Today Was a Good Day

As the title of this post says, today was a good day and I kind of needed it. I've been in a funk the past few days and I'm not quite sure why. I had a wonderful site visit last week. I have a cute apartment, complete with furnishings, acquired pets, and a constant supply of cockroaches. I was walking around my house with a broom before I went to bed at night and killed a significant amount of them. Luckily, I have a mosquito net which keeps most critters out. I live below a large family with 6 kids. They seem pretty nice and there is always someone around to play with.

I will be working at the New Amsterdam School of Nursing and possibly teaching Community Health and Anatomy & Physiology. My introduction to all 178 students went something like this:

Tutor over the microphone: Students, I'd like you to all meet our new Peace Corps volunteer Mrs. Brooks
Me: (quietly whispering ) Excuse me, I'm not married
Tutor over the microphone: You're not married?!!
Me: Umm..no not yet
Tutor over the microphone: Ohhhh, okay. Well students this is Miss. Brooks...

Besides the marital status mix up, I am really excited to be working at the school. It is going to be a big challenge teaching so many students that are around my age, but I think I can pull it off. I am also very grateful for the current volunteers at my site because they were awesome and showed me around and even cooked dinner. :-)

This is where I will be working for the next 2 years!

This was the original maternal and child health bed in the clinic

So despite the encouraging visit, some how I landed flat at the beginning of this week. Maybe I've been a bit homesick or just a bit nostalgic/jealous of the Cherry Blossom pictures people are posting (having access to FB can be a blessing and a curse). Fortunately, today was just what I needed. A group of us on the Health side has been working with a local health center. This was our week of project implementation. We really weren't given much time to organize everything and gather supplies, so I was a little worried about how much we would be able to get done. Our goals were to fix the examining bed for pregnant moms, cut down all the weeds surrounding the center, and general clean up. In short, a health center beautification project. On Tuesday, we did a general clean up, put up health posters, and secured a cushion for the maternal health bed. Today we were set on painting and still in desperate need of someone to cut the grass. Soon after arriving for the day, we had a whole group of Community Health Worker students, the clinic staff, and ourselves listening to music, painting, and chatting.

Working with the health centre staff to beautify the clinic!

Even better, we had a potluck style lunch to keep us all going. However, we still had money in our budget for someone (anyone at this point) to cut the grass. A neighbor stopped by the clinic for a check-up and we told him about our tall grass situation. He said he'd go check, hopped on his bike, and came back a bit later to say a guy would be coming, just now. I'm not sure if I mentioned this, but just now is a Guyanese phrase that means now, a few hours from now, a few days, weeks, or months from now, and any time in between. To our surprise, just now meant about 10 mins and we had someone chopping away at the tall grass. We finished our mural and took a step back to realize all of the positive changes we were able to make with a small budget, a short time frame, and some really great relationships with our clinic staff.

Only 1 week left until I am a full fledged volunteer!! Until then!

-KB

I'm Finally Here

“The big occurrences in life, the serious ones, have for me always been nearly impossible to recognize because they never feel big or serious. In the moment, you have to pee, your arm itches, or what people are saying strikes you as melodramatic or sentimental, and it's hard not to smirk. You have a sense of what this type of situation should be like - for one thing, all-consuming - and this isn't it. But then you look back, and it was that; it did happen.” -Curtis Sittenfeld

That moment, that "big occurrence," happened. I left my home over six weeks ago and moved to a completely different country. At the same time, I didn't feel any different. Excited, yes, but all consuming? Not yet, not even close. I kept asking myself, is this Peace Corps? Am I REALLY here? Well...am I?

This past week has been super busy. My fellow trainee Beth and I woke up early last Saturday morning to kill and pluck 20 or so chickens for our Host Family Appreciation dinner. After getting over the initial shock/horror that the chickens in the pen would be our dinner in the upcoming week, we got to work. Thank goodness Beth's host family had a plucking machine so we had a little less work to do, but it was time consuming and a bit messy.

On Monday I gave a talk about preventing illnesses by having good hygiene/hand washing, sanitation, and keeping food safe. Little did I know that later in the day I would fall victim to the same types of illnesses I had warned others about. It was so unfortunately ironic, that I had to laugh. I think it helped me to a speedy recovery.

On Wednesday, my group went to our local health center and primary school to give talks about good hand washing. One of my fellow trainees made up a song about washing your hands so we had a good time getting all the students to sing along with us. It was pretty catchy, so look for a music video in the future. ;-)

Hand washing at the La Grange Primary School

Thursday was a holiday called Holi or Phagwah.  (To learn more about Phagwah click here!) It is the Hindu holiday for the triumph of good over evil. A fellow trainee and I were invited to a Mandir to celebrate so we thought it would be fun to check it out. We walked to the Mandir (we were a bit late) and noticed everyone was sitting down for a service. We got worried and didn't want to interrupt, so we tried to walk away slowly without anyone noticing. Silly us, it is Guyana! Everyone notices and knows everything. We were spotted and were ushered inside. The service was very interesting and we were presented with lots of snacks afterwards. Then, we played Phagwah. This consists of throwing water and colored powder on everyone. It was a blast! We were soaking people young and old with water and powder.

The thing is, the WHOLE neighborhood / all of Guyana plays (as long as they say so), so we had neighborhood kids waiting to soak us and some people even drove by with supersoakers. We were already stuffed with the amount of goodies that people were offering us, but we had yet to have REAL lunch, which was the famous and delicious seven curry dish. We managed to stave off bursting our bellies by splitting some of the food.

Eating traditional Seven Curry!  Recipe to follow!

Later on we went to the stadium where there were 10,000 people all throwing powder and shooting dye at one another. My host family barely recognized me when I came home. It has been 4 days, many many showers later and my eyebrows and parts of my hair are still pink.

Friday was the big day. Site assignment day!! Of course they didn't tell us until the very END of the day and even then we had to answer question correctly in an intense game of Jeopardy to reveal who was going where. For each question a team answered correctly, they got to reveal one site placement with our names and pictures on a big map of Guyana. I was so excited and nervous to find out. I have some patience, but I was really at the end of it when each person's site was so slowly revealed. At last, they announced the name of a site in New Amsterdam, Berbice at the College of Nursing. My PM looked directly at me before my name was read, so I knew it was me. I didn't know what to think. I was excited but I wasn't exactly sure for what. I found out about the apartment I will be living in, a little description about my job, and other miscellaneous details. I go to visit my site on Wednesday this week so I will have a lot more to say about my site assignment and job then.

I might call Saturdays, Chicken Saturday, because once again yesterday morning I was dealing with more chicken. I was in charge of cooking 52lbs of chicken for the Host Family Appreciation Day. I woke up early to marinate all of the chicken.

I thought about Murphey's Law and someone was on my side because all terrible events that could have happened, somehow didn't. I almost stepped on a snake carting chicken from one house to the next, there was an accident in front of my street so I was worried my helpers wouldn't make it, and we had a short blackout while the chicken was cooking. Like I said before, the potential was there but somehow all the chicken was prepared and we went off to the Host Family Appreciation Day.

Wearing traditional Guyanese clothing for fashion show

HFA was a great event. It started out a bit slow, but eventually we had our host families and trainees participating in games, we had a big potluck dinner, and then a talent show. Everyone did a great job and I think the host families really appreciated it. At the end, one of the trainees made an awesome video where we said Thank You to our host families. It made me realize how much we have already been through and how much I am going to miss my host family.

If I haven't lost you yet with this long post, I can tell you that after HFA, I realized that I am finally here. I have been in this moment for a while now, but just haven't been fully aware of it. If I look back on the past few weeks, I can see some of the progress I've made. I adore my host family, I think of my fellow trainees as family, and I recognize a lot of beauty and humor throughout Guyana.  We were also lucky in that our urban group got to visit the remote group in St. Cuthbert's Mission, an Amerindian community.

St. Cuthbert's Mission

We went on a scanvanger hunt around the mission- The one volunteer is dressed in traditional Amerindian clothing

St. Cuth's Host Family Appreciation

Now, I am looking forward to visiting my site this week and meeting my counterpart at my job. I have a feeling I will be very busy until swearing in, but I will try to keep you posted on it all. Thanks for reading and FYI, you East Coast people are now on the same time zone as me. :-)

-KB