The Finer Things in Life

Things you certainly don't need to survive or even be happy, but they're just nice.
Cold water.
Perforated TP.
Pads with wings.
Cake with icing.
Percolated coffee.
Real, cold milk.
A well-inked pen.
Pillows.
Trash cans.
High Quality Q-Tips.

Rainbows

They are all over down here. And, not like in the States, where you can only see one side or one piece of it.... there's enough open space here to see the rainbow in it's entirety. Can you imagine? A rainbow, a full spectrum of color, spanning 12 or more miles, across the open savannah, mountains in the background, trees all over...... bountiful clouds, red-brown dirt roads...

Another gift from rainy season. Light rains come, with the sun still shining bright, and it's as if the rain is showing you one of Earth's beautiful secrets.

Where There is No Doctor

"Quick! What do you do in an emergency?"
-"Call my mum!"

That about sums it up. That, and if it's really bad - call 911. Because you know you'll get relief, you know you'll get your wound repaired. There's someone out there, with the magic words, touches and tablets that'll make it go away and get better. You assume it. "It'll be OK." "Do this and it'll be better." How sheltered, lucky, provided for are we?

What happens when this isn't so? Nothing to depend on, no expected understanding or solutions, securities. It is out there.

No neck braces, no defibrillators, no other beeping machines, no white jacket that indicates authority, knowledge and instruction.

What if you never have that feeling of "It's ok. It's good. I am safe, I am looked after."

Doctors. Parents. GOD.

Life without these securities? Dimmed. ?

"Don't worry about a thing, cuz every little thing's gonna be all right." - Bob Marley. Well, that's one take on things.

But - What, then, do you DO?

The posts after this, the one's marked "Where There Is No Doctor," are different encounters of accidents and emergencies I've witnessed or been a part of here in Guyana. I think the instances themselves provoke sufficient thought into the realities and frailties of life in all corners of the world.

Where There is No Doctor

As Jess and I walked back from CH, we saw a vehicle stop at the Health Post. Which was curious, because it's closed for the night, and really, there's not much stocks there to be of use. That's the thing about being isolated, you tend to notice all motors passing through, near or over the village. We assumed it was CH returning from their afternoon away. Mary went that way, maybe to look for the Health Worker or something, and then she comes pedalling back to us as we walk to her house, saying how Miss Eleanor was in an accident on the road and CH vehicle found her and her leg is all messed up and blood....

Jess has some experience in first aid and injuries, being a former gymnast and gymnastics coach, and decided to go check out Eleanor while I went to Novellena's. When Franzea and I left Nova's, we went to the Health Post, which had a gaggle of spectators and Jess, the CHW and Alice surrounding Eleanor on a mattress on the floor. She'd dislocated her hipbone when she fell upon her Dad's motorbike, going home from the phone booth. CH vehicle just happened to pass her right after it happened and carried her back to the Health Post. There wouldn't be much traffic at night time on the road. Her leg was forced up and out of socket and she had an abrasion on one leg. Alice gave her some codeine which slowly kicked in, and at Jess's encouraging, the CHW attempted to pop the hip back in, though Eleanor was screaming...

They tried to get a hold of RAM - Remote Area Medical - to see if a small airplane could be flown in to carry her to the hospital in Lethem, but they couldn't be called. So, the vehicle that did the hired carry for CH got commissioned to carry in Eleanor. And if the car's already going, why not Novellena, too? Two mattresses were slid into the bed of the truck, 3 pillows and two blankets were gathered from around. The CHW went, Jess went, Mike went and Rhomayne drove, at the speed of probably 20 mph over the bumpy terrain, as to not overly jar Eleanor's propped up, popped out leg.

The trip took almost 4 hours, double the normal time to Lethem, which is probably doubly as long as it'd take to drive there if the road was paved. According to Jess, when they got there, the doctor wasn't around, yadda yadda. In the morning, they popped Eleanor's leg back into place and said they wanted to keep her for two weeks. According to Novellena, who came back Sunday afternoon, she needs to go back for surgery, though she doesn't know what for. We're not all that sure that the doctors said she could be released, either.

And apparently, Eleanor's gone MIA from the hospital, as well. Lord just hope she hasn't come back to the village upon motorbike.

Where There is No Doctor

Novellena was playing football with all the boys in the afternoon. There are male and female teams in the village, though in the afternoon is more informal games, that mostly males seem to play. A few ladies, like Novellena and the two Juliets, will play with them, though the Juliets were gone for the day. Jess and I remarked at how spunky Nova was for playing with the competitive males.

But then that night, as Jess and I played Phase 10 with Lucy, Evenena, Nova's mother, came to our house, asking for some medicine for Nova, because she had pain in her side. It's troubled her since she was a girl. Jess gave her some strong pain killers and I gave her some tablets to calm a stomach.

Afterwards we went to CH to check mail, and we met Mary, Nova's sister, who was coming up to ask CH for medicine for Nova, "because of her appendix." More medicine, different medicine, who knows. No one was back at CH yet, though Jess looked for different meds, though while doing so, we asked Mary if Nova had taken the pain killers we'd given her. Mary said she didn't know, she just wanted to come up and see if CH had appendix medicine. We told her to go check, because we didn't want her to mix strong meds. We didn't see how it could be her appendix, but speculated maybe a kidney problem, a hernia or maybe a cyst in her ovaries. She was crying and in a lot of pain, apparently. Mary didn't seem to know what was going on, nor did she seem to take in our advice, so while we were walking, we decided to go check on Nova and talk to her mom.

Jess and I split up, and it was I who walked to the house, Nova crying in a hammock, Franzea with her and Evenena around. Nova's father stumbles in the room, drunk and trying to gaff me about nothingness, oblivious. Evenena describes where Nova's pain has been, how it has troubled her off and on since she was Rosie's age (the youngest daughter in the family) and pointing to Rosie's youthful potbelly where something stuck out of Nova's when she was younger. They went to the doctors once (I'm assuming in Lethem), who said she was too small for an operation at the time. I explained about not mixing meds, and offered what I thought it could be, and then extracted myself from the house, gaining distance from intoxication, ignorance, unattended pain and helplessness.

Where There is No Doctor

I had come home from training to no one around, so I relaxed in the back of the house. I emerged a few minutes after I heard voices in the front and had a laugh with my host mother and her friends because they thought I wasn't home. I'd gone back inside to the kitchen, when I heard a thick thudding crash outside, a metallic one that, though I don't remember ever hearing before, could only be thought of as a car crash. As I stood, processing that, my host mother and her friends ran out the drive to look...

About 4 houses down the street, a 4x4 had collided with a motorcycle with two male passengers on it. The car was headfirst into the trench, the two males on the bike were thrown into the trench.

A crowd gathered and mayhem ensued. One man was proclaimed dead on the spot - by the bystanders. The other one lost a foot and was dying as the women stood wailing in the streets. Some men dragged those on the bike out from the trenches and sort of moved them around, and I muttered to my host mother about calling for an ambulance. She responded that there were no ambulances.

There was one, maybe two in the car, I remember one crawling out the window, unscathed. He had been drinking, I heard. Accidents are common on this main road on the coast. This road goes from Supenaam to Charity (maybe 25 miles) on the Essequibo Coast, and bicycles, motorcycles, taxis, cars, trucks, bullock carts, mini buses, goats, cows, horses, pedestrians and more all frequent it. Traffic is fast and swerving, and I am not sure there's even a speed limit.

Though accidents are no stranger to the coast, the anguish these people felt was so keen. One of the men's mothers was beside herself on the road, wailing, falling to the ground. Meena, my host mother, comforted her a little, though, she, too, was distraught; her son, Shiva, had died only 4 years earlier - a car accident as well - and it was clear she was reliving it.

I felt so strange, I felt a call of duty to try and organize structure, administer First Aid; I mean, I was a Peace Corps Trainee, for gosh sakes! But my First Aid knowledge extended to knowing that if you don't know what you're doing, don't stick your nose in it, you could mess things up worse, and after hearing there were no ambuances to call, I didn't really know what else to do.

I felt pulled forward to the mourning mother, and I put my arms around her for a few minutes, trying to murmur "It's going to be ok" to her, not really knowing if it was true. I've never seen death before. And it felt like this death, this accident had no answers.

The other man died, on the road, as a vehicle was finally obtained and was taking him to the nearest hospital. Apparently, the onlookers later took things into their own hands; the intoxicated was not charged with anything, and so a crowd found him and got physical with him.

Immediately, that night, people began visiting the houses of the two men lost; it was the start of a "13-day" vigil, where people would visit, sit, mourn, play games and eat food each night. The two lived close together, we needed only to walk a few houses down to each home of loss.

We visited several of the following nights. I'll never forget the impressions made on me by the sound of the crash and the wailing of the mother...

To Rain or Not To Rain

Guyana, like other Caribbean countries, has only 2 seasons: Rainy Season, and Dry Season. The sun rises and sets within the same hour throughout the year (sunrise between 5:30 and 6:30 a.m., sunset between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. most of the time) and the temperatures vary very little, around 30C, which is 86F. Breezes are always welcomed.

Dry Season lasts from about November (the rains end around late August, and a month or so later, the waters recede) to May, and in this time, the rivers come drastically down, roads open up all over the savannah, dust is rampant and fishing is a free for all. It's harder to maneuver boats through some twists and turns of rivers and creeks, but the fishing makes it worth it. For those away from water sources, there can be stress to maintain enough drinking, bathing, washing water. Though I've never heard of terrible drought-like instances anywhere. I've come to view Dry Season as the more enjoyable of the two seasons.

In rainy season, one has to be prepared to always be dirty. Once you get clean, you're either stepping in mud or a puddle, or you're slapping bugs and smearing blood all over, or you're spraying bug spray, or you're sweating because of the long sleeves you're wearing.

My feet are perpetually dirty, with mud lines outlining my toes. I'm constantly slapping all exposed parts of my body. There's either a bug to wipe off, a hive like bite to not itch, a bubble of blood to wipe, scrape away. And then with the itching you're not supposed to be doing with the bites, you're getting dirt under your nails that you have to constantly clean out.

Cicadas are running 24/7, their constant humming, buzzing, trilling doesn't just happen at dusk and night time, but throughout the entire day. You can hear as new ones join in, either matching to the same frequency as the others, or creating a whole different wavelength of sound.

The sky is cloudy and so our solar panels aren't continually functioning, meaning work done on computers is limited, the wells aren't continually functioning so water is inconsistent to wash clothes. When you get your clothes washed and on the line, it may be days before they are fully dried, because once they get half dried, rain comes again.

With different rain fall patterns on the roof, the leaks appear in different places each night. Moving the bed out of one leak one night might mean nothing the next night, as rain has found another hole from nails in the zinc roof. Nothing can be left on the ground, because water seeps in from the corners of the room.

Yups is on a hill, which prevents massive flooding in the village. However, at the bottom of the hill, a creek forms. It's called Prepida, and it comes up the hill halfway. It's a good place to go bathing, closer than the river or lake, though to get to the main road, you have to take a long route around, where water is lower. And the on the road to Lethem, you have to go the long way, because the shortcut through Nappi and Parishara is underwater. It's 30 to 50 minutes out of the way, not to mention the slower velocity you're already driving because of puddles and things.

Higher water levels also indicate lower density of fish, as well as fish eggs getting uprooted and flooded out. Fried fish is hard to come by in times like these. No boily, no orange fish, no fish stew, either.

On the up side, travel by water is easy and quick, there are no worries of running on land, you have to make fewer turns. You can use routes to places that'll get you there faster than it would on land. And, there IS an exquisite joy in travelling by water. You are at eye level with the earth, almost, you are pulled into one of its rhythms. You have the breeze on your face, the sunlight above you, the buoyancy of the water beneath you. You have a higher opportunity to see different birds, reptiles and mammals.

You can wait for the storm to pass, or you can learn to dance in the rain, right?

Arrival Day (27 photos), by Sarah Ambriz

I'd like to share my Walmart Digital Photo Center photos with you. Once you have checked out my photos you can order prints and upload your own photos to share.

Here's the photo album of Arrival Day I talked about in my General Updates post a month or so ago. The pumpkin pie-baking day. The day's festivities seemed a good opportunity to shed light on the six main groups of Guyana and how the individual cultures collectively influence the country as a whole, through food, dance, dress and language.

The Incredible, Edible Egg

Scrambled eggs and farine, scrambled eggs and toast, scrambled eggs and crackers, fried eggs and farine, boiled eggs, egg salad sandwich, egg salad and bakes, fried egg sandwich, egg drop soup, pancakes, french toast, sweet/fancy fried breads....

Eggs have become a main staple of mine down here.

Did you know eggs didn't need to be in the fridge? I mean, I sorta did, I read Little House on the Prairie and remember wondering, in amazement how they kept their eggs. But it sorta slipped my mind when I got here, and so seeing eggs, out of a carton and out of a chilled area, was weird. We were instructed that eggs would keep, though for a shorter amount of time, obviously, and they recommended you turned your eggs over every couple of days to keep them from going bad as fast.

I remember the day I arrived at site (almost 2 years ago!), I was so oppressed by newness, so wary, so alert. CH left me free reign of their kitchen, though this was before I developed my mad cooking skills. I glimpsed sight of a flat of eggs, and, without any other seasonings except for salt and pepper and water, made scrambled eggs and ate them with ketchup. The familiar taste was an ovular hug of encouragement, of moral sustenance as well as caloric.

The egg is an easy meal to make, you can make it as simple as salt and pepper, or as fancy as onions, garlic, peppers, bagee (spinach), tomatoes and even beef. Jess has this eggs and farine and cheese meal she makes that's pretty darn good, too. (When we have cheese, that is). As long as I have eggs and farine, I know I'd never starve here.

But, what does it take for me to get the eggs?

Sometimes, eggs are available at the main shop in the village, Bryan and Maisie's shop. They have vehicles and drivers for those vehicles, so their stocks are more or less consistently available. When I buy from the shop, I'll buy 6 or 8 at a time, (at $40 an egg, or 20 cents). These eggs are for the entire village to purchase, however, so you want to be a little frugal, or at least realistic when you think about how many you buy, because you don't know when next the shop will get eggs.

Sometimes, I buy directly from Lethem, when I or my roommate happen to go in to shop, or if CH goes in and has room to bring us some. When that happens, I get a whole flat. One flat, 30 eggs ($880), of our very own, to last us until we eat them up, or they go bad, maybe after 2 weeks or so. And what does it mean to procure a flat, purchase it, and purvey it back to K. House?

You gather forth your 30 eggs in the cardboard, egg shaped pallet, then you get the same egg cardboard ontop. You Duct Tape that baby around and over, around and over, several times, to make sure none fall out. Once the vehicle is packed of all other supplies in mass quantities, you put the eggs in, last, on top of a lap, most likely. And you guard it, vigilantly, for the next 2 hours, the next 40 miles, over a riveted, gravel/mud road, through puddles, through streams, over tree stumps. You protect your eggs from happy-go-lucky pit stops upon the road, where everybody's out, in and all about. You finally get to your House, and unload that flat of eggs upon your counter, cut open the tape bindings and sigh in relief and pleasure at the sight of 30, unfractured, brown, spotted eggs.

F, O, X, fox

Gus: Give me a word, any word, and I show you how the root of that word is Greek. How 'bout 'arachnophobia'? 'Arachne,' that comes from the Greek word for 'spider' and 'phobia' is a phobia, is mean 'fear.' So, fear of spiders.... there you go.
Girl 1: Okay Mr. Portakalos, how bout the word 'kimono'?
Girl 2: *whispers* good one.
Gus: Ah, kimono, kimono, kimono........AAAH, of course, 'kimono' is come from the Greek word 'jimona,' which mean 'winter.' What do you wear in the winter to keep warm? A robe. So robe, kimono, there you go.

You ever feel you're like you're grasping a bit?

Sorta felt like that just now when I was at Nursery School. I'm supposed to be helping them with Jolly Phonics, a program that teaches the 42 phonic sounds with songs, actions and stories. We've finished the basic consonant sounds and the short vowel sounds and have moved onto the long vowel sounds. Each of the phonic sounds has an action and short song to explain the sound.

With the short a sound (aah), you take your fingers and walk them up your arm like ants crawling on you, and saw 'aah, aah, aah.' That's good, right?

I figure Jolly Phonics was reaching a bit, though, when they tried to explain the long e sound, because they've combined it with the 'or' sound, and the action you're supposed to teach with the two sounds is "eeyore, eeyore" and wagging your hands on your ears, like you're a donkey.

How are you going to teach two separate sounds, with 4 separate letters, in one day? And the long vowel sounds? They can be spelled in several different ways. It feels quite complicated.

So, for today, I decided to recap on the previous lesson of long i, spelled only 'ie,' and we practiced combining i and e to make long i sound, and we spelled lie, die and tie.

"T, I, E, tuh, eye, tuh, eye. What does that spell? tuh, eye, tuh, eye, TIE. In the morning, Enid puts on her uniform and TIES the sides together.... When Toshao dresses up with a nice shirt, he puts a TIE on."

"D, I, E. duh, eye, duh, eye, duh eye. What does that spell? DUH, EYE..... DIE. Um..... my bird is sick, I hope he doesn't DIE."

Then, we moved onto the ee-or sounds. We looked at the page, we saw the donkey, we saw the kids in the picture wagging their hands on their ears, we saw donKEY, shEEP and BEEs.

"OK, we're going to learn to spell one of these animals that has the long e sound. 'S,' what sound does that make? - sssss - Yes, and 'H,' what sound does that make? - huh - yes, but TOGETHER, s and h makes the 'shhhhhh' sound. Call that sound! - shhhhh - Good.

Ok, next, what two letters? - E and E - yes, good, and two E's together makes what sound? - eeeeee - yes, ok and last letter: P. What sound? - puh - good.

So lets put them together: SH, EE, P. SH, EE, P. What does that spell? SHEEP. You see? And, now, for our last song; what sound does a sheep make?........ Baaaaa. Ok, so let's sing 'Baa Baa Black Sheep'!"

So, there you go.