on our spare time. Well we cook every single meal, and the only one that is not elaborate is lunch M-F, because we only have one hour to eat. Those meals usually consist of Mac & Cheese or peanut butter (or Nut-Butter, that’s what the Guyanese call it) and jelly sandwiches. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays is when we really go all out. It took awhile to learn how to cook on Guyanese cookware and on a gas cook top (since we still don’t have a range, fingers crossed we will be getting one in the next month). Guyanese have two staple items called a “Kahari” and a “Tawa.” A “Kahari” is a cross between a big pot and a frying pan that doesn’t have a lid and is made of aluminum, so the bottom of it gets pretty charred after using a few millions times. A “Tawa” looks like a big round griddle, also made of aluminum. Guyanese only cook with a few spices; these are Curry, Masala, Geehra, black pepper and salt. So learning how to use these spices was a challenge, before we got some awesome care packages with all sorts of seasonings. Our first few weeks at site, we ate a lot of burnt food and gosh-awful curried-spiced dishes. Of course, once we passed the steepest part of the learning curve we straight up began dominating some incredible dishes.

Fried chicken delight!

Let’s see if I can describe some of our prized meals that have come from scratch.

Dinner: Spiced split-pea soup, pan-fried okra, onions and tomatoes with whole-wheat flatbread. Homemade pineapple, onion, garlic pizza with a tomato broad-leaf spiced sauce. My famous three-bean pumpkin chili with homemade whole kernel cornbread. Panko-crusted buffalo chicken with sweet potato fries and chipolte ranch sauce. Chicken Mofongo that my dad would be jealous of (Wink, Wink). Eggplant parmesan with a fresh tomato and broad-leaf sauce. White-cheddar chesse sauce over pasta and fresh veggies with homemade breadsticks. Red-bean and oats burger with Guyanese cheese.

Lunch: Fresh guacamole and garlic/lime hummus with homemade corn tortillas. Homemade falafel with ranch dressing and a zesty-sweet cucumber salad. Plantain chips and phulourie (split-pea flour fritter) with Green mango sour sauce. Nate’s incredible New York style soft pretzels with a zesty mustard dipping sauce.

Breakfast: Banana and M&M (thanks Tammie for the M&M’s) pancakes from scratch with cinnamon-rum syrup Nate made, Holy deliciousness! Banana Bread…Incredible! Curry egg salad sandwich (we finally got a hang of curry). Our own grown Lemongrass tea. Hot chocolate from raw cocoa produced locally (you have to grate the sticks of cocoa and boil it).

Pancake cooking on a tawa.

As you can see, we are becoming quite handy in the kitchen and the best part is that we typically don’t spend more than $25 a week on all the ingredients, since we each live on about $4 a day. We also are lucky that we have some pretty awesome fruit trees in our backyard that include mangoes, cherries, and avocados the size of your face. Not to mention all of our generous neighbors that give us Pineapple and free-range organic eggs almost on a weekly basis. We have also become incredibly good at not wasting a morsel of anything edible. This anecdote is for my dad, you would be proud. Last week, we bought two pounds of chicken and made three meals out of it. We cut the skin off and made chicharrones, which is friend skin to put in our mofongo. We took the neck, all the bones and the spine of the chicken and made a soup and then we took the meat of the chicken and made Panko-crusted chicken nuggets, which is why we bought the meat in the first place. So as you can see, nothing goes to waste here. Not only do we not have the luxury of throwing away anything that is edible, we don’t have the heart when we see children who are malnourished.

Nate's homemade pizza.

Back home we spent a lot of time, money and energy trying to find food that was produced in a sustainable way that was local and organic. Living in Guyana, which is the food basket of the Caribbean, we feel even more connected to our food and the best part is that we don’t have to spend a fortune.

Till next time.

The Regional Education office, where my office is located.In the 2 years we spent contemplating joining Peace Corps, we spent a lot of time wondering what our daily life would be like. What will our house look like; how will we get water; would a solar charger be a good investment; what foods will be available; what will our worksites look like; how will we get to work… and the list goes on. As the weeks tick by, Ilana and I have slowly begun to settle into a groove and our routines have begun to emerge. The following is a description of a typical week for me.

This is what the Internet actually looks like.

On the weekdays I get up around 6am, without an alarm, right around the time the hospital’s generator turns off. It’s one of those sounds that’s far enough away that after a few minutes of hearing it your brain tunes it out until the second the sound goes away and you suddenly notice its absence. The din of the generator is quickly replaced by the calls of songbirds, roosters, dogs, cows, passing cars, sometimes a neighbour straight rocking some 90s soft rock, and the fluttering of the birds that come inside our house to pick off the moths that didn’t hide so well. I get up, make coffee (recently it’s been Starbucks French Roast sent by my parents… they should call it “Ground Black Awesomeness”), and put the dishes away from dinner the night before while the coffee steeps. By about 6:30am Ilana’s up and we sweep the floor to clear out all the dead insects the birds didn’t want. We work out… usually some yoga (thanks to the book Ilana’s mom sent us), I do a prison-type workout and Ilana might do a workout video or go for a run, which really turns some heads since running in public is not something sane people do here. Unfortunately, some mornings I have to burn our trash. Definitely not my favourite thing to do, but the trash is not going to burn itself.

At 8am I walk to work, which only takes 2 minutes since we live on the administrative compound. I like that much better than the 45 min drive through traffic back home. The last traffic jam I saw was when the Prime Minister’s motorcade stopped in front of the secondary school and a few minibuses waiting behind him.

Here I am in my office.Although it seems silly to mention it, one thing I didn’t expect would be an important factor about working in Guyana is the dress code. I thought that since I’ll be living 7° from the equator I won’t be expected to wear pants or long-sleeve shirts… Wrong. As a rule, Guyanese (and I’m told most other cultures) tend to dress much more formally than Americans do for work. One policy in my office is that people wearing shorts are not even allowed inside the building. Guyanese are also fastidious about pressing (ironing) their clothes everyday. Now it finally makes sense why Peace Corps was so emphatic before we got here about volunteers dressing in business casual all the time… apparently it’s a consistent problem that PC admin has to deal with. I guess when most Americans think “Peace Corps chic” it doesn’t usually translate into business casual.

At this point in my service, my job is basically to be gathering information about my community, try to identify and prioritize the needs, and then try to come up with a plan to help people meet those needs. Most days I spend a good deal of time observing or researching things like teaching strategies or grants. I have also done a bunch of workshops with teachers on subjects like lesson planning, differentiated instruction, Marzano’s high yield strategies, components of literacy, how to teach reading when you’re not a reading teacher (thanks SBAC Mentor Coach peeps!), and student engagement. I’ve also been giving tutoring sessions a few nights each week. Monday night is math for secondary students, Tuesday is English for adults trying to pass their CXC test to get a better job, and Wednesday is science/engineering activity day where I have kids compete in groups on some challenge like “who can build the highest tower out of 7 pieces of paper and 1 piece of tape.” It’s going well so far but I’m worried I might get spread too thin.

So I work from 8am to 4:30pm with an hour lunch break between 12-1pm. Since Ilana and I both work so close to home we’re able to meet up every day for lunch, which has become a favourite little tradition of ours. Lunch is usually a sandwich, chips and fruit, even though Guyanese don’t consider a cold sandwich a meal. I guess it all balances out when we see them in their business suits eating chicken and rice with their hands.

At work the culture is very different. Here it’s much more formal, for example everyone is referred to by either Mr or Mrs and their surname. Depending on the time of day, everyone is greeted with the appropriate salutation, which here include “Morning, morning” or “G’afternoon”. Only after the Sun goes down will people greet each other with “Good night.” That took some getting used to… it’s common for people to answer the phone “Hello, good night.” They are also meticulous about qualities we Americans don’t emphasize as much like handwriting, spelling, drawing lines perfectly straight (like when they hand draw weekly schedules or budget forms)… all things I’m trying to improve on.

At 4:30pm everything closes and people make their way home. The road usually stays “busy” (all 4 minibuses driving back and forth) until about dusk and then it’s pretty dead. We usually do laundry every other day to stay on top of it since washing everything by hand takes a while. We start making dinner around 5:30pm or so. A typical week’s menu includes some combination of: pumpkin curry, mac’n cheese and steamed veggies, chow mein veggie stir fry, pizza from scratch, Ilana’s newly famous pumpkin chilli, dahl and roti (spiced split pea soup and flat bread), or mofongo. Sometimes we splurge and buy chicken to batter and fry… ok, my mouth is watering so I’ll stop there. We eat pretty well and Ilana has become quite an exceptional cook, especially considering that we only can buy produce once a week and, even then, have a limited selection.

After dinner we’ll usually chill in our hammocks or under our mosquito net and just talk or read or watch a DVD we bought for a $1. Right now we’re ploughing through the entire series of Lost, which is the best show we never watched back home. We were watching Dexter but haven’ been able to find the second season (cough, cough….Alex… elbow nudge, elbow nudge).

Weekends are really chill and usually include some combination of cleaning the house, doing laundry, gardening, going on a hike, visiting other volunteers, or entertaining visitors. We also like to experiment with new recipes. Saturday mornings we like to make breakfast and some kind of beverage. Recently we’ve been able to make tea from lemongrass in our garden, hot cocoa from a cocoa farm up the river, and my favourite… Bloody Mary’s with V8, pepper sauce, and good ol’fashioned Vodka smuggled from Venezuela. And despite not having an oven, I’ve successfully made corn bread, banana bread, soft pretzels, granola, and I think this weekend I’m going to attempt biscuits or pancakes and syrup or… call me crazy…. Both! I don’t know… I don’t know if there’ll be enough time (wink wink).

Since we have been in South America, Nate and I have been able to cross a few things off of our bucket list. This past week, Nate was able to cross a big one of his list; see an endangered Leatherback Turtle come to shore to nest. We spent one night at Shell Beach located about 45 minutes northeast by boat from Mabaruma and saw not one, not two, not three, not four….but FIVE Leatherback turtles up close and personal. So close, in fact, we could smell turtle breath. We set out Wednesday morning to visit the remote area of Shell Beach to work at the health post and primary school. Here we met Mr. Audley, who was the founder of Shell Beach about 27 years ago. Fun fact about Mr. Audley, he single-handily planted all the rows of palm trees that you can see today. There must be over 1,000 trees!

Downtown Shell Beach

Mr. Audley welcomed us to his community and showed us around, and by showed us around, I mean he pointed at the seven buildings in the area due to the minute size of this community. There are only about 120 inhabitants year-round with the exception of turtle nesting season when groups of gringos visit the area.

Shell Beach, Region 1, Guyana

We spent most of the morning working at the school and health post, giving vaccinations and assessing the needs of the two sectors. Around 4pm Nate and I headed out on a premature beach walk, (you will see why this was premature a bit later) to see if we could catch a glimpse of any other wildlife. Unfortunately, we didn’t see anything on our walk, but we were able to forage for some dinner. Remember how I said that Shell beach was really remote, well Shell Beach is so remote that there are absolutely no shops to buy food or even dry goods. The people who live there either grow their own food or come out to our village’s market once a month. Also, because of so much beach erosion this community’s once produce garden has since washed away. So all we had was a small jar of peanut butter and jelly and some crackers.

Luckily, Nate’s caveman instinct kicked in and he was able to score us four paw paw’s (this is what they call papaya), one coconut and some cassava leaves, which surprisingly taste a lot like bland spinach. Once we washed down our delectable meal with a bottle of lukewarm filtered water, it was almost time to set out on our 5-hour beach walk to spot our leathery-backed enormous friends.

At 8pm we set out on our night through what can only be described as the backdrop of “Where the Wild Things Are,” as one of the other volunteers so accurately described it. You are surrounded on one side by ocean and on the other side by straight-up jungle. The only light you can see is that of your flashlight and of the moon shining on the pitch-black ocean. There was absolutely nobody else on the beach but our team of 8 and our turtle expert. By hour three we saw our first turtle in all her glory! This turtle was about 6 feet long and an impressive sight.

Leatherback turtles usually nest multiple times during the season at which time they can lay up to 120 eggs at one time. Once on shore they dig a deep hole using there two back fins; it almost looks like ice cream being scooped out with a scooper. After they lay their eggs they cover them up by flinging sand in every direction to camouflage where the eggs have been laid. Once this laborious process is done, which takes about an hour or so, our huge turtle friends make there way back to the water and disappears into the waves. Of all the eggs that leatherback turtles lay, only about 5% will actually survive and sometimes even less than that. In Guyana, turtle eggs are a delicacy and are commonly poached.

Some eggs had to be relocated further up the beach to give the hatchlings a better chance at survival.

I hate to admit this, but since I have been here I have eaten a turtle egg. I am not proud of this, but it was a cultural experience I couldn’t pass up and with all honestly I would have been considered rude otherwise. It was gross! The eggs are slightly boiled and due to the consistency of the outer shell you have to bite a small hole and suck the yolk into your mouth. I ate half the egg when my gag reflexes starting kicking in, at which time I tossed the remainder of the egg over my shoulder and pretended to be fully satisfied with my turtle egg. Moral of the story, don’t eat the eggs of an endangered species!

A mommy flinging sand to camouflage her nest.

At around 1:30am we saw our last turtle and retreated to our hammocks for the night. Oh, I forgot to mention that the mosquitoes on Shell Beach were something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. During the day they aren’t bad, but as soon as five o’clock hits, its like someone releases them out a cage. They were so bad that we had to wear socks, long pants and sleeves and bathe ourselves in repellent. Even with all our efforts, I was unfortunately attacked by a swarm of mosquitoes in the time it took for me to change from a long sleeve shirt into a tank top and get into my hammock. All it took was 60 seconds of exposed skin! Nate left without a mark, but I guess I just have sweeter skin.

My back after getting swarmed.

These shelters are build by fishermen who stay in them for a few nights at a time when they're out fishing on the river. In the background you can see a flock of endangered Scarlet Ibis.

Till next time.

Since joining the Peace Corps and moving to Guyana, it would be fair, and in no way negative, to say that we now have some extra time on our hands. We’re doing our best to stay busy (i.e. gardening, reading, hammocking) and I’m definitely not complaining since having extra time seems to be one of the perks to our new life. So, below are the results of extra time + change.

Figure 1 - Lifestyle Changes

As you can see from figure 1, Ilana and I have experienced differing levels of enjoyment for some of these new changes.

Figure 2 - Water vs Stress

When we first moved to Mabaruma the learning curve was steep. Thankfully now things are leveling off as we get better settled in and finding a routine. We’ve begun to notice patterns in our attitudes. Figure 2 represents the inversely proportional relationship between the level of water in our tanks and our general level of stress.

Figure 3 - Cow Sounds

Another trend we’ve noticed is how our affinity for cows has changed. At first it was hilarious to hear a young calf and his mother taking turns trying to locate each other outside our window. However hearing that sound at 5:30am for 4 weeks in a row just makes me miss steak that much more.

Figure 4 - Our Guyanese food pyramid

Speaking of steak, some of the greatest changes so far have been in our diet. Perhaps one of the biggest surprises we’ve encountered so far (aside from Ilana’s appendix trying to explode) has been how much we miss food and drinks from home. Looking at pictures of ourselves from when we were State-side, it’s easy to believe we liked our food.

Figure 5 - Fantasies

Consequently we have some new fantasies.

Figure 6 - Reasons Nate Sweats

When I’m not dreaming about food, I’m probably sweating…. Though the two activities don’t seem to be mutually exclusive. Ilana’s dad, Jose, often says “you gotta sweat the body”. He’d be proud of me. Notice there is not a graph to represent Ilana’s perspiration pattern. I’m still trying to figure out her secret.

On a completely unrelated note… A few days ago I was riding in a truck and saw the largest bird I’ve ever seen sitting on the top of a really tall tree. Since we were driving away all I could see was it had the shape of a large eagle and was slate gray across the front of its breast. Hearing stories from SPICE fellows about the elusive Harpey Eagle, the largest bird of prey in the Western hemisphere, and knowing this area is included in their distribution, I have been trying to catch a glimpse of one since we’ve been here. I heard the screeching of some kind of eagle the other morning and when I looked outside to see what kind of raptor I saw a huge slate gray bird perched up in the top of a rubber tree. To the complete surprise and confusion of our neighbor, I ran outside to take these pics.... can anyone tell me if it's a juvenile Harpey. I know it's probably not, but maybe!

Last Sunday, Nate and I set out on our very first river trip with a group of Guyanese educators and health personnel for the purpose of working with special needs children in two villages located in the Moruca sub-region. As you can already imagine, “business trips” take on a whole different meaning here in Region 1. Packing is a bit different. You have to pack sheets, a mosquito net, toilet paper, all of your food goods and of course your clothes and toiletries. This was challenging as we were gone for 5 days and were traveling in an 11-seater v-hull passenger boat made of wood with no cover that needed to fit 12 people and everyone’s luggage and about 40 gallons of fuel. Needless to say, a 4-hour trip turned into a 7-hour tour, coupled with a one-hour truck ride, where once again, a 5-passenger truck was crammed with 12 people and all our gear. Good thing, Nate and I are travel-sized because we have become experts at cramming ourselves in small spaces for long periods of time, and surprisingly even in very small spaces I can sleep as long as there is some sort of movement and a breeze.

Our 7-hour tour boat

We stayed in a regional guest house, which was pretty much like camping, but with a bed because there was no electricity and by the last few days our tanks of water were empty as was our gas tank, so we were fetching water and cooking on a small camping kerosene stove. However, the Guyanese people we were with were incredible cooks and really enjoyable to be around, so the amenities, or lack there of, really didn’t bother us at all. After our 8-hour journey, our group decided it would be nice to reward ourselves with a couple of cold beers and we all decided to head out to the nearest bar. Well…the nearest bar required us to board another smaller boat and ride along a river to a wooden building on stilts on the water. Pretty cool! The bar only had enough electricity to run a stereo, a cooler and one light bulb, but since there aren’t lights for miles, the sky was lit with stars and acted as our own personal disco ball. It was beautiful! And of course, they were blasting 90’s pop, which made the experience just that much better.

The view from our guest house and the rivers we traveled through.

The next two days we spent our time in the village of Waramuri, and met the first group of special needs children. So, before I talk a bit more in-depth about these children, I think it is important for me to explain what “special needs” consists of here in Guyana. Special needs back home, includes things like ADHD or dyslexia, rather than just physical challenges. However, here only children that have physical challenges are considered special needs, and many children that are autistic or ADHD etc are thought to have evil in them (we saw a mother literally trying to beat the demon out of her severely autistic 2 year old). Of course, these ideas are among the less educated individuals and not the health professionals or many of the trained teachers. The community members typically mock these children and indirectly force them to be kept locked up in their homes, never giving them the opportunity to learn or develop socially. Culture shock and heartbreaking to say the least! In Waramuri, we saw about 10 children who were blind, deaf, mute, had clubfoot, cerebral palsy, or were epileptic. We were able to get a comprehensive histogram on each child and find out whether they received any public assistance, which consists of $27.50 USD a month. I also gave a nutrition talk and Nate did two different trainings for teachers on “student engagement & teaching methodologies.” Our first talks weren’t raging successes, as we had hoped, as we are still learning how to be engaging in these presentations, without scaring our audiences with our loud American voices and fast-paced agendas. This is especially a challenge for me, who has the voice projection of a German dictator. A skill I was once proud of is now biting me in the butt. It’s all right though, I am learning to tone it down and Nate is already getting better at engaging teachers and not scaring them with all his questions, which here are often thought of as invasive.

Teacher Nate.

The following two days we did the same tasks with a new group of about 20 children in the village of Santa Rosa. Most of the children were not attending school, because there parents were ashamed, weren’t sure if they could learn, didn’t have a wheel chair and for this reason were bedridden or if they had a wheel chair the schools have no ramps or large enough doors for the student to enter the classroom. There were reason after reason and story after story that was heart wrenching. One in particular stood out that neither Nate nor I have been able to shake. About a year ago there was a young girl that was about 10 years old that had cerebral palsy. Her mother was opposed of her attending school, regardless of the fact that the young girl was very bright and had requested on numerous occasions to attend. After much convincing from the teachers and other health professionals, the mother agreed that she could go to school. On the first day of school, the young girl had to use the bathroom and took herself to the latrine where she fell in and drowned. They tried to get her out, but she couldn’t grab on to the rope and they didn’t have large enough vehicle to knock down the latrine in time. They just had to watch her struggle and die. I am still speechless and this is only one story. Deep breaths.

With some of the kids doing a self-esteem activity.

Even though our trip was not as productive as we would have hoped, Nate and I feel this was a good introduction and first step in working more with these children. Communities need to be educated on children and adults with disabilities and special needs, schools need to be accessible and safe for all children, teachers need to be trained in methods of working with children of special needs and most importantly these children need to be given at least a chance for a better life. We know of course, this is much more than either of us can chew, so right now we are trying to research and learn as much as possible on these disabilities so we can be advocates, and of course looking for funding to improve the state of these schools. One step at a time of course, there are a thousand issues that we want to fix, but we are trying to help in the ones that have the least amount of resources and support.

If anyone has any educational materials (teaching strategies, parenting strategies, community sensitization literature, etc) that are especially relevant to teachers/health care professionals working with students with special needs, they would be extremely helpful to us here. The best way for us to get them is either by email (Nate: n8stew@gmail.com, Ilana: ilae85@gmail.com) or by mail* (see address to the right).

Till next time.

*Items sent in a manila envelope reach us in about a month. It’s not uncommon for boxes to take 2 or 3 months to get to us, so if you’ve sent us a box and are wondering why we haven’t thanked you, it’s probably because we haven’t received it yet (except for Windham… we’ll just send that crap back marked “return to sender”).

Now that we have been sworn in as official PC volunteers our two years of service have officially begun. We have already spent three weeks in our permanent new home of Mabaruma, which is located in the northwest part of the country. We are so close to Venezuela that on a clear day we can see over the border, but since the border is just bush and come to think of it everything around us is bush, we really don’t know what we are looking at. However, Venezuela does have quite an influence in our area. The beer of Guyana is “Banks Beer,” but because of where we are everything that isn’t locally produced needs to be imported on a cargo boat that only comes once every two weeks, so its cheaper and more accessible to get beer from our neighbors, which is called “Polar Light” (Extra Refrescante…as it so nicely labels on the can). At the market you can buy empanadas, which are a bit different from Puerto Rico’s empanadas, I think the shell is made of corn meal, but they are still delicious and a wonderful reminder of home. Nate and I were so excited to see empanadas, that not only were fresh and hot, but were made with chicken (we don’t get to eat meat very often anymore) that we ate the empanada in front of the woman thanking her profusely, so much so that we made her blush. Needles to say, I think she just got weekly customers for the next two years. I’ll talk more about the market in a few, but first let me get back to Venezuela. There are glorious death-trap mini buses here too in Mabaruma, and the gas that fuels them is smuggled from Venezuela. There are no gas stations of course, so the buses will randomly stop in front of someone’s house and they will come out with a gallon of fuel and refill the buses and cars. It’s strange to me every time and always seems to catch me off guard. Even though we are so close to Venezuela, 10 miles to be exact, we never really hear anyone speaking Spanish. Funny thing is that when Nate and I speak in Spanish to one another, especially in the market when we are trying to discuss whether we think we are getting ripped off, people have no idea were to place us. They think we are Americans when we first walk up and then we speak Spanish and then they assume we are from Venezuela. It’s quite funny to see their expressions of total confusion, and I actually think it helps us when asking for prices.

OK so back to the market. The market, which is a cultural experience in itself, is located by the water and occurs every Tuesday and Saturday. Nate and I normally walk to the market, which takes about 20 minutes, and then take a mini bus back with our full bags. The market sells produce and dry goods, they also have “fresh” fish, but we haven’t ventured into buying fish that isn’t tuna in a can (just doesn’t seem sanitary.) Most produce is sold by the bunch and costs around 50 cents to a dollar. Produce that is grown in “Kumaka,” (that’s the name of the village the market is in) or in the surrounding areas is normally cheaper and readily available. These things are pumpkin, cucumbers, green beans, sweet potatoes, avocado, okra, green onions, onions, garlic, pineapple, bananas, bok choy, spinach, plantains and eggs. Produce that is shipped on the boat can be more expensive which ranges anywhere from two to three dollars and are available only on a limited basis. These things are carrots, tomatoes, cabbage, and CHESSE. But we definitely splurge and spend more money on these full market days. We don’t buy meat at all, due to how expensive it is and how it’s cut. Most “butchers” just take a cutlass (machete) to the chicken or beef and just hack away. So when you buy meat by the pound you have no idea what you might get. It’s a grab bag of fun; until you get chicken feet, cow face (I am not kidding, it was skin and meat off of the face of the cow), gizzards, tripe and bones galore. So we consume a mostly veggie diet and save our money to buy cheese whenever available. Half a pound of Cheddar cheese (the only cheese they have) is about $3. (As you can tell I am really missing cheese, so if anyone wants to send us grated Parmesan cheese feel free to…ohh and we will forever be in your debt). The dry goods are quite basic, like beans, noodles, rice, mac and cheese (not only is it mac and cheese, its Kraft mac and chesse), flour, sugar and condiments like mayo and mustard. Cooking is a challenge we overcome more and more everyday since we only have a limited supply of ingredients to make every meal. Some meals can be quite comical like guacamole and crackers but others are sometimes more elaborate like homemade pizza and mofungo, of course when ingredients are available. However, the produce is so fresh that even the most basic meals are delicious.

Our Kitchen

We have definitely been nesting in our new home. We have moved into a two-bedroom apartment located next to the hospital that is made of wood, concrete and aluminum. We have indoor plumbing, which means a flushing toilet and an actual shower. The water comes from the tanks outside of our house that collect rain water and has water pumped in from a reservoir every other day for an hour. Indoor plumbing is, without a doubt, a luxury. There is very limited water in the region, especially during the dry season, and it is necessary to conserve every drop. Our water situation has been quite an ordeal due to the families of frogs living in our tanks that had to be drained and cleaned and then the pipes we were counting on to refill our tanks were found to not be working properly. We spent the first week stealing water from our neighbors and doing everything with a bucket. We got down to using 5 buckets a day, including washing, cooking, showering and drinking. Pretty impressive if you ask me! I can now shower with half a bucket, well only if I am not washing my hair. Now our pipes and pumps are fixed, but most of the solutions are temporary so we will see. On the upside we get “current” (electricity…that’s what they call it here) for 20 hrs a day. We are hooked up to two different generators that split the day in half. Even though it can sometimes be quite noisy, nothing beats cold water and sleeping with a fan. We aren’t sure how long we will be living in this unit, because it is not finished. The floors still need to be puttied and shellacked to prevent the wood ants from the eating the boards, which right now they are having a feast. They have told us that the unit furthest away from the generator would be completed with the floors and eventually we can move into that one, but since we don’t know how long that will take and if it will even occur, we have made ourselves pretty at home. We have started to become accustomed to the daily creatures that visit us. Like our security system, the bull, which we have named “Bob,” who stands outside of our gate and bellows for about 30 minutes at dusk, our huge bat that we have named “Dracula” that flies through our house every night around 10pm and scares the living crap out of us, and the two roosters that start crowing a 6am and don’t stop till around 9am that I have so lovingly named “Shut the hell up.”

Our Bedroom.

(We have a guest bedroom that looks the same (*Hint Hint...come visit us! We will even give you the fan!))

Our Living/Dinning area equipped with not one, but two lavish hammocks!

We have a lot of land around our building and we are in the beginning stages of starting a garden. It was covered, I mean covered, in construction trash when we first moved in so we have spent hours picking up and burning trash. We have cleared up enough space that we have started to hoe a garden and have even planted some sunflowers (thanks Karen). We aren’t sure how successful it will be due to the amount of fowl and feral dogs running around, but we are optimistic, or at least hopeful, we can at least grow some herbs and some tomatoes.

See if you can spot yourself on our walls :)

Our nest is feeling more and more like home and we feel very lucky to be so welcomed into our community. Our front neighbor even plays pre-Johnny Cash country for our listening pleasure. ☺

Till next time.

Living in Guyana we get to experience many sub-cultures wrapped into one main Guyanese culture. One of the sub cultures that we’ve had the opportunity to get a good taste of is that of the Indo-Guyanese people. The reason for this is of course because our host mom is Indo-Guyanese, and she has made sure that we get to experience everything from her culture, which includes food, music, religion and of course Indian soap operas (which surprisingly there are a lot of). The majority of Indo-Guyanese are the descendants of the Indentured servants who were brought from (then) British India, to what was then called British Guiana to work in sugar cane plantations after the abolition of slavery in 1833. Indo-Guyanese are the largest ethnic group identified by the official census, making up 43.45% of the population and are primarily Hindus.

Even though our host mom is not Hindu most of her family and friends practice this religion and invited Nate and I to join them at their temple, which is called a Mandir, to partake in the religious holiday of Rama Navami. Rama Navami is a Hindu festival celebrating the birth of Lord Rama to King Dasharatha and Queen Kausalya of Ayodhya. They celebrate the holiday by having a service for nine nights which consists of chanting, offering of fruits and flowers, and an element of fasting, which for the Indo-Guyanese means not eating meat or any meat products like eggs and avoiding alcoholic beverages. At the end of each service a different family is the host of the Mandir and provides food and drink for the temple, usually consisting of some sort of curry and parsad, which looks and kinda tastes like cookie dough without the chocolate chips. However, before accepting the food you are supposed to drink milk that is poured in your hands. Funny story about this~ When we went to the Mandir the first night I was given milk in my hands to drink, but because I had no idea what I was supposed to do with this and the woman next to me said I was supposed to do this before eating the parsad, I for some reason assumed that “doing this” meant washing my hands. So…I starting washing my hands with the milk and Nate followed my lead. Oh boy! Quickly we realized that we were doing something wrong when the woman next to us starting laughing and our hands started to smell like sour milk. Needless to say, we made fools of ourselves! Oh well, certainly hasn’t been the first time and it will definitely not be the last time.

The temples are full of color and are absolutely beautiful. Adding to this beauty are the multiple colors of the women’s attire that I was so privileged to wear. I was able to have two outfits for each night of the Mandir. I was psyched to have multiple costume changes. Don’t judge me…you can still be a girly girl in the Peace Corps. The first night I wore a maroon colored Sari and on the second night I wore a mustard colored Salwar Kamee, which are loose fitting pants with a long dress shirt worn over the pants and a shawl. Married women are supposed to wear the shawl over their head. It was too hot, so I didn’t do this. The clothes are incredibly comfortable. In fact, they are so comfortable I wish I could buy a dozen of them and wear them all the time, even to sleep in. Nate, unfortunately, was not so lucky to have an outfit change and just wore khaki’s with a white shirt.

Thanks to Mahindra, Sunita, Patsy, Ram and Nalini for letting us tag along and participate in the nine days of Rama Navami.

Till next time.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Sooo…that was scary! Less than one week in country and what does my body decide to do, oh yeah how about appendicitis? That sounds like fun. Well, needless to say that was probably the most traumatic event my 25 years of life has graced me with so far. Thanks for that! Nate’s story is spot on for how quickly a stomachache became the worst pain I have ever felt and how now I laugh, mwahaha, in the face of child labor pains (bring it on) not literally, but you know what I mean. Today, 4 days after surgery, I feel somewhat human again. I can get out of bed without Nate having to pick me up, food is starting to taste somewhat normal again, I am able to eat more than just half a bowl of soup, and I am able to sleep more than a couple of hours at a time because I can lie on my side (it’s the little things).

As you can imagine, having emergency surgery just one week off a plane and in a strange place can mess with one’s head. I would be lying if I said I haven’t cried my eyes out one or two times due to the mere stress of the situation. So many questions have been circling in my head, wondering whether we will stay or go, how will this affect our training, will we be able to find a host family on such short notice in the urban area, how long until I am completely healed, could I bring myself to going remote again, and the list goes on. I guess that happens when you have 5 days to do nothing but think and watch pirated TV. [Tangent~ the TV here is a trip. Due to the fact that there are no copyright laws here, you can watch one channel for four hours and see the same channel change from Discovery to TLC, to Fox, to NBC, to Lifetime. Also, instead of having the obituaries in the newspaper they do it in the evening on the television. They have a picture of the deceased and then all the names of the family members with insane music blaring in the background. Oh, and they also love to start a show and then mid-way just change it to something totally different.] OK moving on, so I wish I could say I had answers to all of those questions, but I don’t. PC is trying to figure out the logistics of our unique situation. In the 23 years PC has been in Guyana, no trainee or volunteer has ever had surgery in country. Yup I am the first! Most medical issues that manifest themselves usually don’t occur until some weeks into training or after they have been sworn in and are placed. So you can imagine the --rhymes with “lusterbuck”-- we are in right now. PC has been letting me heal in a hotel room for the last couple of days before any decisions are made, which I greatly appreciate, because I have needed some time to process everything and get my head on straight.

Of course I want to stay and get a fair chance at this experience, but I part of me is a bit terrified after everything that has happened. We were having such a good time before my lovely appendix decided to do it’s thing. We had a great host family (Eslyn, Aaron and Moses) out in a remote setting. They had a farm with all sorts of fruit trees, turkeys, chickens, and pigs and we were already learning so much: how to make a broom out of a palm frond, how to make Roti, how to wash our clothes by hand, words in Arawak, they even had the following weekend lined up for us to learn how to make Cassava bread and how to do some basket weaving. The location of their house was smack in the middle of the jungle and already the wildlife was amazing. So we were pretty stoked! But now …well who knows.

I am thankful that I am alive, and that the medical staff and the hospital acted quickly and carefully and that I got good medical help. I am thankful that I am with Nate, because there is no way I would have made it through this last week without him and whatever may lie ahead. I am thankful my belly is not as swollen anymore (it looked like I was two months pregnant after surgery). I am thankful I am in an air-conditioned room and that Fresh Prince of Bel Air comes one everyday at four and that Pizza Huts exist all over the world (again people, it’s the little things).

For now I am doing well and soon I will be doing great. Because just like Dr. Frankenstein said “[S]he’s alive” and its going to take a lot more than appendicitis to take me down, it may take a whole village with pitch forks instead. Only time will tell.

Till next time.

First let me preface this post with the fact that we are fine and that the Peace Corps acted quickly and appropriately to help us and literally save Ilana's life. Here's what happened:

Short story version.... Ilana had to be medically evacuated from our remote site because she required emergency surgery to remove her appendix here in Guyana. The doctor said that a few more hours without treatment and it would have erupted (that's the medical term they used), spreading the infection, and making Ilana's situation much more grave.

Thankfully, she is OK now. The surgery was successful, she walked out of the hospital yesterday, and she's sitting next to me right now in our hotel room in Georgetown. She's sore in the area where they did the surgery, but she's in good spirits and already showing improvement.

Long story version.... we had been living with our host family for about a day and a half and things were going great. Even though we were only there a short time we were quickly feeling at home.

Saturday night after dinner Ilana began complaining of a stomach ache. Throughout the night the pain worsened to the point that she could not get relief and it never seemed to subside like a normal gas or constipation pain would. In the morning we let our host parents know and they promptly called the Peace Corps medical team, who dispatched the remote medical team to come check her out. Based on her symptoms, the team decided she needed to be evacuated from the site to do some tests in Georgetown.

Because of heavy rains through the night, our route to Georgetown was more challenging. To get out we had to take a motorized dugout canoe through the forest, Ilana had to walk the better part of a mile to the trail where a truck could pick us up, then our driver had to navigate the sand road that was washed out in several places, then drive another hour into Georgetown. Once in Georgetown, the PC medical team met us to evaluate Ilana. They quickly determined that she likely had appendicitis and needed to be admitted to the hospital.

An ultrasound helped doctors make the official diagnosis of acute appendicitis. The PC medical team was in communication with Washington DC to determine if Ilana should be flown to the states to have the procedure, but the decision was made that there may not be enough time and the operation needed to happen here in Guyana. I'm not able to find the words to express how scary that was.

Hospitals in a developing country like Guyana are... different. No elevators, wards are segregated by gender, they don't provide even ICU patients with food or water, zero bedside manner, and after surgery they ask you to sign to say you've seen what they just cut out of you! Then they give you a DVD of the procedure and survey to ask how you liked their service... adorable. That being said, they saved Ilana's life and I am eternally grateful to the PC medical staff and the staff at the hospital.

We're not sure what happens next.... will we be able to stay? If we stay, will we be able to go remote? If we have to come home, what will we do? Those are big questions and we're just trying to take things a moment at a time and get her to heal as best as possible. The PC med staff, administrators, and other volunteers continue to be super supportive.

I'm sure some parents of other Peace Corps volunteers will read this with a lump in their stomach. I want you to know that the staff here considers the health and safety of the volunteers and trainees to be of paramount priority. Although you can never predict crazy things like acute appendicitis, we are all in good hands.

More updates to follow... until then we'll be watching pirated American TV and getter Ilana healed.

To see a pic of her appendix after it was removed take a deep breath and click here. She's one tough boricua.

Much love,

Nate

Here is a picture outside our hotel window of the city of Georgetown, Guyana .

And here's a picture of our sweet air-conditioned hotel room...

Interesting Georgetown fact: the city is 1.5 meters (5 ft) under sea level, consequently no building is allowed to be higher than 5 stories.

I know it's not much info but there hasn't been a lot to report since we've just been training and practically under house arrest in the hotel, of course for security until we've been further acquainted with the ways of Lady Guyana. More to come soon.

Love,

Nate

I don’t really believe in good omens and I am not really superstitious, but if there was ever a time to believe in that mumbo jumbo, well….now is the time. We are in Philadelphia! Why am I so excited, and why is this a good omen? Drum roll please…our blog name was named after the brilliant show “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and we are in Philly! Do you see the connection? Good omen, huh? I think so! So here is our whirlwind of a schedule for the next three days. We left for Philly on Sunday Feb. 13th and spent 24 hrs at a pre, pre-service training on the basics called “Staging.” After a full day of training we got on a bus to NYC to take a flight at 1am to Guyana where we will arrive at 8am, check into a hotel, freshen up and start a half day of training until that evening. We will be spending four days in the hotel getting briefed on every possible thing like bus etiquette, vaccinations, and safety procedures, among many other things. On Friday Feb. 18th we get bused to our host family, where we finally get to settle in a bit and start our 2 months of Pre-Service training before we officially get sworn in as Peace Corps volunteers. Jeez, just typing that exhausts me. We cant wait to start our new adventure, and to be honest we can’t believe it is finally here. It feels like we have been waiting an eternity to get this show on the road and we are finally getting on the road, figuratively and literally.

The last two months have already been a life-changing experience and I know I have said this before, but I will say it again, I don’t think I could have done any of them with out some essential people in my life. Nate is awesome in every sense of the word; actually come to think of it the word awesome should be changed to Nawesome, (haha I crack myself up). Our parents are rock stars and with out them we would have been broke and homeless, our grandparents are endless pits of valuable information and they have already taught us some many tricks like how to wash clothes by hand without killing ourselves, our siblings have spoiled us with top-of-the-line media so we have enough music and movies to last our two years of service, our aunts and uncles who have been incredible cheerleaders (watch out “Glee” Cheerios) and lastly our hard-drinking, hard-partying, travel-junkie friends who always manage to put a smile on our face and make us laugh when all we wanted to do was cry and wished we owned a punching bag. THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart.

Puerto Rico was incredible and being home for six weeks reminded me how much I love that beautiful little island of mine and why when Puerto Ricans leave the island they never shut-up about it. Some good times were had, especially at the cost of my dear husband who tried to practice his Spanish as much as possible. Let’s see, he made some pretty hysterical mistakes such as calling ants (hormigas) meatballs (albondigas)~asking for ice cream (helado) in his scotch instead of ice (hielo) ~asking the woman attendant at the supermarket where the pool (piscina) was instead of where the fish (pescado) was, in which she giggled and then very seriously said “No,” I think she thought he was hitting on her, and lastly telling the Campesino who was working on my dad’s land that everyone was dead inside, when he was trying to express that he had killed the wasps that had stung the man earlier in the day. Needless to say, I laughed a lot. Spending time with my family and all of our incredible friends, all 11 of them that visited us in PR, going to the most beautiful beaches, listening to incredible live music a couple of times a week, sight-seeing, sleeping in hammocks, going to the cock fights (Azul, Azul, Azul), made this vacation hands-down the best one yet.

So now its time to finally start this new chapter in our lives and start writing about Guyana, Peace Corps and our simplified life, the real reason you signed up to follow this blog. But this blog thing works two ways people, so please post and tell us what’s new in the world and with you, in other words let us know we aren’t talking to ourselves. We also have our emails so write us at ilae85@gmail.com and n8stew@gmail.com or send us handwritten letters to the address on the right-hand side. I know, I know who writes hand-written letters anymore? But here is the solution, type your letter on your handy dandy laptops, print it and then put it in an envelope. Brilliant, I know; so no excuses. We love you all and already miss you.

Till next time.

I know what you're thinking… but we lived in Florida, not only Florida but in "The Swamp," so what am I complaining about? Well if you have ever lived in a place where you constantly feel like your clothes are wet or every single piece of paper in a book looks like a glass of water has been poured on it and then rung out, then maybe you might understand my dismay. I am not even living in Guyana yet and I think culture shock, well really "environmental" shock, is beginning to hit.

We have been in Puerto Rico for two weeks visiting my family in the country-side and receiving guests from the states. It has been an intense two weeks of sightseeing and party after party… I know, we lead a hard life ;). However, every time we take our friends and family to the airport, I get more anxious that I am not getting on a plane back to my predictable (and humidity-free!) life, instead I am getting on an airplane to well... I don't actually know what to expect in my new host country. I think our time here in PR has been a good transition from our air-conditioned condo life in Gainesville to all that Guyana has in store for us. For example, the humidity… I hate it!! It makes my hair look like I am a Greek Goddess, and not one of the pretty lay-on-a-plush-chair-and-feed-me-grapes Greek Goddesses… I look like Medusa, you know the ugly one with snakes for hair. This is taking a bigger toll on me than it usually would, and I think the real reason is because I feel like I have no control over anything right now, especially not my hair. Don't get me wrong, I used to live in Puerto Rico so I am a bit used to the climate and the way things are done here, but I moved when I was 13 and since then I only visit once a year for no longer than 4 days and then back to the states I go. So this has been a bit of an adjustment. Not to mention that Nate and I have been sleeping in a different bed every couple nights. We have been living out of a suitcase for five weeks and we still have another 13 weeks to go. It has gotten to the point that I wake up almost every morning and forget where I am and it takes me a good minute to figure out where the heck I am sleeping.

But enough of the complaining. Other than that I have been a non-stop buffet for mosquitoes and I look like I just got out of a wind tunnel, the last four weeks have been pretty awesome! We spent two weeks in Melbourne, FL with Nate's parents and his brother for Christmas and then off to Puerto Rico we went. We’ve quickly been learning the ropes here, especially how to get to the airport as we get to go pretty much every few days to pick up a new friend or family member that has come to visit us here.

We have been keeping pretty busy. Between showing our friends the island of Puerto Rico,roasting a pig for New Year's eve, making dinner for no less that 13 people at a time, Nate learning how to kill a chicken, pluck it, carve it and cook it (trust me, these skills will come in handy), spending time with the hundreds of family members of mine that live on this island and trying to get ready for Guyana, our days are practically flying by. And even though I catch myself becoming misty-eyed more and more regularly, I think it's been good that our minds have been kept occupied. I am pretty sure we would be driving each other nuts if not for all the stimulation of family, friends, and food.

I know I speak for the both of us when I say that we feel extremely lucky with all the support and love we have received. This experience so far has taught us how much we really cherish our friends and family and all the different types of relationships we have developed individually and as a couple. Take it from us who are practically "traveling gypsies" at the moment, when you have friends and family that accept, love and not only support you, but carry you on their shoulders, you feel at home every day. This just means all you wonderful people who took a nice vacation to see us in Puerto Rico thinking that if you visited us now you wouldn't have to come later, I am sorry to break it to you, you better make to Guyana too. We just love you way too much!

The last four weeks have been a blur, but a good blur. I keep wondering if things will eventually slow down, and I think the answer is no. I honestly don't think I would want it any other way, well that's not entirely true. I just wish mother earth and I could chat a bit and get this humidity thing under control. But just like everything else, that too I will get used to and then I will find something new to rant about.

Till next time.

The Gainesville Sun, the main newspaper were Nate and I USED to live~ that was weird to say,~wrote a story about our upcoming Guyana adventure. Pretty cool huh? Check it out!

3 hours of packing in 1 min. from n8stew on Vimeo.After weeks of sorting, organizing, and staging.... we moved!

After 2 years of talking, planning, waiting, hoop-jumping, and more talking…. our plan to go to the Peace Corps is becoming a reality. Ilana and I like to talk about this change as more of a 90 degree turn than a pause. But the turn happens so slowly it can sneak up on you.

Until a few days ago it didn’t really feel real. Sharing the news with friends and family was exciting; their reactions overwhelmingly positive and supportive. Resigning from my job was a bit harder, I think because when I moved here in 2005 I didn’t know anyone or anything about teaching. I hesitated on the steps up to my office, I think because resigning meant giving up something I worked so hard to build. Even though it took ten times longer than I thought it would, it was cathartic to be putting things in boxes and selling everything. “Sometimes our things can end up owning us” I told myself… several deep breaths later everything we decided to keep was in 6 boxes bound for my parents’ storage unit. “Psshhh… this isn’t so hard,” I thought. Sneaky little turn.

But on Thanksgiving weekend a little crack started to show itself. Our friends Jon, Noemi, and Cat had decided to join us at my parents for Thanksgiving. It was epic… my family went all out: 2 huge trays of lobster, crab claws, and shrimp, cheese balls as big as your face, homemade cookies, 16 lbs of turk-ular glory, all the trimmings, then more trimmings. We were practically paralyzed with happiness the whole time. None of us even wanted to leave each other’s company to go to the bathroom, much less bed. Even after all the food I think I lost a pound or two from all the laughter. But something felt different… the Publix commercial (the one with the grandma baking the cake) left me misty-eyed; I didn’t check my email or phone once in 4 days; I got emotional when my brother left for NC even though I know I’m going to see him for Christmas. “What the hell,” I thought. Turned a little more.

Now, a few weeks later and only a little more than a day left in Gainesville I have an overwhelming feeling that skydivers must get right before they jump out of the plane. We’re really excited, a little scared… but not as much as I though we’d be. I think that’s because of how much support we feel from our family, friends, co-workers, even people we didn’t expect. If I had a nickel for all the times that Ilana or I have said how lucky we feel and how incredibly much we’ve learned from our community…. I’d have a sh-t ton of nickels. Thank you all so much!

P.S. I promise to make my future posts less sappy :)

We did it! We sold every single thing we owned in 9 hrs this past Saturday and it felt GREAT! (Can you sense the sarcasm?) It was actually really hard. Well...the selling part wasn't hard, considering we had about 100 people come in and out of our condo handing us money quicker than we could say "sold." Every time we would turn around we realized something else was gone, so the day was a bit of a blur. The hardest part was tagging all of our items for a fraction of a fraction of what we bought it for. For example, let say we bought a gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous dress for $150 one year, we probably would have sold it for $4. Just $4, and I only wore it twice!!!! Yes, this actually happened if you can't tell by now.

So this is how it all went down....The night before our sale we had Nate's mother, Karen, come up and help us tag and organize all of our stuff. She was an incredible help and I seriously don't think we could have done it with out her. It was a rough night. I slept about 2 hrs, I didn't eat anything for about 32 hrs (well...I probably drank my body weight in coffee), I cried probably twice and almost had a melt down, but "gosh darn it" we did it! I can honestly say that I am at peace with it all, OK you got me, I am not totally at peace with it yet, but I am getting there. I have probably vacuumed my floors 7 times since the sale just because I feel a bit violated having so many people walk in and out of my house and touch everything I own and then practically steal it! When you sell something for 25 cents you feel like you have been robbed. Seriously, you do. Anyway, we made some good money and now we will be taking that money and trying to buy all the items we need to be "Americanized" while in the Peace Corps. Funny how even when we try to embrace a new lifestyle and culture we still want to live at a certain comfort level. Oh well...

Needless to say,we slept in our empty apartment last night on our aero bed in the living room floor next to a candle. Our bedroom is now acting like a staging room for all of our Peace Corps luggage. It's nicely laid out on the floor and organized. Oh how I LOVE being organized. So, even though I slept pretty uncomfortably (it's weird sleeping on the floor in your own place; you almost feel like a stranger), I feel like my life just became uncluttered and extremely simple and that feeling is quite wonderful. For the next 10 days we will be "practicing" what our life will be like for the next two years. Eek! And I know what I am about to say will sound cheesy, but some day Nate and I will honestly be able to say that we "lived on just love." Many people say they don't need anything but each other, well we are truly about to find out, and to be honest it's a really exciting feeling.

Till next time!

Remember when building a fort was fun? When covering your floor with boxes and draping a sheet over it stressed your parents out because every time they walked they banged their foot on a box or had to strategically move around your so-called "fortress" just so they wouldn't knock it down. You seriously couldn't figure out why they were so annoyed. Well....I get it! I know what you wondering, "Did it seriously take me 25 years to figure out why?" Give me a minute to explain this epiphany. I promise you will be in tears when I am done. Well not in tears, but you're interested now, right? OK so here it goes...

The weekend before thanksgiving was our "lets go through our stuff" weekend, where we packed boxes among boxes of things we would store, sell, or just plain throw away. We had so many piles of these three categories I swear I felt like I was training to join the circus with all the acrobatic movements I was doing to get around our tiny little condo. But it wasn't the piles of boxes that annoyed me or the fact that I think I might have stubbed my toes at least 12 times, it was the realization that boxes meant both the end and the beginning of a stage in life. After taking down the last frames off the walls, tears starting streaming down my face. I thought to myself, "Why in the world do I care so much about these belongings?" More than half of them were stored in a drawer or closet somewhere, and to be really honest, I have already forgotten half the stuff we have recently stored.

So why was I so sad? Well I was sad because I realized I won't get to look at my awesome possessions every day. Nope that's not it! I mean I know I have awesome stuff, but I really didn't care if my walls were bare. Maybe it's because I bought all these possessions with my hard-earned money. Nope, that still wasn't it. Then it hit me like a pile of bricks (or in this case like a pile of boxes) and I realized I wasn't actually sad, I was annoyed. I was annoyed because I am leaving every comfort I know and enjoy, and the thought of that is terrifying and also (I hate to admit it) extremely shallow. I was angry at myself for being so sad that I was boxing and selling my possessions. Seriously why do I need three hand-painted gator plates that I use only during tailgating season and then they just sit on top of my fridge collecting dust the rest of the year? Are my friends really that fancy that they need hand-painted plates to eat off of? Well I can assure you I am not that fancy, and well come to think of it, neither are my friends. That's why we are friends :)

By no means am I trying to sound enlightened. I know it's going to suck not having a blow dryer or my awesome Tempurpedic pillow while in Guyana, and I can guarantee when I come back I will be yearning for these things I once boxed up. The point is that it is really hard to let go of physical things, even though we all know money doesn't buy happiness.

But now I think I understand why my parents were annoyed at my fortress building, well at least I think I do. Other than it really is annoying to have to live among boxes and stub your toes over and over again; whether you are moving in with someone for the first time, moving down the street, to another state or country you lose a bit of your treasured comfort, and that's hard to swallow. I am still dealing with this loss and will probably deal with it for awhile, especially after the first time I have to hand-wash my own clothes...Oh jeez what am I getting myself into. But I really am happy that I get to challenge myself in a way I never imagined.

Anyway the weekend was difficult, but nothing a good meal and martini and some light-hearted conversation with "Nate the Great" doesn't make better.

Till next time.

On February 15, 2011 Nate & I will be leaving for Guyana, which is located in South America, and will be spending 27 months serving as Peace Corps volunteers in the areas of health and education. We thought it would be a good idea to document our experiences for those who want to follow us on our travels, those who are considering applying for the Peace Corps and those that get accepted and are in desperate need of finding information about the country they will soon be traveling to, if it wasn't for others blogs I don't think I would have ever been able to finalize a packing list, which I will share later.

I am thrilled to be writing my first-ever blog post. Can you believe in my 25 yrs of life I have never had a blog to document the incredibleness that is me! ~(can you sense the sarcasm) I tried to convince Nate to let me name our blog the "Incredible adventures of Ilana in Guyana (with Nate)," but for some reason he wasn't too keen on that idea. Instead, we decided to name it "It's Always Sunny in Guyana," yes just like the show, except we only have 2 people in our gang as opposed to the 5 in the show. Which means, we are still auditioning for three other parts for anyone who wants to disrupt their life and move to Guyana with us. Come on...you know you wanna ;)

OK, so the real reason for this post is to give you some information about our soon to be new home and jobs. I am sure you are wondering where is Guyana? Well, I am glad you asked. On the right-hand side of this post is a map that shows you the location of Guyana. Guyana is a tropical country on the northern shoulder of South America. It is bordered by Venezuela, Brazil, Suriname, and the Atlantic Ocean and has a population of approximately 760,000, largely confined to a narrow coastal strip. It is the combined size of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York. Guyana is the poorest country in South America, and is mainly composed of people of African and East Indian descent, and people of Portuguese, Chinese, Amerindian, and mixed descent. Luckily, the language they speak is English, however they speak an English-based Creole and in some parts of the country they speak a Portuguese-based Creole due to their close proximity to Brazil.

So...what are we doing, exactly? Well, we don't know for sure, but the Peace Corps has given us some good ideas and direction of what our main responsibilities will be. As a “Community Health Educator,” I will be working alongside locally trained community health workers to help provide basic health education in rural and/or urban communities, public health services, and assist government health care workers and NGO’s to design, develop, and implement a program response to the HIV/AIDS situation in Guyana. Guyana has the highest HIV rate in the western hemisphere, second only to Haiti.

Nate will be working as a “Community Education Promoter” and his primary goals will be to improve the skills of school-aged populations in reading, literacy and life skills, train teachers in creative approaches and strengthen community alliances through parent-teacher collaborations. Pretty much the same thing he does now in Alachua County. So that worked out nicely. As you can see from our descriptions these are very broad goals and will encompass a variety of tasks that will more than likely change on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

Now that we have an idea of what we will be doing and when we will be leaving, we are working on trying to get all of our "ducks in row" (a.k.a. sell all of our stuff) before we begin the next two months of spending time with family and friends. So if you want to see us, here is our timeline. We are in Gainesville until the glorious day of Dec. 19th, my BD, and then will be traveling to Melbourne Fl, to spend a week with Nate's parents. On Dec. 27th we fly to Puerto Rico where we will stay with my parents until we leave for our "staging event," on Feb. 15th. Flights to Puerto Rico are cheap and you have a place to stay if you come. So book now!

Well, I hope you have enjoyed my first-ever post. I cannot express how excited I am to be starting the experience of a life-time with Nate by my side (he's pretty cool). I am scared and really nervous, but I think that's normal.

This weekend we will begin our packing extravaganza and try to consolidate our lives in 8 boxes and 4 suitcases....

Till next time.