AND NOW FOR THAT TYPICAL WEEKEND

So I ran out of time for the typical weekend.

Weekends start late, around 8am - 9 if I'm really pushin' my luck. Traffic is somewhat quieter (ie. many bus drivers probably sleep off hangovers first thing Saturday). Then I go to the pool. I have been invited to take a group of about ten 9 and 10 year-old guys to the pool on Saturday mornings from 10-12:30. We only swim for an hour, the rest of the time is spent on busses and on foot getting there.

Then I'd spend some quality time doing laundry with my washer and dryer, pictured here:


It's pretty time intensive, all that plunging, and scrubbing, and plunging and scrubbing, and ... well, I often find that a shower is the best thing after the clothes get out on the line.

After that would come the market to buy fruits and vegetables, or an event like we had this weekend. On Saturday we celebrated Mercy Day and recognized the committment of two sisters (American sisters) serving here in Guyana. It was a lovely mass with great snacks and company afterwards in a beautiful banquet centre. It was sort of a garden room with more kinds of orchids than I had ever seen before.

Next time I'll tell you about the fair ....

typical day, typical weekend (as experienced so far)


<-- my room, at night - (apologies for the clothes everywhere - just finished laundry - it's drying)

10 to 6 am: someone laying on the horn outside my window. every morning. i get up about 20 minutes later.
breakfast: wheetabix and fernleaf full-cream instant powdered milk
water: fill bottles from clean water supply. we think one jug looks a little like a totem figure, so we gave it a headband and a feather.
bus to hospital: still having trouble deciding whether the caller is pointing straight or sideways as the bus comes rushing at me around the corner at about 50 kph, but i'm getting faster at calling them over to ask - hand out and down, NOT up.
walk to hospital: HOT, even at 7:30, but i'm getting used to it. it's maybe 5 minutes, and i go SLOWLY
Hospital: i'm doing social work, pre-test counselling patients having HIV testing (really just educating about HIV/AIDS) and learning elementary finance to keep track of grant money spent in a variety of ways.
Lunch: about 4 servings of rice and tiny, exotic cuts of chicken, usually (i think i got a piece of neck today - lots of tiny bones, probably vertebral column)
bus home: different route, different questions, different things to be aware of. another short walk down my street to the flat.
jogging/walking on the sea wall (pictures coming soon)
cooking dinner
reading (Harry Potter books 4&5 mostly, lately - if anyone wants to send #6, i'm hooked!)
dropping into bed, exhausted.
car noises start to diminsh around 10 pm.

NEW NEWS:

Briefly, I don't know that this blog habit is going to be compatible with my committment to simple living on a stipend. It takes a long time for the pictures to upload, and I've got SO many pictures I want to share with you all, so you can see some of what I see .... I'm still deciding what to do about this. I'll let you know when I decide.

I AM CHANGING MY EMAIL ADDRESS: hotmail is unreliable and the account is getting junky. Please update your address books, I will be hamelkate@yahoo.com.

I am WORKING now, at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital. I will write more about that soon.

We are MOVED IN, and living large in our swanky new flat. The traffic on the corner is the perfect alarm clock, so it really doesn't matter that mine's busted.

We are having wonderful SPIRITUALITY NIGHTS. This is part of our MVC lifestyle and committment, and I'm glad to have this opportunity once a week.

I am MISSING many of you, horribly, so please keep me posted on your comings and goings - it's great to still feel connected to those of you at home.

INTERNET CAFE = SNAPSHOTS

convent life

My room at the convent, complete with bug nets.

Aerobics with the sisters and Eileen - I was always in the back row, since I really wasn't old enough for this programme (or so they said).
exercise nearly always followed by the young and the restless, watched with rapt attention by several of the ladies you see here, and one you don't.

Surviving our first 4 blackouts means ...
CELEBRATIONS AT THE UMANA YANA



This afternoon, we took a second sardine-packed (15-20 people, vw bus sized), reggae/hip-hop-blaring bus circuit to Mercy Wings Vocational Centre (the last of the ministries that we have to figure out how to get to). Still getting used to men hissing at me on the streets. Today a clever one said something like, “Aah, Snow White, looking lovely today,” in that tone of voice that made me unsure whether it was a complement or an insult. Not that I’ve ever bothered to categorize them.
We topped off the bus rides with a visit to the Umana Yana (traditional central meeting house for Amerindian peoples) to look at an exhibit kicking off September as officially “Amerindian Heritage month”. It was amazing, there on the outskirts of the city, by the sea wall, was this colossal structure made entirely of forest materials (undoubtedly brought in from the interior). It had to be three stories tall, a modified sort of cone shape with a round base and a more rectangular shape at the very top where it flattened in stead of tapered to a point, and it probably would have taken me a good fifteen to twenty seconds to walk from one side of the arena inside to the other. Amerindian crafts from the local villages were displayed at tables, there was food, a fermented black potato liquor (which we had to sample – kind of like beer and wine together), many intricately woven baskets with several colors, statues, paintings, carvings, hammocks, sandals, necklaces and earrings, and much more. Since I’m living on about $60 a month and it feels like I have no money right now, I decided not to buy anything today.
During my time there I spoke with Modesta, a wonderful Arawak woman who knows a lot about Maruca and lives in Georgetown, “for now”, she tells me. I asked her what she thought the three most important things were for Americans to know about Amerindian life and culture. We talked about many things, but I’ll mention a few that stick out in my mind. First, Modesta is 55, has just retired from decades of teaching primary school in the interior, and has come to Georgetown seeking work and options because she feels like “there’s so much more I can do”. So she’s a member of an organization named something like the Amerindian Affairs Commission (or maybe it was Council?), and has been helping to train and hold accountable regional representatives who communicate with the people, the Council, and the Ministry of Homeland Affairs. As if that’s not enough, she wants to host a boy in Georgetown on a scholarship and also wants to go back to the interior to serve in a battered women’s shelter there. Meanwhile, she’s looking for a house with a third room, which is proving very difficult to do within her personal budget. My prayers are with her, and if you’re a prayerful person, please keep her in yours, too.
She also confirmed things that I have read again and again in texts about the adaptation and evolution of culture that leads to new indigenous realities: so many young people are leaving the communities to find work and not returning to start their own families there; few even send money to their families in the interior; young girls, especially, are recruited to “work” in Georgetown, a businessman sells the parents on the idea and disappears with them, leaving the parents with no way to communicate, complain, or find their daughters; AIDS and HIV rates are growing; drug use and trafficking(sp?) are growing; native languages based in oral cultures are not being written down and preserved, much less used actively, and are fading. Amid all of this, however, is a fight for dignity which leads them to actively petition the government frequently for necessities like bridges, electricity and clean water. There are also these celebrations, like the week-long display in the yumana yana, that celebrate what is left, what has come before, and how the changing and adapting is happening right before our eyes.
Did I mention she also tipped me off to the skipper of a ferry that takes passengers down the rivers to the interior? His nickname is “Peanut” – I can’t wait to get over there and ask for him ;o). She gave me her name, address, phone number and phone numbers of Peanut and another friend, as have several Guyanese before her – they are really an amazingly hospitable people. So there’s a lazy Sunday afternoon for you. We move into our flat tomorrow, and I’ll probably start work mid-week this week. Heads up: forthcoming blog entries will probably be a little less frequent until computer situation is all figured out.

With two-dozen mosquito bites despite the nets and bugspray,
Kate

EATIN’ ANTS FER BREAKFAST

That’s right. I’m true-blue Equator livin’, now. I have eaten ants for breakfast. No no, nothing so primal and glorious as huge carpenter ants skewered on sticks over an open pit fire, but rather the tiny white ants that roam the kitchen and found their way into the Raisin Bran box after the sugary raisins. I noticed a line climbing up the cupboard away from the box, and upon closer inspection, saw them ducking in under the “insert flap here” piece. Eileen and I observed an ant farm-like atmosphere through the plastic bag when we pulled it out, which elicited an, “EEEEW - gross!” from Eileen. We were on our way to throw them out when Ms. Lydia said, “Oh no, you can’t mind the ants – they don’t do you no harm”. We looked at her with wide eyes and she persisted, “No – of course not, no harm a’tall. They get on things from time to time, but you just scrape them off or shake them out and go on eatin’”. So the box stayed on the shelf, we learned about how to set up “moat traps” of water around things that were potentially defile-able by an ant colony. They learned the hard way after a wedding cake was assaulted by an ant army, but the guests ate it anyway. We figure everything edible will go in the fridge.