Let’s do this thing now! I’m now going to ask you for money! Not for me though, it’s for the children. We’re trying to raise money to purchase footballs through the One World Futball project. The project is an attempt to put footballs in the hands of the youth of our villages, combined with an educational program to promote life skills. The cost of this project is mainly in the balls. These aren’t your normal everyday footballs; these are indestructible blue footballs, blue balls! They do not go flat, they will last forever, and because they’re blue they won’t get lost or disappear, I’m sure of it. We’re raising funds through our Peace Corps Partnership website, where you can donate through the website whatever amount you can give, its super easy, and fun! So please, go on and donate whatever you can, every little amount helps, and as you know it’s for the children. Website link below:
Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a great new year. I can say that I myself did have a great one. I spent it in the capital, Paramaribo, with most of the Peace Corps volunteers. We spent most of the night at a Hostel/Restaurant/Club called Zus & Zo. It was a good time, to be out with a big group of volunteers on a day of celebration, good way to start off the year!
Since my last entry a lot has happened, let’s start from where we last left off. Since August, a whopping 5 months ago, we can begin with the annual Peace Corps conference, even though the conference was in October. For the SUR 16’s it was MST (Mid Service Training) and for the SUR 17’s (Early Service Training). All the volunteers in the country participated in the weeklong conference that had a slightly different focus depending on the group. My group, the SUR 16’s, focused on the fact that we were at roughly the half way mark, so we talked about our pasted experiences, what we learned, how we helped, what stories we had to share, and how to go about things into the next year. We also along with the SUR 16’s had new trainings of methods and a open forum where volunteers could get into groups of ideas and topics of interest put up by volunteers themselves. It was in my opinion a very successful conference. I had a good time throughout the week and learned some valuable insights that can be incorporated throughout the rest of my time here.
Out at site I’ve been keeping myself busy. It did start off slow with not too much going on, but towards the end of the year things really did pick up to the point where I was constantly busy. English lessons, something that is continual has been going, though sometimes there are breaks. As I mentioned before I have one student who repeatedly shows up so the lessons are essentially one on one tutoring sessions. We have them when we want and don’t really follow any particular schedule; it works well for the both of us. There’s a chance that I might start to tutor others as well, there’s been some interest in the idea, we’ll see how it goes. I’ve also started to do computer lessons, also one on one. A number of villagers own desktop computers and laptops but really don’t have much of an idea of how to use them besides the basics, and even that sometimes is a bit iffy. I’ve been meeting up with them to show them how to get around in a computer and to work specific programs they have interest in. It’s a slow process, trying to explain some of the concepts I find nearly impossible given my language skills and the fact it can’t even be expressed in the language. A slow process, one that does move forward though.
I’ve been doing a fair amount of electrical work, both in my village and in a surrounding village. In my village I’ve wired three houses with power in the last weeks. Now this is something from the start that I’ve had the intention of teaching others, to educate people who are interested in it so that they can do it themselves but I really haven’t had any luck finding people who are really interested in doing it. There are only two people in the village who know this stuff, and one spends most of his time in the city. I would think someone would want to learn this since there’s a real opportunity to make money. I’m going to search for some people and really try to make this happen because it’s so easy to learn and super practical.
The radio station located in the village, Radio Paakatie, currently only operates in the evenings. It gets its power from either the village when we have power or it runs its own generator. With the soaring costs of fuel providing their own power is a major expense on their own part and since they don’t have a very big budget I was thinking of starting a project with them to get a solar panel system installed. It’s the perfect situation for a project like this, a radio station that’s ran by the villagers in the community, that promotes educational and cultural programming, attempting to put in sustainable energy to power the station. What could be better? But it is better, one of the board members of the radio station lives in Paramaribo and is a high ranking government official. So, I was thinking great! I’ll write the project, using a general outline that could be used for any funding source, create nice presentation, and go with the board member and present this project, get the funding, etc., etc., etc., and before you know it have the station be powered by solar. Everyone wins. But then two things happened to stall this. One, I got the estimate for the system and it came in at $30,000, way more than I thought it would be. And two, I wanted to get as much information about the history of the station as possible. I contacted the board member and spoke with him about getting the information, and great, he said he’d get to it, which he eventually did, but that took 3 months to do. Something that should take a week at the most. Now I’m thinking I don’t really know if this is going to work out. The money that’s involved is big, and because of that this has got to be done professionally with a good partner who will be on it. If it took 3 months to get me basic information I really don’t think I can see what I have in mind working out. I’m still going to write to project but I’ll have to see how to take it, I’ve only got 7 more months here and something like this will need more time seeing how slow things work here. Time will tell.
With the help of another PCV I picked up two boxes of books for the school in my village. These books combined with the books already at the school will make a great start to a new library that we intend to create. The objective will be to have the teachers take care of the running of the library themselves. This is something that will happen, the PCV that’s helping me has already done it in her village and it’s a success.
I’ve starting painting a map of Suriname on the school wall. Currently it’s about halfway complete. The base layers, outline of the country, ocean, and borders are all down. All that’s needed is the detail of the country; the rivers, villages, districts, and whatever else that belongs. I expect to have this complete in February. Painting it has been great, I’ve had such a good time doing it that when I finish I might start some other projects. The headmaster at the school expressed interest in having me paint cartoon characters around the school. That’s something I think I’d like to get into.
Lastly, I helped make and produce a DVD of a huge GTG, the Gaanman Gazon Copa. All of the footage that was shot ending up being 5 hours long, consisting of about 200 short films that had to be edited. So after some long nights working my magic on the computer the DVD was completed. Being 5 hours long it’s on 2 discs. I made 75 copies. It turned out well; you definitely get a great idea what the party was like.
As far as village life is concerned quite a bit has been going on as well. Back in October, there was a huge GTG. It was the Gaanman Gazon Copa, normally referred to as the Gaanman Tiki. This was a great week long gathering meant to celebrate the Gaanman who lives in my village. He’s been in power longer than any Gaanman before him and was also the most important Gaanman ever. He was instrumental in the modernization of the Aukan people. Several thousand people came out from all over, from every Aukan village, other indigenous people’s villages, including four other Gaanmans, and members of the government. The week included meetings, talks, a football tournament, dancing every night with live music, and the presentation of a giant gold staff (tiki) to the Gaanman. The staff itself was massive; it had something like 600 grams of gold on it. The whole week was great, with so many people and so much going on it couldn’t have been better, this one of the experiences that makes all this so worthwhile since coming across something like this doesn’t happen very often, actually, it never happened before, and sadly it won’t be happening again.
In early December the Gaanman passed away. I was in Paramaribo at the time but I ran into a villager the night before who told me the Gaanman was in the hospital and that he wasn’t doing too well. When I got back to the village his body was already back and the process was started to make the casket. Normally when someone dies it’s an 8 day process from the day of the death to burial with a step going on every day, building the casket being one of the steps. With the Gaanman it’s a bit different, though the steps are the same its spread out over a period of 3 months. He won’t be buried until February. Currently it’s the in between time, his body had been placed in the casket, located near his old house in the village in an old meeting house. A temporary structure has been built alongside it for people to mourn, which in this case isn’t really a sad thing. It means that people come and sit, talk, and meet up to remember the Gaanman and about life in general. I’d like to go into detail about the whole process because it’s interesting, but there’s just too much to possibly put down here in a blog post. Come February though when it comes time for him to be buried I’ve been told there are going to be more people in the village than during the Gaanman Tiki celebration with possibly even more going on, and I’ll be there for it.
The government has plans to damn the river. They intend to divert water to the Brokopondo Reservoir in order to push more water through the damn to make more electricity. The extra electricity that is created will then be directed to Paramaribo and the surrounding districts, with no communities on the river seeing any of it. I was told that once the damn is created the current low level of the river will become the high level, and the new low level will be lower than anything that’s ever been seen. This is obviously bad news for anyone living on the river since it will affect not only transportation on the river but the ecology of it too. It’s going to have a serious impact. The thing is though, that since a small amount of the population live on this river and the number of people who benefit from it is the bulk of the population the government looks at this as doing good. In order to spark interest about this on the river, another PCV and I went on an epic 6 day river trip up river with captains from my village and surrounding villages to see the location of the proposed damn site. We stopped in every large village along the way to discuss what’s going on. Once you get to point up river you end up in Amerindian country, it’s all Amerindian villages from that point on. It begins in a village called Apetina, where the Amerindian Gaanman lives. We had a meeting with them and pickup up some people along the way. By the time we eventually made it to the damn site, 20 hours boat travel, 4 days later, we meet with a group of Amerindians from even further up river. The damn site was close to Palumeu. The whole trip was amazing; it’s been the favorite thing that I’ve done since I’ve been here. Being on the river, on the boat, going through an amazing landscape could not be beat. The further we went up river the denser the jungle became, and it seemed like we were going back in time. We would sleep in the villages we stopped at along the way, with the last two nights sleeping in the middle of nowhere on the river bed itself, since the river was low, with nothing around but dense jungle and the sounds of the jungle. We fished and hunted almost every day to get food, and we had a group of 4 women with us who would do the cooking, it was a good trip.
I decided that it was about time for me to visit my host family back in Tapuripa. This was where I lived when I first got into the country. I spent almost my first 3 months living with them, learning the lifestyle, culture, and the language. I’m not going to lie, it was a difficult time, I didn’t enjoy it all that much. That’s not say it wasn’t all bad, but 3 months was an awfully long time be in that situation. I wasn’t looking forward to going back but knew that I couldn’t live here for 2 years and not go back and visit, what kind of son would I have been, though, I haven’t visited my family back in Cali all this time either so there you go. I ended up having a really good time; I planned on going back for 3 days but ended up staying 5. I was a bit worried at first since I couldn’t get a hold of anyone, I just went, hoping things would work out. Once I got there, walked up to the house, everyone remembered me, everyone was happy to see me, and it was like I never left, I could tell this was a good decision. Being able to speak the language really made a big difference; I could now communicate with everyone at ease. I spent my time with my host family & friends, and my friends from Guyana who work on the barge close by. I also went to Brownsweg, a village about a ½ hour away to participate in the World Aids Day GTG with another volunteer who lived nearby. A successful trip indeed, but some sad news, less than a week later I found out that my host mother died. Apparently she died in her sleep of natural causes; she was getting to be up there in age. She looked perfectly healthy the whole time I was there, she was still even going to grounds, it was just her time to go.
Unfortunately I have more piece of bad news on the death front. The lovable monkey that lives behind my house has also passed on. A villager found him stealing a bag from his house that he said had 500srd in it. Whether that’s true who knows, but the next time that villager saw the monkey in his house he ended up getting him good with the machete. The monkey survived but wasn’t doing too well. Another villager ended up catching the monkey and took him to the poli-clinic to see if he could save him but it was a no go, the monkey lost too much blood and the cut was to severe to stitch up. So, now if we can, let’s have a brief moment of silence for the monkey, as much of a pain in ass as he was.
And there we go, done. Quite a lot has happened in these last 5 month. It’s now officially 2012, crazy right! I’ve got 7 months to go then I’m out of here, I’m going to make this time the best yet, until next time…
Oh, and here’s a list of all the books I’ve read in 2011:
1) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – Robert Pirsig
2) Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh
3) Off the Road – Carolyn Cassady
4) Crime & Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
5) A Life Inspired: Tales of Peace Corps Service
6) Advice on Dying – Dalai Lama
7) The Story of Philosophy – Will Durant
8) The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
9) Catching Fire – Suzanne Collins
10) Mocking Jay – Suzanne Collins
11) Life in the City – Shane Charles Sourgose
12) Kitchen Confidential – Anthony Bourdain
13) Teacher Man – Frank McCourt
14) De Anima – Aristotle
15) Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
16) Ecce Homo – Friedrich Nietzsche
17) On Liberty – John Stuart Mill
18) A Practical Guide to Racism – C.H. Dalton
19) The Philosopher at the End of the Universe – Mark Rowlands
20) Eli – Bill Myers
21) Skipped Parts – Tim Sandlin
22) The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe
23) In Patagonia – Bruce Chatwin
24) I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell – Tucker Max
25) Why Moths Hate Thomas Edison – Hampton Sides
26) The Nasty Bits – Anthony Bourdain
27) Ocean of Wisdom – Dalai Lama
28) Got War? – G.B. Trudeau
29) Pride & Prejudice & Zombies – Jane Austen & Seth Grahame-Smith
30) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kasey
31) The Beach – Alex Garland
32) Sweet Thursday – John Steinbeck
33) Visions of Cody – Jack Kerouac
34) Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice – Mark Plotkin
35) The World is Flat – Thomas Friedman
36) Sand in My Bra – Multiple Authors
37) The Razor’s Edge – W. Somerset Maugham
38) Bohemia – Herbert Gold
39) Half A Life – V.S. Naipaul
40) Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell
