3/6/09 (1 month till school’s over!
Hello! This is the last letter you are going to receive before coming out to visit! Hope you’re excited.
Not too much has happened within the last month. We have had a fair few visitors, including: Ian, while Ollie & Craig got the opportunity to go to Shell Beach, our Kiwi friend Rachel [who just can’t seem to leave this country] who cooks awesomely & enjoys food about as much as me, Terrence – our Georgetown Friend – Dora & Cuthbert volunteers & Rachel again – for Moruca day. This is all just a warm up before relations start appearing ….first batch arrives on Friday – belonging to Ollie.
Banks my now 5 week old black kitten is growing so fast one can almost watch it happen. She’s playing, climbing, feeding & generally leading a very comfortable life. We still have yet to train her to eat cockroaches …I currently have an ongoing battle with her about urinating under my bed, Yuk!
The benab is complete. The palm thatch, open sided hut out the back of the house is a perfect place to chill in a hammock with a book in the breeze off the savannah. It served its purpose very well for holding guests on Moruca day! We’ve spent so many weekends & holidays just out there with books, music, good food, the cat, rum punch etc.
The 3 Canadian red cross volunteers who are here for 2 months are awesome, very nice people. They’ve been helping out at the primary & secondary school, the hospital & the dormitories. Unfortunately due to recent events they are going to be leaving sooner than anticipated. I’ll explain just now.
Last week was Youth week. This was an excuse for the children to have a whole week of activities & NO lessons. Monday was supposedly an art & crafts day. Unfortunately the idea was a really good one, but no-one, of course wanted to structure/organise the event so it turned into a day of students doing nothing & teachers doing paperwork. Only 2D [my class] could be found doing anything remotely creative. Ollie & I taught them how to make bracelets, so we had a small industry for the day.
Tuesday was a holiday. Craig & I cycled to Waramuri a sandy, hilly ride that I fell off twice on. It took 1 hour 45 minutes but we did get lost a fair bit. The sudden burst of exercise made us feel quite sick but it was actually a very nice & fun ride. We visited Waramuri on a red cross trip – it’s a beautiful, white sand village on the river. There’s a peace corps volunteer there who we went by so as to bathe & generally recover. Unfortunately Craig standing in his boxers in the front door [he rarely is seen in more clothing] has started a few rumours about Miss Keena & a naked white ‘sir’.
Wednesday, Sir Rouel, Ollie & I took my class to Bamboo Wall where we had a bush cook & I wowed them with my cricket skills! ‘Woah Miss, you lash hard bad!’ The place was stunning – plenty bamboo. We found a circle of bamboo that had a diameter of about 3 ½ metres & this is where the boys made the fire. The place was beautiful with streams of light slanting between bamboo. It took 3 hours to cook the rice & even then it was not soft …mmm crunchy.
It was a good day out though, the children all had fun. On the way back we took a ‘short cut’ through thick jungle. Somehow Ollie, Arlene (a student) & I got separated from the rest & we found ourselves alone in silent bush with mahoosive trees & vines all around – uh oh ….we found them 25 minutes later!
On the Thursday Ollie & I took my class to Flavi’s at cabaccali where we had a day of competitions. To be honest we just wanted a relaxing day of peace & quiet, so we devised a cunning plan. We created 3 competitions, all involved sending the students away to complete tasks!
1. Fruit gathering competition. 1 ½ hours to gather as much & as various fruit as possible. We got 22 varieties & 293 pieces of fruit …enough for a DELICIOUS fruit salad.
2. Savannah Race. First child to cross the river & then savannah, touch Sir Lloyd’s house & get back wins. Methods: swim, run, paddle dug-outs.
3. Fishing competition. ½ an hour to catch as many fish using hands as possible. 2 were caught!
Was such a good day – though I accidentally got so sunburnt & am now suffering the consequences.
The weekend was then Moruca day/ Moruca expo weekend. This weekend was good fun: Morucan food, drink, crafts & pageant – 1 big party, we even had a ban come in for Friday night at Flavi’s. Various friends of ours had stalls & were selling Fly [local alcoholic drink made from ‘sweet potato’ i.e. beetroot] doughnuts, cassava bread & pepper pot & other local dishes. I got HIV tested & am NEGATIVE! Yey. Party, party, party – shame so many students were around to observe. Saturday night I had 3 men proclaim their love to me – complete strangers of course.
Unfortunately a few things marred the weekend, including: the Canadian volunteers having over $1400 stolen, the Red Cross having their day’s income from their popcorn stall stolen, & then our friend getting really drunk & threatening to kill himself from the top of a telegraph pylon. It was really horrible.
A weekend later & I find myself in a hammock in Caraburi school on my last Red Cross trip. It’s raining – Rainy season has finally decided to happen & the noise of the rain on the zinc roof is at such a level that I literally cannot hear anything happening around me. Sophie has pointed out that this is excellent practice for the childrens projectory voice skills!
Ollie has gone out to collect her Mum, sister & friend & Craig has gone to collect his Dad. Louise arrives on Wednesday – so its all happening! This last week I had my last Biology lessons & I’ve completely finished all work with I.T. So ….I’m done. We now have 3-4 weeks of exams & then ….
Very mixed feelings about coming home. I’m dreaming a lot about it. I’m very ready to return but I’ll miss this all so badly. Give me a week of being back in England & I’ll be wanting to escape again!
Lots of love from,
Emily XXX
Sunday, 21 June 2009
Sunday, 14 June 2009
Letter 11 from Guyana - It's a longun!
24/4/09-28/4/09
I am currently lying on a nice, big double bed in a beautiful Guest House on a hill overlooking Mabaruma – a town close to the Venezuelan border, west Region #1. In Guyana, ‘Teacher’s Workshop’ means going on a 5 hour boat trip through thick jungle, free accommodation in a nice place with excellent free food, chance to visit an absolutely stunning part of the country & having more productive days than I have had for months, things could be worse! We saw 2 giant otters on our way here (just to rub it in). I’m meant to be in school at the moment as it’s the 1st week back, but when Sir Glen (our HM) rang at 6.10 Wednesday morning to tell me the boat was going at 7.00, would I like to go? I was like ‘Why not? Nothing’s really going to happen at school this week’…..1st week at school is always full of not much work & not many students.
This really is a stunning place, red clay ‘roads’, hills and jungle, endless jungle.
Mabaruma’s real close to another Project Trust placement: Wauna – where Mirjam & Iona are. Iona’s been coming to the workshops too.
So, 8 months in, 3 ½ months to go, 10 more weeks of term (take off 5 for exams, revision etc) that’s 5 more teaching weeks! 9 weeks until Mum & Dad come to visit, 6 weeks till Louisa comes out. It’s going to fly by.
Easter holidays was so, so good. Though I am left with very little money *cough* HINT!
We went into town on the Sunday and met up with Ian, Stewart & Declan (St Cuthbert boys) & Chris & Nick (Dora boys) who we then got on a coach with & travelled down south to Lethem. The journey was 15 hours long & the road was more of a dirt track that cut straight through the jungle & then out through savannah. It was very bumpy! At several points in the journey we had to get off the bus & show ID. I’m guessing this was as we passed in & out of different regions & also parts of reserve. Different parts of Guyana feel more like different parts of the world. Savannah in region 9 is completely different to that in region 4. To be honest, savannah in region 4 is just sand with low bushes. It’s the same with other types of terrain in the country, it varies vastly wherever you go. Region 9 is generally very dusty, walking 2 minutes anywhere will turn your feet bright orange! It’s mostly extensive savannah & random mountain ranges in the distance (the Kanuku’s & the Pakaraimas). I longed to climb those mountains & was tempted even more when I was told that a certain range had never before been crossed on foot!
On arrival to Lethem (Tuesday afternoon) – a very odd place it is too – we decided ‘Hey why not continue on to Brazil?’, so we did ….
Filled in forms at the Lethem police station & on foot headed the direction that they pointed in when asked for ‘Brazil’. Was a very random route along a track, over some plants crossing a stream, through some trees to find a Mahoosive bridge. Up some giant steps, On to the bridge, Over the river & ……..BRAZIL …to discover that no-one here, however close to the border, speaks English.
[By the way, we’d met Milly in Lethem who decided to join our wee gaggle]
We spent Tuesday to Friday in Boa Vista, Brazil, basically just eating as much steak as possible. It was very odd to be back in a more modern city with novelties such as: traffic lights, cars, signs, proper restaurants, supermarkets & STEAK! The meat really was incredible & very cheap, as was the beer!
Our biggest problem was the language barrier. One kind of assumes that everyone knows at least basic English. However Brazil is so vast that it really isn’t necessary to speak our language, especially seeing as only one country that borders it speaks English – being Guyana ….& most of Brazil is probably as ignorant as you & I & has never known of the country’s existence! I managed to shock the other volunteers by getting us a hotel, directions & rooms purely with Spanish. Still got some of the GCSE lingo tucked away it seems!
Other times, it was less easy. Thursday night we went to the water front where there are some bars & restaurants. We didn’t understand any of the menu & it turned out the waiter didn’t speak any Spanish. We were particularly interested by one of the items on the menu & had to resort to sign language. We decided that it must be lobster so Ian began to sign language ‘the whole thing?’ or ‘just the claw?’ We gathered ‘the whole thing’ so Ollie ordered it & waited to see what came. Milly used a different tactic & went for animal noises. Millie’s technique proved more accurate, Ollie received beef.
The best morning we had was on Thursday when we found the ‘Chocobom’ chocolate shop & the sweety supermarket. Large domes of hard chocolate, filled with either condensed milky chewy stuff, or chocolate cakey mixture stuff, with either fruit or nuts in the centre. Ian, Milly, Ollie and I chose 9 at random & went & sat under a tree on the side of the road (classy I know) & each, one at a time, picked one, took a bite & passed it on. Our 40 minute chocolate tasting session left us feeling fairly sick – but so satisfied. Unfortunately, 20 minutes later, we found ourselves standing in front of a massive sweet shop which obviously had to be investigated! First aisle: bubblegum, 2nd: Throat sweets, 3rd: boiled sweets, 4th: gummy sweets, 5th: chocolate, 6th: biscuits, 7th: toothbrushes & toilet roll. It was Ollie’s dream shop, all wholesale, all at least 90% sugar all very very cheap! So Brazil was a success!
Friday morning, after an avocado milkshake (!), we headed back up to Lethem & Guyana for Rodeo.
Lethem is a weird place. There’s no central part to the town where you would expect essential buildings, such as police station, school, admin, travel, shops, bar/restaurant. Everything is so spread out & dotted around large spaces of red dust. The people have a completely different accent to up north, some seemed only to be able to speak Portugese, very odd.
Rodeo was awesome. Bought a cowboy hat obviously …(mainly because if I didn’t turn up cowboyish to a party I was going to be made to wear a coconut bra & grass knickers) but was gutted to find that I couldn’t get cowboy boots; Guyanese cowboys are hard core – they don’t wear anything on their feet.
Went to a party on Friday night by an English guy’s house – he’s ex-SAS & out here running jungle survival courses. It involved the usual: rum, music, fire, bull whips, bows & arrows, blow pipes & skittle vodka! I spent a long time perfecting cracking the bull whip & managed to give myself a lash around my back & face leaving long red marks for an hour or so! But once perfected, it’s so satisfying. There was also the usual dancing & beauty competitions that are always so psyched up & always so boring!
Saturday, Ollie, Milly, Stewart & I never made it in time to see any cowboy action ….We’d decided to go swimming in the river with Dellon (Milly’s boyfriend) & some of his friends. The river was stunning, very wide, Brazil over the other side, long white sandy beachy parts. We drove a minibus down the sand duney bank across the beach, into the water; I could foresee problems ….anyway we left Dellon’s friends all getting into the ‘cleaning vehicles in underwear (Y-fronts in this case) in time to crazy music’ mode of things, & swam over to Brazil. When we came back the bus was looking nice & clean but its wheels had sunk 2/3’s into the sand. It took 2 ½ hours for us to wait for a pickup to come & tow, while we all pushed & levered the minibus out & up the bank, by which point we were all very sandy, sunburnt & the bus was in need of a clean again! So by the time we got to the Rodeo ground most of the action was over & everyone was just preparing for the big evening party & fair.
There’s actually a project in Lethem so everyone went back by Steve’s house, bathed in the creek, strung hammocks up in the school & pick-uped back to the Rodeo for toffee apples, toffee grapes (?), steak on sticks, beer, rum, music etc.
The next day (Easter Sunday) we made sure to arrive at Rodeo in time to see some cowboys on horses! To be honest, generally they didn’t stay on the horses very long – they were bucked off. I have some awesome photos! We also saw lassoing of calves & bulls (which was really exciting, especially when one, really pissed off bull decided to charge the horse & rider). The sad thing was that the animals stood in the sun for the whole day, in the hot hot sun, with no shade & no water. By the end of the day some of the animals just refused to move & one horse died of heat exhaustion. It was horrible, I saw it all, it was fitting & bleeding from its ears. A vaquero tried to resuscitate it by knee dropping it, but soon fluids came out of all orifices & it died. Crazy that they let that happen. Generally vaqueros live for their animals, they do everything. Raise the cattle, kill them – by tying them to a tree, bludgeoning them on their head & then slitting their throat & draining the the body – cut it up, divide meat from other useful parts, cut the meat, skin the animal, make leather, use/sell the leather etc. Tough life!
Sunday night was a big party again – got back at 4.30am, slept an hour, before meeting Craig, his friend ‘Charlotte’, Ollie & Milly & heading back up for Karanamba – a 3 hour ride in the back of a pickup (not so good after a night of accidentally drinking beer on antibiotics …not a good mix!)
Karanamba is beautiful. Set in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by savannah, lakes, mountains & next to jungle lined river. The place was settled in the 1920’s, set up by an American who was interested in the balata trade. His daughter now looks after the place. Diane McTurk, the daughter, has set up a program restoring orphaned otters to the wild & has aided extensive research in the last 50 years. To financially support her program she decided to make Karanamba a place where tourists & researchers can stay & experience some of what this incredible country has to offer. It’s an incredibly personal place. Diane, who is 78 now, comes on every trip with her side kick 68 year old Pat, & they still are so excited by everything even though they’ve live there so long & led expeditions so many times. They are an awesome pair. Pat is a chain-smoking, very blunt & opinionated, rum punch lover who originally came to Guyana to achieve her dream of catching the world’s largest fresh water fish species: the Arapaima. Diane also lives on rum punch – it’s the drink of choice taken on all river & savannah trips & is offered at all times of the day. She insists that all guests eat together – amazing meals prepared by some locals she employs – where she tells some incredible stories, she really is a remarkable lady. I can see how Craig enjoyed working for them for a month last summer – 2 old interesting ladies, plenty rum punch, awesome food & one of the most peaceful places I’ve ever been. We stayed in little cabins, we’d go out on trips to return to clean washing, our bed nets down & beds made & the orphaned racoon ‘Bandit’ having squeezed through the window slats & drinking from the toilet! Unfortunately the otters that Diane had been looking after had disappeared 2 weeks back. She fears that they were attacked & killed by others as they’ve stopped leaving ‘calling cards’ – fish bones, rocks etc. - & have not returned. So we spent 2 days going on river trips, walks & a savannah trip to search for wildlife. We saw caiman, a capybara, monkeys, plenty birds -> Road-side hawk (Dad), many kingfishers, green ibis, storks, herons, parrots. We watched the world’s largest Lily species open its petals at night (the Victoria Amazonica), had fish jump right up over the boat – made me laugh & scream every time! But the best sighting was on the last morning when I spotted, using binoculars, an ANACONDA – big, black, shiny mass curled up in some dead branches of a fallen tree on the far side of a lake. Wow!
Ollie & I headed back to Town on Wednesday, by air! 12 seater plane that you couldn’t stand up in, could touch the controls from where you sat - & rained inside! Guyana’s incredible from the air (I really need some new adjectives) it’s all under water, savannah & trees, the colours are beautiful, especially on the savannah. Colour changes from browns , to gold, to yellows, to greens depending on how close the grass is to water/ was close to water seeing as it’s all dried up! We also passed over a gold mine which looked like some sort of a lost city.
Back in town we chilled out with some friends trying to spend as little money as possible. I was waiting for Ian to return from the Shulinab project back in Region 9 (otherwise known as the Rupununi). Shulinab is up in the Kanuku mountains, turns out Ian spent the time fishing under water with goggles & spears, % playing with human skulls found in dutch pots up in a cave on skull mountain! We managed to spend a couple of days together at the end of the holidays in town before heading back to our projects.
Good times!
So returned to Moruca on the Sunday taking with us Iona – who accidentally missed her flight back to Mabaruma! At this point I was expecting to go to Mabaruma Monday morning. It wasn’t until we got back that Sir Errol told me that it had been postponed. So we had Iona stranded with us in Moruca until we found a boat passing through – which didn’t occur until Tuesday!
When walking back from the landing to our house on Sunday we passed a Sloth that had just started climbing a telegraph pole at the side of the road. We were so close we could have touched it; got some real good photos on my new pink camera. I really did want to tell the Sloth that it wasn’t going to find anything at the top of the pole…& would have to climb all the way down again!
Jumby news from Moruca – on Palm Sunday 4 girls got ‘attacked’ in Mass at which point one of the teachers stood up & publicly blamed another for the whole thing. She’s now asked for a transfer (rumour has it) which would be awful as she’s one of the only outspoken teachers who gets things done & acts as a voice for all the staff. There were a couple more ‘attacks’ over the holidays & now an old monk has brought his psychologist sister from America in to properly assess the problem. We’ll see what comes of that.
Pass my thanks on to all who have sent me goodies & letters, they are still so exciting to receive. If I were you, be sending last stuff around the end of May so that stuff doesn’t arrive when we’re not here.
Only other news was a 5 hour house clean & cockroach massacre. About once every 3 months the cockroach situation gets so bad that when you get out of bed at night you hear the scuttling as they scatter ….nasty! So we have our cockroach cull. Craig goes in to the cupboard with toxic ‘Fish’ spray (insecticide that is sure to be illegal in the UK). I stand on one side with a swatter, Craig on the other & the splatting begins as they start to scuttle out by the 10’s. Ollie stands at a distance & spots for us. The whole process takes around an hour & a half & is both an adrenalin rush & very satisfying – apart from when cockroach guts squirt everywhere – like all over my leg (it stinks). It’s always a fairly loud activity – can’t help but scream when they creep out on you/ squirt on you, but hey it gets the neighbours back for waking us up at all hours of the morning with their screeching!
Just waiting for some rain now. Now using pond water for bathing with & the tanks are very low too. The river is the lowest I’ve ever seen. Savannah is actually attached to mud! Loads of people are, for some reason, deciding to burn it – don’t know why. Rainy season is due to start now & continue through to August, so I guess I should be making the most being dry in Guyana for the last time!
Yuck I just turned the tap on & a big tadpoley mush dropped out on to my tooth brush!
Hope all is well everywhere else, don’t get swine flu ….
Lots of love from
Emily
XXX
I am currently lying on a nice, big double bed in a beautiful Guest House on a hill overlooking Mabaruma – a town close to the Venezuelan border, west Region #1. In Guyana, ‘Teacher’s Workshop’ means going on a 5 hour boat trip through thick jungle, free accommodation in a nice place with excellent free food, chance to visit an absolutely stunning part of the country & having more productive days than I have had for months, things could be worse! We saw 2 giant otters on our way here (just to rub it in). I’m meant to be in school at the moment as it’s the 1st week back, but when Sir Glen (our HM) rang at 6.10 Wednesday morning to tell me the boat was going at 7.00, would I like to go? I was like ‘Why not? Nothing’s really going to happen at school this week’…..1st week at school is always full of not much work & not many students.
This really is a stunning place, red clay ‘roads’, hills and jungle, endless jungle.
Mabaruma’s real close to another Project Trust placement: Wauna – where Mirjam & Iona are. Iona’s been coming to the workshops too.
So, 8 months in, 3 ½ months to go, 10 more weeks of term (take off 5 for exams, revision etc) that’s 5 more teaching weeks! 9 weeks until Mum & Dad come to visit, 6 weeks till Louisa comes out. It’s going to fly by.
Easter holidays was so, so good. Though I am left with very little money *cough* HINT!
We went into town on the Sunday and met up with Ian, Stewart & Declan (St Cuthbert boys) & Chris & Nick (Dora boys) who we then got on a coach with & travelled down south to Lethem. The journey was 15 hours long & the road was more of a dirt track that cut straight through the jungle & then out through savannah. It was very bumpy! At several points in the journey we had to get off the bus & show ID. I’m guessing this was as we passed in & out of different regions & also parts of reserve. Different parts of Guyana feel more like different parts of the world. Savannah in region 9 is completely different to that in region 4. To be honest, savannah in region 4 is just sand with low bushes. It’s the same with other types of terrain in the country, it varies vastly wherever you go. Region 9 is generally very dusty, walking 2 minutes anywhere will turn your feet bright orange! It’s mostly extensive savannah & random mountain ranges in the distance (the Kanuku’s & the Pakaraimas). I longed to climb those mountains & was tempted even more when I was told that a certain range had never before been crossed on foot!
On arrival to Lethem (Tuesday afternoon) – a very odd place it is too – we decided ‘Hey why not continue on to Brazil?’, so we did ….
Filled in forms at the Lethem police station & on foot headed the direction that they pointed in when asked for ‘Brazil’. Was a very random route along a track, over some plants crossing a stream, through some trees to find a Mahoosive bridge. Up some giant steps, On to the bridge, Over the river & ……..BRAZIL …to discover that no-one here, however close to the border, speaks English.
[By the way, we’d met Milly in Lethem who decided to join our wee gaggle]
We spent Tuesday to Friday in Boa Vista, Brazil, basically just eating as much steak as possible. It was very odd to be back in a more modern city with novelties such as: traffic lights, cars, signs, proper restaurants, supermarkets & STEAK! The meat really was incredible & very cheap, as was the beer!
Our biggest problem was the language barrier. One kind of assumes that everyone knows at least basic English. However Brazil is so vast that it really isn’t necessary to speak our language, especially seeing as only one country that borders it speaks English – being Guyana ….& most of Brazil is probably as ignorant as you & I & has never known of the country’s existence! I managed to shock the other volunteers by getting us a hotel, directions & rooms purely with Spanish. Still got some of the GCSE lingo tucked away it seems!
Other times, it was less easy. Thursday night we went to the water front where there are some bars & restaurants. We didn’t understand any of the menu & it turned out the waiter didn’t speak any Spanish. We were particularly interested by one of the items on the menu & had to resort to sign language. We decided that it must be lobster so Ian began to sign language ‘the whole thing?’ or ‘just the claw?’ We gathered ‘the whole thing’ so Ollie ordered it & waited to see what came. Milly used a different tactic & went for animal noises. Millie’s technique proved more accurate, Ollie received beef.
The best morning we had was on Thursday when we found the ‘Chocobom’ chocolate shop & the sweety supermarket. Large domes of hard chocolate, filled with either condensed milky chewy stuff, or chocolate cakey mixture stuff, with either fruit or nuts in the centre. Ian, Milly, Ollie and I chose 9 at random & went & sat under a tree on the side of the road (classy I know) & each, one at a time, picked one, took a bite & passed it on. Our 40 minute chocolate tasting session left us feeling fairly sick – but so satisfied. Unfortunately, 20 minutes later, we found ourselves standing in front of a massive sweet shop which obviously had to be investigated! First aisle: bubblegum, 2nd: Throat sweets, 3rd: boiled sweets, 4th: gummy sweets, 5th: chocolate, 6th: biscuits, 7th: toothbrushes & toilet roll. It was Ollie’s dream shop, all wholesale, all at least 90% sugar all very very cheap! So Brazil was a success!
Friday morning, after an avocado milkshake (!), we headed back up to Lethem & Guyana for Rodeo.
Lethem is a weird place. There’s no central part to the town where you would expect essential buildings, such as police station, school, admin, travel, shops, bar/restaurant. Everything is so spread out & dotted around large spaces of red dust. The people have a completely different accent to up north, some seemed only to be able to speak Portugese, very odd.
Rodeo was awesome. Bought a cowboy hat obviously …(mainly because if I didn’t turn up cowboyish to a party I was going to be made to wear a coconut bra & grass knickers) but was gutted to find that I couldn’t get cowboy boots; Guyanese cowboys are hard core – they don’t wear anything on their feet.
Went to a party on Friday night by an English guy’s house – he’s ex-SAS & out here running jungle survival courses. It involved the usual: rum, music, fire, bull whips, bows & arrows, blow pipes & skittle vodka! I spent a long time perfecting cracking the bull whip & managed to give myself a lash around my back & face leaving long red marks for an hour or so! But once perfected, it’s so satisfying. There was also the usual dancing & beauty competitions that are always so psyched up & always so boring!
Saturday, Ollie, Milly, Stewart & I never made it in time to see any cowboy action ….We’d decided to go swimming in the river with Dellon (Milly’s boyfriend) & some of his friends. The river was stunning, very wide, Brazil over the other side, long white sandy beachy parts. We drove a minibus down the sand duney bank across the beach, into the water; I could foresee problems ….anyway we left Dellon’s friends all getting into the ‘cleaning vehicles in underwear (Y-fronts in this case) in time to crazy music’ mode of things, & swam over to Brazil. When we came back the bus was looking nice & clean but its wheels had sunk 2/3’s into the sand. It took 2 ½ hours for us to wait for a pickup to come & tow, while we all pushed & levered the minibus out & up the bank, by which point we were all very sandy, sunburnt & the bus was in need of a clean again! So by the time we got to the Rodeo ground most of the action was over & everyone was just preparing for the big evening party & fair.
There’s actually a project in Lethem so everyone went back by Steve’s house, bathed in the creek, strung hammocks up in the school & pick-uped back to the Rodeo for toffee apples, toffee grapes (?), steak on sticks, beer, rum, music etc.
The next day (Easter Sunday) we made sure to arrive at Rodeo in time to see some cowboys on horses! To be honest, generally they didn’t stay on the horses very long – they were bucked off. I have some awesome photos! We also saw lassoing of calves & bulls (which was really exciting, especially when one, really pissed off bull decided to charge the horse & rider). The sad thing was that the animals stood in the sun for the whole day, in the hot hot sun, with no shade & no water. By the end of the day some of the animals just refused to move & one horse died of heat exhaustion. It was horrible, I saw it all, it was fitting & bleeding from its ears. A vaquero tried to resuscitate it by knee dropping it, but soon fluids came out of all orifices & it died. Crazy that they let that happen. Generally vaqueros live for their animals, they do everything. Raise the cattle, kill them – by tying them to a tree, bludgeoning them on their head & then slitting their throat & draining the the body – cut it up, divide meat from other useful parts, cut the meat, skin the animal, make leather, use/sell the leather etc. Tough life!
Sunday night was a big party again – got back at 4.30am, slept an hour, before meeting Craig, his friend ‘Charlotte’, Ollie & Milly & heading back up for Karanamba – a 3 hour ride in the back of a pickup (not so good after a night of accidentally drinking beer on antibiotics …not a good mix!)
Karanamba is beautiful. Set in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by savannah, lakes, mountains & next to jungle lined river. The place was settled in the 1920’s, set up by an American who was interested in the balata trade. His daughter now looks after the place. Diane McTurk, the daughter, has set up a program restoring orphaned otters to the wild & has aided extensive research in the last 50 years. To financially support her program she decided to make Karanamba a place where tourists & researchers can stay & experience some of what this incredible country has to offer. It’s an incredibly personal place. Diane, who is 78 now, comes on every trip with her side kick 68 year old Pat, & they still are so excited by everything even though they’ve live there so long & led expeditions so many times. They are an awesome pair. Pat is a chain-smoking, very blunt & opinionated, rum punch lover who originally came to Guyana to achieve her dream of catching the world’s largest fresh water fish species: the Arapaima. Diane also lives on rum punch – it’s the drink of choice taken on all river & savannah trips & is offered at all times of the day. She insists that all guests eat together – amazing meals prepared by some locals she employs – where she tells some incredible stories, she really is a remarkable lady. I can see how Craig enjoyed working for them for a month last summer – 2 old interesting ladies, plenty rum punch, awesome food & one of the most peaceful places I’ve ever been. We stayed in little cabins, we’d go out on trips to return to clean washing, our bed nets down & beds made & the orphaned racoon ‘Bandit’ having squeezed through the window slats & drinking from the toilet! Unfortunately the otters that Diane had been looking after had disappeared 2 weeks back. She fears that they were attacked & killed by others as they’ve stopped leaving ‘calling cards’ – fish bones, rocks etc. - & have not returned. So we spent 2 days going on river trips, walks & a savannah trip to search for wildlife. We saw caiman, a capybara, monkeys, plenty birds -> Road-side hawk (Dad), many kingfishers, green ibis, storks, herons, parrots. We watched the world’s largest Lily species open its petals at night (the Victoria Amazonica), had fish jump right up over the boat – made me laugh & scream every time! But the best sighting was on the last morning when I spotted, using binoculars, an ANACONDA – big, black, shiny mass curled up in some dead branches of a fallen tree on the far side of a lake. Wow!
Ollie & I headed back to Town on Wednesday, by air! 12 seater plane that you couldn’t stand up in, could touch the controls from where you sat - & rained inside! Guyana’s incredible from the air (I really need some new adjectives) it’s all under water, savannah & trees, the colours are beautiful, especially on the savannah. Colour changes from browns , to gold, to yellows, to greens depending on how close the grass is to water/ was close to water seeing as it’s all dried up! We also passed over a gold mine which looked like some sort of a lost city.
Back in town we chilled out with some friends trying to spend as little money as possible. I was waiting for Ian to return from the Shulinab project back in Region 9 (otherwise known as the Rupununi). Shulinab is up in the Kanuku mountains, turns out Ian spent the time fishing under water with goggles & spears, % playing with human skulls found in dutch pots up in a cave on skull mountain! We managed to spend a couple of days together at the end of the holidays in town before heading back to our projects.
Good times!
So returned to Moruca on the Sunday taking with us Iona – who accidentally missed her flight back to Mabaruma! At this point I was expecting to go to Mabaruma Monday morning. It wasn’t until we got back that Sir Errol told me that it had been postponed. So we had Iona stranded with us in Moruca until we found a boat passing through – which didn’t occur until Tuesday!
When walking back from the landing to our house on Sunday we passed a Sloth that had just started climbing a telegraph pole at the side of the road. We were so close we could have touched it; got some real good photos on my new pink camera. I really did want to tell the Sloth that it wasn’t going to find anything at the top of the pole…& would have to climb all the way down again!
Jumby news from Moruca – on Palm Sunday 4 girls got ‘attacked’ in Mass at which point one of the teachers stood up & publicly blamed another for the whole thing. She’s now asked for a transfer (rumour has it) which would be awful as she’s one of the only outspoken teachers who gets things done & acts as a voice for all the staff. There were a couple more ‘attacks’ over the holidays & now an old monk has brought his psychologist sister from America in to properly assess the problem. We’ll see what comes of that.
Pass my thanks on to all who have sent me goodies & letters, they are still so exciting to receive. If I were you, be sending last stuff around the end of May so that stuff doesn’t arrive when we’re not here.
Only other news was a 5 hour house clean & cockroach massacre. About once every 3 months the cockroach situation gets so bad that when you get out of bed at night you hear the scuttling as they scatter ….nasty! So we have our cockroach cull. Craig goes in to the cupboard with toxic ‘Fish’ spray (insecticide that is sure to be illegal in the UK). I stand on one side with a swatter, Craig on the other & the splatting begins as they start to scuttle out by the 10’s. Ollie stands at a distance & spots for us. The whole process takes around an hour & a half & is both an adrenalin rush & very satisfying – apart from when cockroach guts squirt everywhere – like all over my leg (it stinks). It’s always a fairly loud activity – can’t help but scream when they creep out on you/ squirt on you, but hey it gets the neighbours back for waking us up at all hours of the morning with their screeching!
Just waiting for some rain now. Now using pond water for bathing with & the tanks are very low too. The river is the lowest I’ve ever seen. Savannah is actually attached to mud! Loads of people are, for some reason, deciding to burn it – don’t know why. Rainy season is due to start now & continue through to August, so I guess I should be making the most being dry in Guyana for the last time!
Yuck I just turned the tap on & a big tadpoley mush dropped out on to my tooth brush!
Hope all is well everywhere else, don’t get swine flu ….
Lots of love from
Emily
XXX
Monday, 20 April 2009
Letter 10 from Guyana
25/3/09
7 months gone, 4 ½ to go.
I can’t remember when I last wrote, whether it was after Mashrami, after Phagwah, both, or not at all. So, as usual, bear (bare?) with me a tad.
So, since returning from Phagwah – a Hindu festival where lots of dye is thrown over EVERYONE & EVERYTHING resulting in dyed skin, clothes & hair (Ollie’s hair is still green 3 weeks later) for a fair few days – Ollie and I returned to Jumbie mayhem. Since getting back the school has been evacuated & ‘cleansed’ by exorcism several times. It’s exams at the moment (though no-one’s quite sure whether they’ve been cancelled after yesterday’s havoc) & several times they’ve been interrupted by dramatic scenes of possession from various girls. This week, for 6 nights in a row, the Pentecostal Church (i.e. ‘Clap Hands’) are holding a crusade on the ballfield – about 200m from our house. This involves aggressive, strangely accented preaching, AWFUL keyboard playing, the WORST singing, some exorcisms & plenty ‘Praise to Jesus’, ‘Flee evil demons’ & ‘Hallelujahs’! All done through microphones & being belted out so that the whole of Moruca can hear for FOUR HOURS …I just want some peace & quiet!
So yesterday, at 11.00, just as form 1 & 2 were finishing their IT exam, all went crazy. Suddenly there was screaming coming from all over the school & there were students all over the ballfield. 4 girls got the Jumbie & were being carried, or manically kicking up on the ballfield. Each was surrounded by a group of students, being held down & prayed over.
At this point Sir Steve ran into the class I was invigilating & told them to stop what they were doing & get out of the class & school as fast as possible. I told them they could leave if they were scared but that if they wanted to do well they should try & finish. Within 10 minutes the school was cleared apart from the staff who all congregated in the auditorium waiting for permission from above to leave. While we waited there was still one girl thrashing around on the field, surrounded by a group of 20ish people, including her mother & completely traumatised younger brother. They prayed over her & sang & struggled for about an hour.
We never got permission to leave so we waited until the usual time of 12.00 for lunch & returned at 1.00 to a studentless school & for a 3 ½ hour meeting where …what a surprise ……nothing was decided on. It is possible that next week (our last of term 2) no students will come to school & yet we, being staff, will have to turn up & spend a week doing nothing.
I’m bored of it all, I’m bored of school keeping being dismissed & us still having to turn up & spend hours doing nothing. I’m bored with Jumbie & don’t see how it’s going to be stopped. All the emphasis is on prayer & locals are generally closed to the idea of getting in psychologists. Yes prayer is a healthy thing to do, however this has been going on for far too long & we need to start looking at other options. I wish that the ministry would step in & help. There’s a condition called ‘crowd hysteria’ that has been diagnosed in schools where similar things have happened. Look in to it; no-one seems to be here!
I’m so tired of doing nothing!!! Very tempted to just leave & go to St Cuthberts where we’re actually needed & will be used.
Other news: Easter plans are made. We’re going down to Lethem on Monday – we being me & St Cuthberts & Dora boys. Ollie is meant to be going on the Sunday (she’s going Aishalton project with New Amsterdam Girls). Craig is flying down on the following Saturday with a friend from England. Rodeo is happening on the Saturday & Sunday there & so most of Guyana goes to take part! Not sure what we’ll do during the first week, maybe go to Brazil or there’s a cabin on a mountain, near a peanut butter factory, that has nice walks around it close-ish to Annai…we’ll just wing it. After Rodeo, me, Craig, Ollie, Craig’s friend & maybe Milly are going to go to Karanambu Lodge. Karanambu is in the middle of the jungle & is a research & eco-tourist place. It’s run by a pretty eccentric lady who releases giant otters back into the wild. Ollie & I fly back to town on the Wednesday. Then on Friday we may try to go to Kaiteur Falls. It’s going to be an expensive Easter! BUT HEY! I’ll get STEAK!
We continue to see plenty sloths & plenty Toucans at the moment. Shame that waterproof camera number 2 drowned. We went on a bush cook last Sunday. Bush cooks are where you go somewhere nice, generally in the bush, make a fire & cook lunch. We went to Cabora Creek – a beautiful and secluded part of Moruca. I walked there about an hour after the others as I was still in bed as they left! I put on some chillaxing music – none other than choir boys (don’t laugh – I was feeling mellow), waved to a sloth in the bamboo & set off for Cabora Creek. I past a tree with a couple of Toucans in it – they always shock me by how weird they look - & also passed the biggest caterpillar/ grub thing I’ve ever seen – about 3cm diameter & 15 cm long – like something out of Doctor Who. I then passed a very traditional, palm roofed stilted house & 3 little girls (probably all 6 yrs and under) who were in the ‘yard’. They’d clearly been asked by their mother to pick up rubbish outside – they were all carrying plastic bags – but instead they’d decided to play ‘dizzy dinosaurs’ (you know the game where you spin round until you fall over!). So these 3 tiny girls, their long hair all in plaits & in their home made ‘princess’ dresses were all spinning in the dust & wind with their plastic bags held out like parachutes apparently (to me) all to the music of choir boys – it was an absolutely gorgeous sight.
(Break from letter as I get dragged downstairs to take part in a special school ‘crusade’. 5 more girls sick….school dismissed….apart from…teachers….service with the AWFUL keyboard downstairs…I thought it couldn’t get worse! OH well, I suggested to the teachers that we have a bush cook at the school seeing as we having nothing to do & they all said YES! So have gone to get supplies)
SO I arrived at the creek without having been eaten by a ‘tiger’, much to the relief & joy of our local friends & had a lovely afternoon.
My birthday cards starting arriving 2 weeks back, thank-you! Though the PM hates me so much that I can no longer enter the post office so others have to collect it for me!
‘One more girl just got ‘attacked’’
Grrr, this thing is driving me mad!
Well, that’s most of the news, I think…Whanita is pleading for any dresses that could be used for the Moruca day beauty pageant….Maybe check out some charity shops? Also for bright make-up…she trains the beauty queens!
Will write after Easter,
Lots of love,
Emily
xxx
7 months gone, 4 ½ to go.
I can’t remember when I last wrote, whether it was after Mashrami, after Phagwah, both, or not at all. So, as usual, bear (bare?) with me a tad.
So, since returning from Phagwah – a Hindu festival where lots of dye is thrown over EVERYONE & EVERYTHING resulting in dyed skin, clothes & hair (Ollie’s hair is still green 3 weeks later) for a fair few days – Ollie and I returned to Jumbie mayhem. Since getting back the school has been evacuated & ‘cleansed’ by exorcism several times. It’s exams at the moment (though no-one’s quite sure whether they’ve been cancelled after yesterday’s havoc) & several times they’ve been interrupted by dramatic scenes of possession from various girls. This week, for 6 nights in a row, the Pentecostal Church (i.e. ‘Clap Hands’) are holding a crusade on the ballfield – about 200m from our house. This involves aggressive, strangely accented preaching, AWFUL keyboard playing, the WORST singing, some exorcisms & plenty ‘Praise to Jesus’, ‘Flee evil demons’ & ‘Hallelujahs’! All done through microphones & being belted out so that the whole of Moruca can hear for FOUR HOURS …I just want some peace & quiet!
So yesterday, at 11.00, just as form 1 & 2 were finishing their IT exam, all went crazy. Suddenly there was screaming coming from all over the school & there were students all over the ballfield. 4 girls got the Jumbie & were being carried, or manically kicking up on the ballfield. Each was surrounded by a group of students, being held down & prayed over.
At this point Sir Steve ran into the class I was invigilating & told them to stop what they were doing & get out of the class & school as fast as possible. I told them they could leave if they were scared but that if they wanted to do well they should try & finish. Within 10 minutes the school was cleared apart from the staff who all congregated in the auditorium waiting for permission from above to leave. While we waited there was still one girl thrashing around on the field, surrounded by a group of 20ish people, including her mother & completely traumatised younger brother. They prayed over her & sang & struggled for about an hour.
We never got permission to leave so we waited until the usual time of 12.00 for lunch & returned at 1.00 to a studentless school & for a 3 ½ hour meeting where …what a surprise ……nothing was decided on. It is possible that next week (our last of term 2) no students will come to school & yet we, being staff, will have to turn up & spend a week doing nothing.
I’m bored of it all, I’m bored of school keeping being dismissed & us still having to turn up & spend hours doing nothing. I’m bored with Jumbie & don’t see how it’s going to be stopped. All the emphasis is on prayer & locals are generally closed to the idea of getting in psychologists. Yes prayer is a healthy thing to do, however this has been going on for far too long & we need to start looking at other options. I wish that the ministry would step in & help. There’s a condition called ‘crowd hysteria’ that has been diagnosed in schools where similar things have happened. Look in to it; no-one seems to be here!
I’m so tired of doing nothing!!! Very tempted to just leave & go to St Cuthberts where we’re actually needed & will be used.
Other news: Easter plans are made. We’re going down to Lethem on Monday – we being me & St Cuthberts & Dora boys. Ollie is meant to be going on the Sunday (she’s going Aishalton project with New Amsterdam Girls). Craig is flying down on the following Saturday with a friend from England. Rodeo is happening on the Saturday & Sunday there & so most of Guyana goes to take part! Not sure what we’ll do during the first week, maybe go to Brazil or there’s a cabin on a mountain, near a peanut butter factory, that has nice walks around it close-ish to Annai…we’ll just wing it. After Rodeo, me, Craig, Ollie, Craig’s friend & maybe Milly are going to go to Karanambu Lodge. Karanambu is in the middle of the jungle & is a research & eco-tourist place. It’s run by a pretty eccentric lady who releases giant otters back into the wild. Ollie & I fly back to town on the Wednesday. Then on Friday we may try to go to Kaiteur Falls. It’s going to be an expensive Easter! BUT HEY! I’ll get STEAK!
We continue to see plenty sloths & plenty Toucans at the moment. Shame that waterproof camera number 2 drowned. We went on a bush cook last Sunday. Bush cooks are where you go somewhere nice, generally in the bush, make a fire & cook lunch. We went to Cabora Creek – a beautiful and secluded part of Moruca. I walked there about an hour after the others as I was still in bed as they left! I put on some chillaxing music – none other than choir boys (don’t laugh – I was feeling mellow), waved to a sloth in the bamboo & set off for Cabora Creek. I past a tree with a couple of Toucans in it – they always shock me by how weird they look - & also passed the biggest caterpillar/ grub thing I’ve ever seen – about 3cm diameter & 15 cm long – like something out of Doctor Who. I then passed a very traditional, palm roofed stilted house & 3 little girls (probably all 6 yrs and under) who were in the ‘yard’. They’d clearly been asked by their mother to pick up rubbish outside – they were all carrying plastic bags – but instead they’d decided to play ‘dizzy dinosaurs’ (you know the game where you spin round until you fall over!). So these 3 tiny girls, their long hair all in plaits & in their home made ‘princess’ dresses were all spinning in the dust & wind with their plastic bags held out like parachutes apparently (to me) all to the music of choir boys – it was an absolutely gorgeous sight.
(Break from letter as I get dragged downstairs to take part in a special school ‘crusade’. 5 more girls sick….school dismissed….apart from…teachers….service with the AWFUL keyboard downstairs…I thought it couldn’t get worse! OH well, I suggested to the teachers that we have a bush cook at the school seeing as we having nothing to do & they all said YES! So have gone to get supplies)
SO I arrived at the creek without having been eaten by a ‘tiger’, much to the relief & joy of our local friends & had a lovely afternoon.
My birthday cards starting arriving 2 weeks back, thank-you! Though the PM hates me so much that I can no longer enter the post office so others have to collect it for me!
‘One more girl just got ‘attacked’’
Grrr, this thing is driving me mad!
Well, that’s most of the news, I think…Whanita is pleading for any dresses that could be used for the Moruca day beauty pageant….Maybe check out some charity shops? Also for bright make-up…she trains the beauty queens!
Will write after Easter,
Lots of love,
Emily
xxx
Letter 9 from Guyana
6/3/09
Not much has happened since I last wrote. The Jambie spirit continues to possess girls – I can currently hear a girl screaming with it downstairs, she’ll probably be sent home just like the others, just in time for missing exams! 8 girls have been possessed in the last week..what a surprise.
Craig and Ollie went to the dormitories last month to walk in on one of my brightest students thrashing and screaming -> full of the Jambie. One of the older boys was holding her down – clearly using the event to feel her up. Most of the dormitory boys seem to have had enough of this whole thing & they themselves are starting to suggest that these girls are just doing this for attention. The girls laugh about it, & as soon as Craig & Ollie appeared to be more interesting than Subina – the supposedly possessed student, they all turned away from her & she herself sat up & started joining in the conversation. It’s strange, we’ve had lots of meetings about the situation & the staff are so divided about what is actually happening. Sir David – a very well respected member of staff & the community is convinced that it really is an evil spirit causing these ‘fits’. Miss Lucy, another respected and very outspoken member of staff is sure that this is either a psychological or attention seeking situation. Whatever is going on needs to be sorted out – often it’s the very bright students who’re being affected & the size of the dormitory has gone from about 130 to 60 students. These kids are not coming back and they’re influencing those that are left behind. I had one of the girls come to my Biology class, sit down & place a lime on the desk in front of her. When questioned about it she said that it was there just in case something ‘rose up in her’ – she left the lesson ½ way through – she could feel ‘it’ stirring.
The dormitory boys are now sick too. This time I think that it’s genuine – something to do with diet – real bad stomach pains – to be honest they don’t look well.
Did I ever tell you that we have a new HM? We had Sir Nigel last term, Miss Bernie (Big Bernie – there are 2) for the first 3 weeks of term & now Sir Glen. He’s a really nice guy, quite shy, but nice to work with.
Did I mention that in January we got paid? Wow – a lot of cash - lots of photos of rolling around in money. Highly inappropriate but irresistible. Unfortunately since then I’ve had to pay off all debts from the previous 5 months & so my pile has run rather thin.
Craig & I continue to go for regular walks following our rule that any interesting path has to be taken. This has led us to many dead ends, random houses, cassava fields & ponds but also to a few new places worth finding! My favourite find has been Cabora Creek which is surrounded by jungley trees. It’s fairly deep & very cold & has nice logs that you can sit on while watching Toucans fly around overhead. Our first visit there Craig & I watched 4 Toucans flying around – I guess that makes 8 cans?
Did I mention that I’ve moved on to creating chicken pies? Damn it, I was going to try & write a letter without mentioning food!
We’re now famous! We were in the Newspaper. A photo of Ian & I (right at the front) then Ollie, Liz & Craig, then Nick & Nicola & Meg (other volunteers – at the back) all at Mashramani parade in Town 2 weekends ago. We’re labelled as ‘tourists’ …just because we’re white it does not mean that we’re tourists! Our students found the picture before us – one has stuck it in her IT book with ‘Miss you are beautiful’ written underneath. Haha, to be honest I just look fat. Yuk!
Mash was good, though I got the most sunburnt I’ve ever been; my nose has never been so hot! About ½ of Guyana was in town for the parties, beer, rum, music & float parade. The Ministry of Amerindian Affairs invited us to be on their float & insisted that they had costumes for us. Only Stewart properly took up the offer & his costume turned out to be overly tight, tiny red shorts & a gold headdress. He also frazzled …mainly because they insisted on covering him in baby oil so as to stick glitter to his chest & then having him walk with the float in the hot hot sun for 2 hours.
That weekend we also went to New Amsterdam to visit the 4 New Amsterdam Girls (NAGs). New Amsterdam is about a 2 hour car journey from Town & is just like a smaller simpler version of Georgetown. I quite liked it, though would not be able to live there comfortably with the number of nasty & annoying comments that follow you down every street. The girls live in a fairly big house (bungalow) on Multi School’s compound – where Hazel & Jolene work. The school was MASSIVE & had cows wandering through the building. The best thing about New Amsterdam was finding BUTTER! REAL BUTTER, I feel that at home I never properly appreciated the stuff. Oliie & I also managed to buy Olives! Wow!
While at New Amsterdam the girls’ friend Jason – a lean black guy with dreads – decided to take us on a walk to a ‘creek’. We were fairly suspicious about the idea because the Guyanese are not the most environmentally friendly people – they’re taught at Primary to throw plastic away into rivers – so we thought that any creek in New Amsterdam was not likely to be hygienic.
After a long, prickly, ant ridden, bushy walk alongside of a perfectly good road (we later discovered) we arrived at a filthy looking trench. We were told that this was not the creek (thank God) BUT that we had to cross this to reach the creek (Yuk!). So we held our belongings above our heads & sunk into the clayey bottom of this lovely 4 metre stretch of water whereupon we entered into a field of tall sugar cane. This, of course, was Ollie’s idea of a dream – surrounded by sugar - & of course it’s healthy sugar because it’s a plant. There was literally caramel seeping from the stems &, as Jason cutlassed a path through the forest of sugar canes we were handed back sticks of sugar cane to nibble on. The field had clearly been burnt recently & so there was ash all over the ground – so obviously we had to give ourselves war marks – we soon arrived at another trench which, again, we were told had to be crossed – this time it was too deep to walk, so belongings had to be left. On the other side we found ourselves still in the sugarcane field but this part had been completely chopped & burnt. At this point Jason pointed to the next trench & said ‘that’s the creek’ err….well….it wasn’t a creek & it was exactly the same as the trench we’d just crossed. Anyhow we proceeded towards it hoping to be pleasantly surprised. We arrived, after having to throw Jolene over a ditch too wide for her to cross, to find, as we had predicted, a trench similar to the previous one. The water was warm & brown & was sweet & sugary (not that I meant to drink it ….eww parasites). Hey it was an experience! A morning well spent!
Other news:
Our friend had a baby! I was meant to be there to see the birth but left the hospital at exactly the wrong hour. It’s incredible – like Craig says: ‘The greatest magic trick ever’. Crazy how 1 hour it’s inside Susan & the next it’s a living being in the world!
On a sadder note a friend of ours was killed 3 weeks ago by a falling tree when working out in the bush. We didn’t know him well but he’d been to a few of our parties & we’re good friends to some of his relatives. He was only 28 & had a wife and 3 gorgeous kids. In Guyana when someone dies there is a night wake, so for 9 nights friends & family go up to the dead person’s house to play cards & dominoes. The nine night (the last night of the wake) is always a fairly big event & I found myself taking part in very serious dominoes with 3 old, fairly tipsy men. It seems that the most essential part of the game is to slam the dominoes down hard enough to make a really good bang & shake the table – earning a round of applause.
It was my birthday! The night before us whities of Moruca had a big roast dinner – yorkshire puddings & stuffing included! On the Monday (my actual birthday) I allocated myself FROSTIES – something we don’t usually allow in the house because I eat them so fast – like within a day – because they’re addictive & make me hyper. I also managed to get my hands on some Bournville Chocolate – it was stupidly expensive ….but so worth it! I had an awesome day at school – gots to love the kids! Received loads of cards from students …nearly as many as on Valentines (yes a very successful valentine haul this year). The afternoon I managed to go up by the Church to use the internet & saw all my lovely messages….THANK-YOU to all. It was also Whanita’s son’s birthday (Church, the youngest – now 6) so we went over in the evening for cake, curry & roti. The Guyanese here do ‘stick the cake’, where who’s ever birthday it is cuts the cake then feeds it to a member of opposite sex & then that person does the same to them! Very odd. There are also many verses to the Happy Birthday song here including: ‘How old are you now’ & ‘may the good Lord bless you’. The thing I’ll never forget on my birthday was waking up & sitting outside watching the sunrise over the jungle when suddenly Happy Birthday songs blast through the trees from Whanita’s house – full volume just for me….so surreal! After cake we went to play pool at Aunty Jenny’s where I celebrated in usual fashion by losing every game ….always so close! After this Ollie & I returned to watch ‘The Notebook’ at home in hammocks.
Craig was sent sing-a-long Mamma Mia – we had an awesome time with some rum & a worried looking Larry watching it last weekend. We payed back the neighbours for their noise in the mornings by singing into the early hours of the morning.
Finally, before returning to the advanced Jambie situation, I find myself talking more & more like the locals. It’s worrying, but if you’re trying to explain something to children who’re just not understanding you, it makes much ,more sense to just say it how they understand it rather than to repeat it in my *ahem* lovely queen’s English 50 billion times.
Th is turning to +
So. Three has gone to tree etc.
My >> me
Us >> we ‘come by we house’
Hers >> she ‘she book’
His >> he
Take >> carry ‘carry me home miss’
At >> by
U is pronounced o ‘Ogly’
Etc. Crazy stuff.
So the advanced Jambie situation:
Today there were 6 girls that got possessed at school. Now it’s not just the dorms kids. School closed at 2.30 today & Sir Glen told all the dorms children to go home as soon as possible. Exams have been postponed to the week after next & there’s an emergency PTA meeting on Tuesday to discuss whether school should continue this term!
INSANE!
Off to St Cuthberts this weekend to vist Ian, Declan & Stewart & their 2 pet turtles. The to Town for Phagwah – a Hindu festival where lots of dye gets thrown all over everyone, followed by large amounts of water.
WOOP!
Will update you soon on situations, remember: The Jambie likes chicken & the colours red & black, it’s big & hairy with pink eyes & doesn’t like lime, garlic & methylated spirits ….
Stay safe!
Lots of love
Emily xxx
Sorry about the writing ..v messy…v tired.
Not much has happened since I last wrote. The Jambie spirit continues to possess girls – I can currently hear a girl screaming with it downstairs, she’ll probably be sent home just like the others, just in time for missing exams! 8 girls have been possessed in the last week..what a surprise.
Craig and Ollie went to the dormitories last month to walk in on one of my brightest students thrashing and screaming -> full of the Jambie. One of the older boys was holding her down – clearly using the event to feel her up. Most of the dormitory boys seem to have had enough of this whole thing & they themselves are starting to suggest that these girls are just doing this for attention. The girls laugh about it, & as soon as Craig & Ollie appeared to be more interesting than Subina – the supposedly possessed student, they all turned away from her & she herself sat up & started joining in the conversation. It’s strange, we’ve had lots of meetings about the situation & the staff are so divided about what is actually happening. Sir David – a very well respected member of staff & the community is convinced that it really is an evil spirit causing these ‘fits’. Miss Lucy, another respected and very outspoken member of staff is sure that this is either a psychological or attention seeking situation. Whatever is going on needs to be sorted out – often it’s the very bright students who’re being affected & the size of the dormitory has gone from about 130 to 60 students. These kids are not coming back and they’re influencing those that are left behind. I had one of the girls come to my Biology class, sit down & place a lime on the desk in front of her. When questioned about it she said that it was there just in case something ‘rose up in her’ – she left the lesson ½ way through – she could feel ‘it’ stirring.
The dormitory boys are now sick too. This time I think that it’s genuine – something to do with diet – real bad stomach pains – to be honest they don’t look well.
Did I ever tell you that we have a new HM? We had Sir Nigel last term, Miss Bernie (Big Bernie – there are 2) for the first 3 weeks of term & now Sir Glen. He’s a really nice guy, quite shy, but nice to work with.
Did I mention that in January we got paid? Wow – a lot of cash - lots of photos of rolling around in money. Highly inappropriate but irresistible. Unfortunately since then I’ve had to pay off all debts from the previous 5 months & so my pile has run rather thin.
Craig & I continue to go for regular walks following our rule that any interesting path has to be taken. This has led us to many dead ends, random houses, cassava fields & ponds but also to a few new places worth finding! My favourite find has been Cabora Creek which is surrounded by jungley trees. It’s fairly deep & very cold & has nice logs that you can sit on while watching Toucans fly around overhead. Our first visit there Craig & I watched 4 Toucans flying around – I guess that makes 8 cans?
Did I mention that I’ve moved on to creating chicken pies? Damn it, I was going to try & write a letter without mentioning food!
We’re now famous! We were in the Newspaper. A photo of Ian & I (right at the front) then Ollie, Liz & Craig, then Nick & Nicola & Meg (other volunteers – at the back) all at Mashramani parade in Town 2 weekends ago. We’re labelled as ‘tourists’ …just because we’re white it does not mean that we’re tourists! Our students found the picture before us – one has stuck it in her IT book with ‘Miss you are beautiful’ written underneath. Haha, to be honest I just look fat. Yuk!
Mash was good, though I got the most sunburnt I’ve ever been; my nose has never been so hot! About ½ of Guyana was in town for the parties, beer, rum, music & float parade. The Ministry of Amerindian Affairs invited us to be on their float & insisted that they had costumes for us. Only Stewart properly took up the offer & his costume turned out to be overly tight, tiny red shorts & a gold headdress. He also frazzled …mainly because they insisted on covering him in baby oil so as to stick glitter to his chest & then having him walk with the float in the hot hot sun for 2 hours.
That weekend we also went to New Amsterdam to visit the 4 New Amsterdam Girls (NAGs). New Amsterdam is about a 2 hour car journey from Town & is just like a smaller simpler version of Georgetown. I quite liked it, though would not be able to live there comfortably with the number of nasty & annoying comments that follow you down every street. The girls live in a fairly big house (bungalow) on Multi School’s compound – where Hazel & Jolene work. The school was MASSIVE & had cows wandering through the building. The best thing about New Amsterdam was finding BUTTER! REAL BUTTER, I feel that at home I never properly appreciated the stuff. Oliie & I also managed to buy Olives! Wow!
While at New Amsterdam the girls’ friend Jason – a lean black guy with dreads – decided to take us on a walk to a ‘creek’. We were fairly suspicious about the idea because the Guyanese are not the most environmentally friendly people – they’re taught at Primary to throw plastic away into rivers – so we thought that any creek in New Amsterdam was not likely to be hygienic.
After a long, prickly, ant ridden, bushy walk alongside of a perfectly good road (we later discovered) we arrived at a filthy looking trench. We were told that this was not the creek (thank God) BUT that we had to cross this to reach the creek (Yuk!). So we held our belongings above our heads & sunk into the clayey bottom of this lovely 4 metre stretch of water whereupon we entered into a field of tall sugar cane. This, of course, was Ollie’s idea of a dream – surrounded by sugar - & of course it’s healthy sugar because it’s a plant. There was literally caramel seeping from the stems &, as Jason cutlassed a path through the forest of sugar canes we were handed back sticks of sugar cane to nibble on. The field had clearly been burnt recently & so there was ash all over the ground – so obviously we had to give ourselves war marks – we soon arrived at another trench which, again, we were told had to be crossed – this time it was too deep to walk, so belongings had to be left. On the other side we found ourselves still in the sugarcane field but this part had been completely chopped & burnt. At this point Jason pointed to the next trench & said ‘that’s the creek’ err….well….it wasn’t a creek & it was exactly the same as the trench we’d just crossed. Anyhow we proceeded towards it hoping to be pleasantly surprised. We arrived, after having to throw Jolene over a ditch too wide for her to cross, to find, as we had predicted, a trench similar to the previous one. The water was warm & brown & was sweet & sugary (not that I meant to drink it ….eww parasites). Hey it was an experience! A morning well spent!
Other news:
Our friend had a baby! I was meant to be there to see the birth but left the hospital at exactly the wrong hour. It’s incredible – like Craig says: ‘The greatest magic trick ever’. Crazy how 1 hour it’s inside Susan & the next it’s a living being in the world!
On a sadder note a friend of ours was killed 3 weeks ago by a falling tree when working out in the bush. We didn’t know him well but he’d been to a few of our parties & we’re good friends to some of his relatives. He was only 28 & had a wife and 3 gorgeous kids. In Guyana when someone dies there is a night wake, so for 9 nights friends & family go up to the dead person’s house to play cards & dominoes. The nine night (the last night of the wake) is always a fairly big event & I found myself taking part in very serious dominoes with 3 old, fairly tipsy men. It seems that the most essential part of the game is to slam the dominoes down hard enough to make a really good bang & shake the table – earning a round of applause.
It was my birthday! The night before us whities of Moruca had a big roast dinner – yorkshire puddings & stuffing included! On the Monday (my actual birthday) I allocated myself FROSTIES – something we don’t usually allow in the house because I eat them so fast – like within a day – because they’re addictive & make me hyper. I also managed to get my hands on some Bournville Chocolate – it was stupidly expensive ….but so worth it! I had an awesome day at school – gots to love the kids! Received loads of cards from students …nearly as many as on Valentines (yes a very successful valentine haul this year). The afternoon I managed to go up by the Church to use the internet & saw all my lovely messages….THANK-YOU to all. It was also Whanita’s son’s birthday (Church, the youngest – now 6) so we went over in the evening for cake, curry & roti. The Guyanese here do ‘stick the cake’, where who’s ever birthday it is cuts the cake then feeds it to a member of opposite sex & then that person does the same to them! Very odd. There are also many verses to the Happy Birthday song here including: ‘How old are you now’ & ‘may the good Lord bless you’. The thing I’ll never forget on my birthday was waking up & sitting outside watching the sunrise over the jungle when suddenly Happy Birthday songs blast through the trees from Whanita’s house – full volume just for me….so surreal! After cake we went to play pool at Aunty Jenny’s where I celebrated in usual fashion by losing every game ….always so close! After this Ollie & I returned to watch ‘The Notebook’ at home in hammocks.
Craig was sent sing-a-long Mamma Mia – we had an awesome time with some rum & a worried looking Larry watching it last weekend. We payed back the neighbours for their noise in the mornings by singing into the early hours of the morning.
Finally, before returning to the advanced Jambie situation, I find myself talking more & more like the locals. It’s worrying, but if you’re trying to explain something to children who’re just not understanding you, it makes much ,more sense to just say it how they understand it rather than to repeat it in my *ahem* lovely queen’s English 50 billion times.
Th is turning to +
So. Three has gone to tree etc.
My >> me
Us >> we ‘come by we house’
Hers >> she ‘she book’
His >> he
Take >> carry ‘carry me home miss’
At >> by
U is pronounced o ‘Ogly’
Etc. Crazy stuff.
So the advanced Jambie situation:
Today there were 6 girls that got possessed at school. Now it’s not just the dorms kids. School closed at 2.30 today & Sir Glen told all the dorms children to go home as soon as possible. Exams have been postponed to the week after next & there’s an emergency PTA meeting on Tuesday to discuss whether school should continue this term!
INSANE!
Off to St Cuthberts this weekend to vist Ian, Declan & Stewart & their 2 pet turtles. The to Town for Phagwah – a Hindu festival where lots of dye gets thrown all over everyone, followed by large amounts of water.
WOOP!
Will update you soon on situations, remember: The Jambie likes chicken & the colours red & black, it’s big & hairy with pink eyes & doesn’t like lime, garlic & methylated spirits ….
Stay safe!
Lots of love
Emily xxx
Sorry about the writing ..v messy…v tired.
Friday, 10 April 2009
Letter 8 from Guyana
7/2/09
I’ve finally run out of writing paper, can you believe that I’ve written 350 pages of letters?!
I see that you’ve been getting loads & loads of snow! Craig’s parents emailed us pictures of what it’s like in Aberdeen – looks incredible & makes us all very jealous. Here the rainy season has ended & it is so so so hot! I’d forgotten how hot it was. The water is all drying up, we’re back to using pond water to bathe in & our rain tanks are pretty much empty. This morning we looked in the bucket of pond water we’d collected (& bleached) to discover a tiny, beautiful little fish …that was er, bleached to death.The river goes down by about ½ foot every day. How come the year I miss Winter you get proper ice & snow?
Surprisingly not much has happened since returning from Tobago. I may have mentioned that Mel, a PT volunteer from last year, was here. She left on Friday morning, it was really good to meet her. She was pretty awesome – it was good to find out that all the rumours are completely wrong and blown out of proportion – I can’t wait to hear what’s been said about us 2 living with a BOY to next year's volunteers. Mel managed to find her old dugout canoe & we spent a couple of afternoons, first trying to get into it without sinking – very tricky, takes a good deal of balance - & then travelled down to Coco, 10 minutes paddle down the river, where we went for a walk.
Ollie & I went for a really good walk last Thursday to Mora, an area of Moruca about 40min walk from Kumaka. When we were in Mora a man asked if we’d like some coconut water, so we went to his house. It was beautiful, wooden, built in a secluded place surrounded by all sorts of fruit trees and bushes. He turned out to be the father of my top 1A IT student. We were introduced to his wife Rose. He neatly cut down 4 coconuts & sliced off the tops of 2 so that we could get the water. Compared to Craig his skills with a cutlass were far superior! They then produced a soursup – a green knobbly/spiky fruit about the size of a large pawpaw. They cut up a ripe one & gave us some of the white lycee/melon textured fleshy fruity part. It tasted amazing, like passionfruit/granny smith apple/ lycee. It’s definitely a favourite!
So Ollie & I made new friends! We left carrying 2 large coconuts, this soursup & then as we walked back home various students ran after us carrying bags of Acquero – a fruit about the size of an egg that’s got a greeny yellow skin that has to be cut off to reveal orange stuff around a large brown round seed. You can eat the orange stuff. It takes a lot of effort to get not very much of a fairly tasteless bit of fruit & unfortunately every day students have been bringing them in for me for the last week. Ollie & I returned from our walk laden down with fruit, in fits of laughter at the situation & singing Hakena Matata very loudly – why not?!
I received a letter from Miss Mortimer & one from Abbie Smith last week – nice surprise – they took 3 months to get here! I haven’t heard from quite a few people for a long time, I hope they all got my letters – I’ve replied to everyone who’s written to me. I was especially wondering if Ali ever got my letter thanking her for the books?
Robbie will be pleased to hear that Sophie walked past a bush yesterday that had a sloth hanging in it. This was just off our path to our house – about 1 metre off it so Sophie has some absolutely incredible pictures. She was so close she could touch it.
I went on a really really good cycle ride on Thursday, it’s very uppy downy & the track was not brilliant – had about a foot wide of smooth road the rest was real cut up. So it actually took quite a bit of skill to stay on!
Lots of mangoes around this time of year they are so amazing, mmm. Last week the whole of Moruca ran out of onions! As did the whole of Region 2 also. Guyana was in a massive shortage as its onion shipment didn’t arrive! This ruined our Chicken Tikka Massala a tad on our curry Thursday though it still tasted damn good!
Recently I’ve been dreaming loads about Project Trust, debriefing volunteers, returning etc. It’s weird! Probably because of having Doug & Rishon & then Mel here. We now only have 4 months left in Moruca! How weird. We’re over half way through the term’s teaching (remember that no teaching happens in the last 4 weeks) & we’re over half way through the teaching overall! By the time you get this we should be over half way through the year. Time has started to fly by. School is very busy at the moment. I don’t even have time to read! Miss Bernie has gone on a months leave leaving Ollie, another teacher – Miss Rowena - & I to take over integrated science to forms 1 & 2. So I now am teaching 8 more periods a week. Tuesdays also I’m teaching a few kids to read, Mondays I’m helping 2 boys with maths, Thursdays I’m teaching extra Biology to the Form 2 students who’ve recently been moved up to Form 3.
In the last week I’ve marked 250 assignments, so I’m very busy. I’m actually quite enjoying it. Last week I learnt 1A, 1C & 1D’s names FINALLY. 1C is very naughty, they now, recently, have been getting lines – in an attempt to try & get them to work/behave. I feel like I know the students better, I even got invited on a bush cook with some of my Form 3s for this weekend, overnight at Waramuri – unfortunately I couldn’t go, also not sure how appropriate it would have been – I think it was just a group of boys. I’m feeling completely settled. I would never have been satisfied if I’d had to leave after 6 months – it’s taken until now for me to really feel completely comfortable. So I now look forward to the last bit of this experience, it’s going to be very different to the first ½.
We’ve got a couple more Red Cross trips coming up & of course seeing as we’re the official cooks & hot drink makers, Ollie & I will be going! We also have Valentines Bingo as a fundraiser next Friday.
There are loads of Public Holidays to look forward to, such as Mashrami – republic day – weekend after next. It’s a long weekend so we’re going to go visit the 4 New Amsterdam girls Saturday & Sunday & then go check out the carnival in town on Monday & then go to a T-pain & Seranni concert (2 very very popular pop artisty people). 2 weekends after that it’s a weekend, then Monday then 2 holidays – Phagwah – (?) where everyone in town throws dye over everyone/thing & then water …very colourful. So we’re going to try go to St Cuthberts (Ian’s project) & then to town. We then have Easter & rodeo to look forward to down in Region 9 – need to organise everything. THEN Peazy comes out for June (at the end of May so that she gets to experience Moruca day (independence) – another holiday) which is so exciting. So there’s so much going to happen & I reckon it’s going to go so fast.
Life in Moruca continues to move on, it gets much busier now that it’s dry. We continue to bear/bare (?) the noise/ screams/ smoking coming from next door, strange children appearing in our house, guests appearing unannounced & the cockroaches & students excuses. We continue to go on regular walks, students continue to tell me that ‘Miss Miss you getting thick.’ Ooo & Ollie started a Channa Challenge! Channa is cooked (soft chickpeas seasoned & with pepper sauce, garlic etc. It’s the cheapest snack here. She’s bet another volunteer: Declan (St Cuthberts) that she can eat Channa for 3 meals everyday for a month – he’s competing & the prize is 10yr old rum. She’s doing very well so far – she’s got fairly experimental adding honey, jam, peanut butter, mayonnaise, sweet corn etc.
Hope all is good. Keep up the contact! If you ever get too cold just pop over to visit.
Love to all,
Lots of love
Emily
Xxxxxx
PS Next time I write I’ll probably be 19 …eww what a nasty age to be!
Mmm …galaxy & Terry’s chocolate orange (HINT)
I’ve finally run out of writing paper, can you believe that I’ve written 350 pages of letters?!
I see that you’ve been getting loads & loads of snow! Craig’s parents emailed us pictures of what it’s like in Aberdeen – looks incredible & makes us all very jealous. Here the rainy season has ended & it is so so so hot! I’d forgotten how hot it was. The water is all drying up, we’re back to using pond water to bathe in & our rain tanks are pretty much empty. This morning we looked in the bucket of pond water we’d collected (& bleached) to discover a tiny, beautiful little fish …that was er, bleached to death.The river goes down by about ½ foot every day. How come the year I miss Winter you get proper ice & snow?
Surprisingly not much has happened since returning from Tobago. I may have mentioned that Mel, a PT volunteer from last year, was here. She left on Friday morning, it was really good to meet her. She was pretty awesome – it was good to find out that all the rumours are completely wrong and blown out of proportion – I can’t wait to hear what’s been said about us 2 living with a BOY to next year's volunteers. Mel managed to find her old dugout canoe & we spent a couple of afternoons, first trying to get into it without sinking – very tricky, takes a good deal of balance - & then travelled down to Coco, 10 minutes paddle down the river, where we went for a walk.
Ollie & I went for a really good walk last Thursday to Mora, an area of Moruca about 40min walk from Kumaka. When we were in Mora a man asked if we’d like some coconut water, so we went to his house. It was beautiful, wooden, built in a secluded place surrounded by all sorts of fruit trees and bushes. He turned out to be the father of my top 1A IT student. We were introduced to his wife Rose. He neatly cut down 4 coconuts & sliced off the tops of 2 so that we could get the water. Compared to Craig his skills with a cutlass were far superior! They then produced a soursup – a green knobbly/spiky fruit about the size of a large pawpaw. They cut up a ripe one & gave us some of the white lycee/melon textured fleshy fruity part. It tasted amazing, like passionfruit/granny smith apple/ lycee. It’s definitely a favourite!
So Ollie & I made new friends! We left carrying 2 large coconuts, this soursup & then as we walked back home various students ran after us carrying bags of Acquero – a fruit about the size of an egg that’s got a greeny yellow skin that has to be cut off to reveal orange stuff around a large brown round seed. You can eat the orange stuff. It takes a lot of effort to get not very much of a fairly tasteless bit of fruit & unfortunately every day students have been bringing them in for me for the last week. Ollie & I returned from our walk laden down with fruit, in fits of laughter at the situation & singing Hakena Matata very loudly – why not?!
I received a letter from Miss Mortimer & one from Abbie Smith last week – nice surprise – they took 3 months to get here! I haven’t heard from quite a few people for a long time, I hope they all got my letters – I’ve replied to everyone who’s written to me. I was especially wondering if Ali ever got my letter thanking her for the books?
Robbie will be pleased to hear that Sophie walked past a bush yesterday that had a sloth hanging in it. This was just off our path to our house – about 1 metre off it so Sophie has some absolutely incredible pictures. She was so close she could touch it.
I went on a really really good cycle ride on Thursday, it’s very uppy downy & the track was not brilliant – had about a foot wide of smooth road the rest was real cut up. So it actually took quite a bit of skill to stay on!
Lots of mangoes around this time of year they are so amazing, mmm. Last week the whole of Moruca ran out of onions! As did the whole of Region 2 also. Guyana was in a massive shortage as its onion shipment didn’t arrive! This ruined our Chicken Tikka Massala a tad on our curry Thursday though it still tasted damn good!
Recently I’ve been dreaming loads about Project Trust, debriefing volunteers, returning etc. It’s weird! Probably because of having Doug & Rishon & then Mel here. We now only have 4 months left in Moruca! How weird. We’re over half way through the term’s teaching (remember that no teaching happens in the last 4 weeks) & we’re over half way through the teaching overall! By the time you get this we should be over half way through the year. Time has started to fly by. School is very busy at the moment. I don’t even have time to read! Miss Bernie has gone on a months leave leaving Ollie, another teacher – Miss Rowena - & I to take over integrated science to forms 1 & 2. So I now am teaching 8 more periods a week. Tuesdays also I’m teaching a few kids to read, Mondays I’m helping 2 boys with maths, Thursdays I’m teaching extra Biology to the Form 2 students who’ve recently been moved up to Form 3.
In the last week I’ve marked 250 assignments, so I’m very busy. I’m actually quite enjoying it. Last week I learnt 1A, 1C & 1D’s names FINALLY. 1C is very naughty, they now, recently, have been getting lines – in an attempt to try & get them to work/behave. I feel like I know the students better, I even got invited on a bush cook with some of my Form 3s for this weekend, overnight at Waramuri – unfortunately I couldn’t go, also not sure how appropriate it would have been – I think it was just a group of boys. I’m feeling completely settled. I would never have been satisfied if I’d had to leave after 6 months – it’s taken until now for me to really feel completely comfortable. So I now look forward to the last bit of this experience, it’s going to be very different to the first ½.
We’ve got a couple more Red Cross trips coming up & of course seeing as we’re the official cooks & hot drink makers, Ollie & I will be going! We also have Valentines Bingo as a fundraiser next Friday.
There are loads of Public Holidays to look forward to, such as Mashrami – republic day – weekend after next. It’s a long weekend so we’re going to go visit the 4 New Amsterdam girls Saturday & Sunday & then go check out the carnival in town on Monday & then go to a T-pain & Seranni concert (2 very very popular pop artisty people). 2 weekends after that it’s a weekend, then Monday then 2 holidays – Phagwah – (?) where everyone in town throws dye over everyone/thing & then water …very colourful. So we’re going to try go to St Cuthberts (Ian’s project) & then to town. We then have Easter & rodeo to look forward to down in Region 9 – need to organise everything. THEN Peazy comes out for June (at the end of May so that she gets to experience Moruca day (independence) – another holiday) which is so exciting. So there’s so much going to happen & I reckon it’s going to go so fast.
Life in Moruca continues to move on, it gets much busier now that it’s dry. We continue to bear/bare (?) the noise/ screams/ smoking coming from next door, strange children appearing in our house, guests appearing unannounced & the cockroaches & students excuses. We continue to go on regular walks, students continue to tell me that ‘Miss Miss you getting thick.’ Ooo & Ollie started a Channa Challenge! Channa is cooked (soft chickpeas seasoned & with pepper sauce, garlic etc. It’s the cheapest snack here. She’s bet another volunteer: Declan (St Cuthberts) that she can eat Channa for 3 meals everyday for a month – he’s competing & the prize is 10yr old rum. She’s doing very well so far – she’s got fairly experimental adding honey, jam, peanut butter, mayonnaise, sweet corn etc.
Hope all is good. Keep up the contact! If you ever get too cold just pop over to visit.
Love to all,
Lots of love
Emily
Xxxxxx
PS Next time I write I’ll probably be 19 …eww what a nasty age to be!
Mmm …galaxy & Terry’s chocolate orange (HINT)
Monday, 30 March 2009
Letter 7 from Guyana 25th Jan 09
5 months in – 7 until I’m HOME! In some ways time seems to fly, some ways it crawls along sooo slooow. I’m 3 weeks into term 2, 1/3 of the term’s teaching done – because no teaching happens in the last 4 weeks - & I’m already looking forwards to Easter! In the last 3 weeks I’ve read 3 books …I’d forgotten how much time I have at school. I’ve spent today (after the usual Sunday clean) baking ….something I’m well known for here. Today I made biscuits and then hot cross buns, which were …’really scrumptious’ (Ollie) & ….’bloody wonderful’ (Craig) …they actually tasted like the real thing. Other cooking achievements: I cooked a Guinness, Beef & Onion pie that would have made Jen so so proud…Craig announced it to be ‘utterly delectable & Ollie ‘truly scrumptious’. I continue to make my herby bread which Ollie & I made Hummus (from scratch) to go with. Whanita taught me how to make bake – a deep fried bready thing. Mmmm I looove the food. My muscle has officially turned to fat. However I am currently trying to counteract this by taking up Morucan Whitey Yoga on Mondays, & by having bought A BIKE! Now I just need to get theself motivation to start riding it, while simultaneously controlling my foodage ….easy! Typical me ….start off my letter by talking about food.
We’ve had a few visitors over the last two weeks. Firstly Doug our Project Trust officer from Coll & Rishon our representative’s daughter from Georgetown came to check out our project. (I’ve just run out of writing paper). So they came out to check that we’re happy which we are very much so. They also came out to see our Head Mistress (who’s new this term as our old HM has been promoted) and check that the school still needs volunteers. Of course she said it was vital that they have volunteers & that we are very much needed – something that I’m not too sure about. They also had to watch a lesson. I, being me, got ridiculously nervous & ended up teaching the worst lesson I’ve ever taught – getting activities explanations mixed & missing out other stuff & generally making a fool out of myself. Typical me, & yes I went bright red too, just like back in the days of English GCSE presentations! It’s a shame because for the rest of the week I really enjoyed teaching for… the first time ever! We impressed Doug & Rishon with our cooking …the first volunteers to risk poisoning them.
We’ve also had Mel a volunteer from last year come stay with Whanita. She’s here for 3 weeks. Mel is pretty awesome, she seems to know everyone – apparently when she first got here she spent her free time walking fr4om house to house introducing herself & receiving free food! Sounds like a plan….She has also mastered talking Creol just like the locals – its really odd watching and listening to her have conversations with people – its surprisingly hard to speak bad English! & she’s achieved the feat of buying a dugout, something we meant to do but …never got around to doing. I spent yesterday attempting to paddle her boat …I sank it several times – it requires a surprising amount of balance …plus I think I’m too heavy.
We’ve found out that pretty much all rumours we’ve been told about the girls are completely false. I can’t wait to hear what’s been said about us next year …probably all to do with 2 girls living with a guy & how we both got pregnant …
We got paid for the first time last week: G$273000 each!!! We spent a good hour playing with all the cash …but then the next day we had to go spend it all ….paying off our debts – food, bikes etc.
The dormitory children are still getting sick – within 2 days of returning to school they started going home. This time it’s not the jumbie spirit but evil water spirits – so lets hope that the exorcisms work this time! Ollie & I took 20 of the surviving children swimming yesterday, along with a group from the church. All the children who attend Santa Rosa Catholic Church have been in tears all week (including some of the teachers from school) because Father Gustavo has been moved to Canada. On his last night, apparently he & all the children & some adults camped and spent the night jumping off all the bridges around Moruca!
Donnette, Craig’s admirer with a husband & 4 kids – continues to deliver a bag of fruitilicious goodies every week as well as a broom this week – she decided, having swept Craig’s room out for him, that we needed a new one. Whanita continues to rescue us by helping with emergency washing & cleaning & sending round goodies. & Sophie who is very poor has offered to do all of our clothes washing & we ‘donate’ money to her regularly for it …peace corps vols aren’t allowed to earn money!
These next 3 months are full of Birthdays. January saw Craig’s 21st, Amy’s (Whanita’s daughter) 12th, & Donnette’s 27th. These all occurred in the same week – resulting in a lot of cake eating – I made Craig a lemon & honey cake & then Whanita’s usual cakey monsters were at every event. We have Kelly’s (Whanita’s daughter) 23rd, my birthday (HINT) & Church’s (Whanita’s soon to be 6 year old) on the same day, Sir Rouel & Miss Lucy’s birthday all in February & then Whanita’s, Ollie’s, Derick & Alesia’s birthdays in March (Derick & Alesia are also spawn of Whanita – to be 15 & 9!). So cake is going to be EVERYWHERE. It seems that the Guyanese get very *ahem* busy in Mayish time – around Moruca day?!
This term we have no sports days but we have 4 Public Holidays. Mashamani is the big event of the term. We have, this Friday, inter-schools mashamani parade & talent competition. The winner then goes to an inter region competition in Mabaruma & then that winner goes to Georgetown to take part in the actual Mahamani parade on 23rd February – Ollie & I hope to go to town to see it. So there should be a few days of missing school
Ollie won an art competition! Peace Corps had an art competition for 12-17 year olds. They had to draw a picture about ‘abstinence’ & then write about it. Ollie got FIRST! Some of the red cross group entered & got 2nd & 3rd (out of 370 entries). All entrants had to have a guardian sign a form, so I, being a responsible adult of 18, signed Ollie’s. We both get a free trip to Georgetown & free hotel so that we can go to a presentation, art show & collect the calendar that Ollie’s work is now in.
The dry season is back! Meaning more sweat, dry clothes, less indoor puddles, monkeys, more fruit & veg, no showers & lads actually turning up to school!! We had a glorious week of perfect weather at the end of rainy season where it rained during nights, was cool in the mornings & evenings & then hot at Midday – perfect!
So that’s it for now, lesson planning has been put off for far too long….
Lots of Love to all
Love from
Emily
We’ve had a few visitors over the last two weeks. Firstly Doug our Project Trust officer from Coll & Rishon our representative’s daughter from Georgetown came to check out our project. (I’ve just run out of writing paper). So they came out to check that we’re happy which we are very much so. They also came out to see our Head Mistress (who’s new this term as our old HM has been promoted) and check that the school still needs volunteers. Of course she said it was vital that they have volunteers & that we are very much needed – something that I’m not too sure about. They also had to watch a lesson. I, being me, got ridiculously nervous & ended up teaching the worst lesson I’ve ever taught – getting activities explanations mixed & missing out other stuff & generally making a fool out of myself. Typical me, & yes I went bright red too, just like back in the days of English GCSE presentations! It’s a shame because for the rest of the week I really enjoyed teaching for… the first time ever! We impressed Doug & Rishon with our cooking …the first volunteers to risk poisoning them.
We’ve also had Mel a volunteer from last year come stay with Whanita. She’s here for 3 weeks. Mel is pretty awesome, she seems to know everyone – apparently when she first got here she spent her free time walking fr4om house to house introducing herself & receiving free food! Sounds like a plan….She has also mastered talking Creol just like the locals – its really odd watching and listening to her have conversations with people – its surprisingly hard to speak bad English! & she’s achieved the feat of buying a dugout, something we meant to do but …never got around to doing. I spent yesterday attempting to paddle her boat …I sank it several times – it requires a surprising amount of balance …plus I think I’m too heavy.
We’ve found out that pretty much all rumours we’ve been told about the girls are completely false. I can’t wait to hear what’s been said about us next year …probably all to do with 2 girls living with a guy & how we both got pregnant …
We got paid for the first time last week: G$273000 each!!! We spent a good hour playing with all the cash …but then the next day we had to go spend it all ….paying off our debts – food, bikes etc.
The dormitory children are still getting sick – within 2 days of returning to school they started going home. This time it’s not the jumbie spirit but evil water spirits – so lets hope that the exorcisms work this time! Ollie & I took 20 of the surviving children swimming yesterday, along with a group from the church. All the children who attend Santa Rosa Catholic Church have been in tears all week (including some of the teachers from school) because Father Gustavo has been moved to Canada. On his last night, apparently he & all the children & some adults camped and spent the night jumping off all the bridges around Moruca!
Donnette, Craig’s admirer with a husband & 4 kids – continues to deliver a bag of fruitilicious goodies every week as well as a broom this week – she decided, having swept Craig’s room out for him, that we needed a new one. Whanita continues to rescue us by helping with emergency washing & cleaning & sending round goodies. & Sophie who is very poor has offered to do all of our clothes washing & we ‘donate’ money to her regularly for it …peace corps vols aren’t allowed to earn money!
These next 3 months are full of Birthdays. January saw Craig’s 21st, Amy’s (Whanita’s daughter) 12th, & Donnette’s 27th. These all occurred in the same week – resulting in a lot of cake eating – I made Craig a lemon & honey cake & then Whanita’s usual cakey monsters were at every event. We have Kelly’s (Whanita’s daughter) 23rd, my birthday (HINT) & Church’s (Whanita’s soon to be 6 year old) on the same day, Sir Rouel & Miss Lucy’s birthday all in February & then Whanita’s, Ollie’s, Derick & Alesia’s birthdays in March (Derick & Alesia are also spawn of Whanita – to be 15 & 9!). So cake is going to be EVERYWHERE. It seems that the Guyanese get very *ahem* busy in Mayish time – around Moruca day?!
This term we have no sports days but we have 4 Public Holidays. Mashamani is the big event of the term. We have, this Friday, inter-schools mashamani parade & talent competition. The winner then goes to an inter region competition in Mabaruma & then that winner goes to Georgetown to take part in the actual Mahamani parade on 23rd February – Ollie & I hope to go to town to see it. So there should be a few days of missing school
Ollie won an art competition! Peace Corps had an art competition for 12-17 year olds. They had to draw a picture about ‘abstinence’ & then write about it. Ollie got FIRST! Some of the red cross group entered & got 2nd & 3rd (out of 370 entries). All entrants had to have a guardian sign a form, so I, being a responsible adult of 18, signed Ollie’s. We both get a free trip to Georgetown & free hotel so that we can go to a presentation, art show & collect the calendar that Ollie’s work is now in.
The dry season is back! Meaning more sweat, dry clothes, less indoor puddles, monkeys, more fruit & veg, no showers & lads actually turning up to school!! We had a glorious week of perfect weather at the end of rainy season where it rained during nights, was cool in the mornings & evenings & then hot at Midday – perfect!
So that’s it for now, lesson planning has been put off for far too long….
Lots of Love to all
Love from
Emily
Thursday, 5 February 2009
Letter 6 from Guyana
HAPPY NEW YEAR 6/1/09
I thought that, seeing as the postcard space was fairly limited, I’d also send a letter with other random holiday bits & pieces on.
On Christmas day we all payed $80 & got on a glass bottom boat that took us to a reef – where we went snorkelling. We then got dropped off at a sandbar in the sea for 30 mins & went for a more relaxing swim followed by a visit to a private beach with lots of very strong rum punch, lots of food & limbo dancing. All was very merry until Ruth (one of the volunteers) decided to dive in to a rock, concuss herself & pass out, at which point we decided we ought to take her to hospital. We spent the evening sobering up in the sea & then went & watched Christmassy films back at the hotel. .
We went to a bar with a pool table on New Years Eve (or Old years as everyone here calls it) called Black Onyx. The Tobagans believe that giving a free drink & food on New Years Eve brings luck for the following year. So we got lots of free rum punch & then free food too – the pool got …. interesting. Then we all headed back to a beach called Mount Irvine Bay where lots of randomers were having a party. Ian & I were in charge of the Project Trust count downs (we’d had one earlier for Britain) which was a good thing seeing as no-one would have noticed otherwise. We started counting from 10 & by 4 everyone had realised what was going on & by 1 the fireworks were going off. At this point all PT volunteers sprinted down to the beach to the darkest point and went skinny dipping – what we didn’t see were the rocks in the sea so as we all ran in bare we all went slam bang on to our bums as we slipped over on the rocks – lots of scrapes! It was a good night.
Tobago is a nice island – fairly developed – with mountains & beaches. Personally I really wanted to climb the mountains but never got round to it! The biggest shock was seeing white people. It was actually quite unsettling & really made me dislike them. It worries me about coming home – just the thought of walking into Heathrow & being surrounded by whities is worrying and kind of scary. In Trinidad airport I found myself automatically going to sit next to the black people where I felt more comfortable. Very odd.When in Georgetown, if you see a white person you always end up staring at them thinking – “what the hell are they doing in this random country?”. They usually seem to be thinking the same thing & the result is walking past each other scowling!
So now it’s back to school. Oo you know I decided to stay that night in Georgetown in a Guest house – Ollie & Milly joined me. That night the Project Trust Flat was broken into- the metal grate on the door was completely ripped off. 2 MP3’s were taken & $120000G from one guy & about $75000G from others & a brand new CD player one of the guys had bought. Everyone’s bags had been emptied & strewn all over the floor & Mirjam had been asleep in the flat the whole time by herself. Scary! Good idea of mine to stay somewhere else – otherwise I too would have been asleep in the flat at that time.
So that’s the current news. We also have a new pet tarantula …Steven; he’s moved into Barbara’s old web. Weather’s still wet, there are rumours it’s going to continue for the next 4 months – let’s just hope they’re rumours!
Hope all is well,
Lots of
Love
from
Emily xxx
I thought that, seeing as the postcard space was fairly limited, I’d also send a letter with other random holiday bits & pieces on.
On Christmas day we all payed $80 & got on a glass bottom boat that took us to a reef – where we went snorkelling. We then got dropped off at a sandbar in the sea for 30 mins & went for a more relaxing swim followed by a visit to a private beach with lots of very strong rum punch, lots of food & limbo dancing. All was very merry until Ruth (one of the volunteers) decided to dive in to a rock, concuss herself & pass out, at which point we decided we ought to take her to hospital. We spent the evening sobering up in the sea & then went & watched Christmassy films back at the hotel. .
We went to a bar with a pool table on New Years Eve (or Old years as everyone here calls it) called Black Onyx. The Tobagans believe that giving a free drink & food on New Years Eve brings luck for the following year. So we got lots of free rum punch & then free food too – the pool got …. interesting. Then we all headed back to a beach called Mount Irvine Bay where lots of randomers were having a party. Ian & I were in charge of the Project Trust count downs (we’d had one earlier for Britain) which was a good thing seeing as no-one would have noticed otherwise. We started counting from 10 & by 4 everyone had realised what was going on & by 1 the fireworks were going off. At this point all PT volunteers sprinted down to the beach to the darkest point and went skinny dipping – what we didn’t see were the rocks in the sea so as we all ran in bare we all went slam bang on to our bums as we slipped over on the rocks – lots of scrapes! It was a good night.
Tobago is a nice island – fairly developed – with mountains & beaches. Personally I really wanted to climb the mountains but never got round to it! The biggest shock was seeing white people. It was actually quite unsettling & really made me dislike them. It worries me about coming home – just the thought of walking into Heathrow & being surrounded by whities is worrying and kind of scary. In Trinidad airport I found myself automatically going to sit next to the black people where I felt more comfortable. Very odd.When in Georgetown, if you see a white person you always end up staring at them thinking – “what the hell are they doing in this random country?”. They usually seem to be thinking the same thing & the result is walking past each other scowling!
So now it’s back to school. Oo you know I decided to stay that night in Georgetown in a Guest house – Ollie & Milly joined me. That night the Project Trust Flat was broken into- the metal grate on the door was completely ripped off. 2 MP3’s were taken & $120000G from one guy & about $75000G from others & a brand new CD player one of the guys had bought. Everyone’s bags had been emptied & strewn all over the floor & Mirjam had been asleep in the flat the whole time by herself. Scary! Good idea of mine to stay somewhere else – otherwise I too would have been asleep in the flat at that time.
So that’s the current news. We also have a new pet tarantula …Steven; he’s moved into Barbara’s old web. Weather’s still wet, there are rumours it’s going to continue for the next 4 months – let’s just hope they’re rumours!
Hope all is well,
Lots of
Love
from
Emily xxx
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