Just Living

This post isn’t about a particular story or cross cultural comparison, to me, it is just about life.  Don’t get me wrong, life is the most valuable thing we possess, but once the adjustments have been made and the cultural shock starts to wear off, that is what you get, life.  It is the day to day, the things you laugh at to yourself, the small yet amazing things.  My co-workers love quotes (I do too) and one was saying that the only constant thing in life is change.  I see it.  I see it with friends I haven’t talked to in a while.  They are traveling the world, forming new relationships, moving to new cities, getting new jobs, getting engaged.  I see it with myself.  Yesterday I entered the bathroom (think small area) in my house to duke it out with a giant flying cockroach.  If that were me a few months ago, I would have shut the doors, plugged up the cracks and waited for the thing to die.  A cockroach is nothing compared to the giant deadly centipede that crawled into my house and even that wasn’t terrible (Okay, I might have screamed)

Bugs are bigger in Guyana!

 
.  I think I’ve been watching a little too much How I Met Your Mother but there is a line in there that says eventually, we become our own doppelgängers.  A dopplegänger is basically a twin or look a-like.  Change is inevitable, but we always walk with (that is the Guyanese expression for carry) some semblance of ourselves.  

Of course there are times when I miss my friends and family, but then I realize that everyone is changing, living, and growing themself, so if you think things will be the same, you will be left behind.  Sometimes I do want to be there changing alongside everyone else, but my past self decided more than a year ago, that the best way for me to change and grow (besides helping people and learning a new culture) was to join the Peace Corps, not stay at home.  The thing is, I know who I was at home, and I know the path I probably would have taken.   At times I desperately crave that path.  I see a lot of other people taking it, running down it at full speed and I am the turtle taking my sweet time.  Slow and steady wins the race right?   It is both exhilarating and frightening, because here in Guyana, everything is up in the air.  But I have to remind myself that life is not a race.  When it comes down to it, you have to pave your own path and of course keep your connections with the people you love and care about.  

I think I am starting to pave my own path here.  I don’t own any steamrollers or asphalt, but I am an established white girl with a bucket full of gravel that I’ve been tossing around.  I have become very busy these past two weeks and expect to stay that way, at least until September.  I have three different public health related classes that I teach, which all involve lesson planning.  Lesson planning is a lot of work and I really admire all of my teachers and am truly sorry if I ever fell asleep or acted out in class.  I also never realized that I enjoy teaching. 

 

Teaching reproductive health to my students

  I used to have really bad fears of public speaking, but I’m getting over that and finding my own voice.  You get to be creative and it is really amazing to see when a student understands something or shows interest in what you are talking about.  Outside of the classroom, I hold computer classes at lunch for students to research a health topic while acquiring basic computer skills.  So they are secretly learning more about health while practicing computer skills (muwahahaha!).  I also was able to get a health column gig for a newspaper here that an old volunteer used to write. 


  Each week I write about a health topic with local appeal.  I am very thankful to have had some practice with this at an internship I had before Peace Corps.  I also became a member of the Gender and Development Task Force for Peace Corps.  The taskforce is meant to promote gender equality through awareness and skill building activities.  One of those activities is Camp GLOW!  It is a week-long camp to empower and give life skills to girls coming up in August.  If you would like to know more about it (and donate!) please click here.  

I try to get something related to those things mentioned above done during the work day.  Most of the time when I come home, I just want to cook food and relax. Very rarely that actually happens.  The neighborhood kids are always out and about to greet me right as I walk through my gate.  Sometimes they have homework assignments and others they just want to play and hang out.  I try to make Sundays our day.  We will do crafts, have movie nights, or even a dance party or two.

Making Easter Eggs with the kids, something they don't normally do

Making Masks

Making sugar cookies

  
   One Sunday there was a high-speed (well as fast as you can travel on a largely pot holed road) chase between the police and some flatbed truck.   It was very strange to see and luckily the kids weren’t out playing on the road.  I heard that they caught the truck about 30 minutes outside of my town, but still don’t know what the culprits did. 

My Nursey Says Column

I have been here almost five months and have already changed in quite a few ways.  For example, now I see myself as a teacher, a newspaper columnist, a camp counselor, and some sort of a big sister.  Did I expect those things when I signed up to be a health volunteer? No, not really.  Am I happy to play those roles? Absolutely!  I am hoping to add community member to that list, but it takes time.  For now, “whitey” “snowflake” “snow white” “white gyal”  or “snow angel” are used to describe me when I am out and about; I’ve always been pale and so I don’t see that one changing.

Until next time!

-KB