Life in our new home

We’re in it now. We’ve been in our village for almost two months. We have spent a lot of time getting our house in order. It hadn’t been lived in by anything but jungle critters for about 3 years so we had to do some major scrubbing down of the walls, existing furnishings and the floor to remove the bat odor, etc. David has been doing some creative carpentry to create screens for all our windows so we can leave them open without being chewed up by mosquitoes. They are working really well and have made the evenings and nights pleasant. David is now working on getting rid of the bat colony living in our rafters. They are quite attached to our home and have been reluctant to leave despite the addition of daylight and some insecticide. David is now installing a heavy duty screen over the openings into the space between the ceiling and the roof. We just have to figure out how to get them to leave before closing up the space completely. We don’t want to create a bat crypt.

Christine spends much of her time fighting to keep our spot in the jungle. The jungle is constantly trying to take the space back. It’s a process of cleaning to keep the multitude of visiting insects and small creatures from setting up camp and staying permanently. Every day requires sweeping the home and washing every dirtied dish in the river. The river is ¼ mile from the house. It’s a lovely walk in the early mornings, unless you’re carrying a full load of dishes and laundry to be washed.

Christine is also reluctantly learning to cook. It just has to be done. The women do the cooking and they talk about it a lot. She is always being asked what she cooked today – then they want details. Damn! To distract them from real food, she has started making cookies and cake and sharing liberally. Now she is more often asked if she is cooking anything sweet today. She has had several women over for cooking lessons to prepare these delights, the most popular being “No bake chocolate cookies”. Good thing, too. Baking here is a late night only activity due to the heat and most households don’t have ovens.

As for life away from the house, we spend our time visiting, working and making a map of the village. The people here are mostly subsistence farmers and it is basic slash and burn agriculture. It’s really hard work – cut the jungle, burn it, muck out the stumps and plant crops. Then, 9-10 months later, harvest and haul to town to sell (weeding in-between). David has helped with this several times and has started our own small “grounds” close to the house - see new pics. Our grounds will be some leafy greens, cucumber, a long string bean called kosubanti and a really tasty squash called pompun (pumpkin). Villagers here grow mostly root vegetables, bananas (several varieties), blisteringly hot peppers, ginger and some greens. The staple is definitely the root vegetables however, cassava being the primary one. Bread, dumplings and a dried cereal much like grape nuts (kwaka) are the main consumables made from cassava. Christine has learned how to cook the bread – see new pics (making the “dough” is actually quite involved). The cassava bread and kwaka have an amazingly long shelf life considering the environment. The cooking process essentially drives all the water out of the cassava and it can last for several months in this condition. They grow another root vegetable called pom taya. This is the main cash crop this time of year. A dish called pom (not surprisingly) is made from this and apparently it is very popular in here and in Holland.

We haven’t started any specific project work yet. We’re still getting to know the community and the people. Peace Corps does not want volunteers to start project work until they have been at site for at least three months so they have a good feel for the community they are in. We think the map should help with most any kind of project work however because it provides good baseline info for a variety things and has definitely been a good conversation starter around the village. We’ve also gotten several kids to help out with the tape and compass. I’m sure our NPS, FHWA and USFS friends will not be too surprised that David brought rudimentary survey gear into the Suriname jungle – and he’s using it!

Finally, children continue to play a huge role in our integration. We spend a lot of time with children of all ages, both one on one and in large groups…sometimes too large. Unfortunately, even the children suffer from our linguistic shortcomings. David recently refused to return one boy’s headphones, mistakenly thinking he wanted our ipod that went along with them. So the poor lad is music deprived for a couple of days while we’re in the city.

Marooned in the City

We’ve been in Paramaribo for 10 days which has been both a blessing and a curse. After swearing-in, we thought we would be heading out to site – after shopping for all the gear, furniture, tools, etc. we’ll need for setting up our household – the 1st of August. Peace Corps gave us more time than in previous years to buy all the stuff we’d need (we’d been in the city a few days before swear-in). This was a very good thing since some of our transactions didn’t work out the way several of us intended (paying for stuff that wasn’t delivered, getting delivery on stuff we didn’t order, etc), and this gave us time to resolve these issues (which we were able to do). But we didn’t leave on the first because we have no money for food. We get a quarterly stipend for food purchases (supposed to get) which apparently got lost in the mail on the way from Washington DC. At any rate, there’s no food money so there keeping us in town until at least Wednesday the 5th.
Paramaribo is a nice city so it’s not a tremendous hardship. Food and beer are good, people are generally friendly and accommodations are comfortable. It’s also fairly easy to get a good internet connection. The problem again is money. It’s not an expensive place by U.S. standards but our PC per diem is pretty meager. It’s enough for 3 meals a day (if you’re careful) but if you do happen to have a beer, or god forbid two, it’s bread and water for a day…so David has definitely lost a little weight. Also, we’re pretty anxious to get out to our site. The little bit of language we have is getting rusty already. The language of the business community is Dutch so most businesses expect people (especially white people) to speak Dutch. The street language is fairly close to the Okanisi we’ve been learning but there are definitely differences. David bought chairs today from a woman who spoke no English and they have four legs and a place to put your rear so he must have been talking ok.

Photos posted

After a joint effort and much patience, we believe we have successfully posted pictures to this web blog. If you're on facebook with Christine, you've already seen these pictures.

As for updated news, we're official Peace Corps volunteers. For our swearing in ceremony, Christine served as the presenter for all the volunteers learning Okanisi (also called Aucan). In this extremely diverse country, volunteers were split into three - a bridge language for all the different groups. Anyway, Christine prepared her speech with the assistance of her language teacher while still in training. Then, when we arrived in the city, the director informed all the presentors that we needed to lengthen our presentations.

Christine typing: So I added some simple transition lines and expanded my thank you to all the villagers in the training region. This made for a very memorable speech as I added a line stating that I love to sew, so my host family taught me to sew blah, blah. blah. I declared with gusto that I love to sew and everyone laughed. I was puzzled and racking my brain. I knew I pronounced everything correctly as it is a simple sentence. Then, I suddenly remembered - the word for sew, 'nai' is also the word for sex. To recover, I said it again and emphasized the sewing part by gesturing as if I was using a needle to sew on material. Not very effective, but again, very funny. I then added that I love to nai - both types - and went on. As a little side note, several reporters, including the local TV news station, were there to capture this moment. On the bright side, no one remembers all the mispronouncations or english words I accidently spit out while talking and everyone liked my speech.

We're in the capital city until Wednesday am and will be checking email and our blog until we leave. Then we're off the grid again for three months or so. Hope you are all well and enjoying the miracle of refridgeration.