April Newsletter

April 2007 Newsletter

Howdy Everyone! Happy spring to you!! I am sure everyone at this point everyone has just about had it with Father Winter and are ready to see life come alive again, creating more life in the process. I would love to see the daffodils bloom, then the tulips (and I would show it to my dog, who just so happens to be named Tulip, so she could know the beautiful spring flower she is named after), and feel the morning chill turn warm as the sky clears and allows the sun to peak out, warming up the afternoon. The wet season is starting to appear here, and I am really excited to see how the savannahs flood so much that they connect to the rivers, which means there will be life in those waters that I have not seen before. It’s like a tropical spring.

On the Road…Easter Break

So I last left you with Jess and I headed off to Nappi, which was to be the beginning of our 2 and 1/2 week South American extravaganza…Unfortunately the only thing that materialized of the trip to Nappi was the talk of it, and not due a lack of our own ambition, but instead a typical situation trying to get somewhere in the Rupununi, which is not annoying, just not a huge surprise. It was nobody’s fault except our own ignorance that led us to believe that it would only cost GUY$4,000 (US$20) to get into the village, and another $4,000 to get out. The original plan was to go out with the students on Wednesday morning; however, the back of the truck was brimming with students and baggage while more students were waiting outside of the truck to find a seat. In seeing this we decided that to could take the bus to Lethem and then hire a vehicle in…Delphina (the student I mentioned in the last newsletter) was the one who gave me the “estimate” of the hired vehicle. I waved my farewell and with excitement told them I would see them there…Jess and I made the trek to Lethem only to find out, much to our disappointment, that to get to Nappi it costs GUY$15,000, which is about US$75. And this was only one way, so needless to say, we could not go…So we rolled with the punches, drank plenty of Polars, which is one of the worst beers ever brewed, and tried to make up for our loss by planning the next adventure to a different village, which, once again, did not transpire. So, after realizing the only trip we were taking out of Lethem was the one back to Annai, we hopped on the bus and went home.
On Saturday the 31st we had a wedding to go to. Two of the teachers at the school, Sir Sean and Miss Edna (now Mistress Edna), got married in Annai and held their reception at the Annai benab. It was really nice, although I felt bad for Edna because she was so hot in her wedding gown that she didn’t seem like she was enjoying the ceremony much. They are a very nice couple and I wish them all the best.
To continue on with our plans, we headed back to Lethem on Sunday. I was supposed to go to Datanowa Ranch with some other World Teach volunteers, but recognizing transportation there probably was not possible we decided to head to Venezuela instead…Little did we know that the week before Easter is Holy Week and everyone from all over Venezuela comes down to “La Gran Sabana” for the week. We thought we were going to have trouble finding a place for 6 of us to sleep, but things worked out, as they always seem to do…we did have to switch hotels all 3 nights, but that was fine as long as we had a place to stay. We took a tour in La Gran Sabana with a man named Louis. Louis did not speak much English, but man, was he a good time. He would lie in the waterfalls and slide down them like a little kid. It was funny…maybe someday you will get to see pictures. Our tour was a “non-traditional” tour where we would drive through the Sabana and then stop and get out hiking. We saw some amazing waterfalls and pools. We stopped at this one spot that was elevated over the rest of the Sabana and Louis relayed to us, half in Spanish and half in English, that this is where Jurassic Park was filmed. All of a sudden La Gran Sabana became filled with tyrannosauruses and vallaso raptors in my head because you could clearly see that it was true. It is this vast open space with nothing but scattered tree islands, hills, and savannah. When you yelled your echo was carried out and back to your ears…I love that.
We headed back to Lethem on Thursday for the Lethem Rodeo. Come Monday we were supposed to head off to Manaus to go on an Amazon River trip for a few days, but I ended up going back up to Venezuela with a different group to go white-water rafting. We had 3 days, so we ended up planning another trip into La Gran Sabana the day before we were to go rafting. I had already seen a lot of the trip, but we ended up getting a lot further the second time around. We slid down these natural rock slides that have been formed from the constant flow of water over time. We also saw some amazing waterfalls, which seem to be everywhere in Venezuela, at least around Santa Elena. The next day we went rafting, which was awesome, minus all the cabbora flies (in Spanish they are called pura-pura)…Cabbora flies come out in the day and are similar to black flies. They were attacking us as we paddled down the river, which led to a lot less paddling and more and more jumping in the water for relief. The rafting was not as we had expected-by standards that we are accustomed to, this was not white water rafting. It was a three-part expedition…we rafted for a little bit, but before that we walked behind this amazing waterfall. At one point we had to get down on our bellies and crawl under this rock…it was really cool to be on the behind all that rushing water and see how it had shaped caverns most people never get to see. After the rafting we went body rafting down the same route. It was really scary the first time, and whoever was the first person to do it must have been nuts. You had to jump directly in to this one part of the water if you were going to go down the correct way…Otherwise, watch out. The thing was though, is that once you started walking/sliding/slipping and falling down the path you were supposed to take you really just lost control of the whole situation and could only hope for the best. It was a rush, and once you got to the end the guide would blow the whistle and you had to swim hard out of the rapid. After we body rafted we then paddled to the village to have lunch and pack up the boat to head back into Santa Elena. This is when the mosquitoes killed us. We kept goofing off and jumping out of the boat. There was one point just before we came to the village where there were these rapids that the guide forgot about (I don’t know if many people actually paddled the hour and a half to the village). At this point I didn’t have on my helmet or my life jacket. I asked him if I needed to put them back on, and at first he said no, and then he said I should maybe put the helmet back on…Well, thank God for that. We went down the rapids with no problem, but we went backwards into them to play around and spin the boat around, and I ended up falling right into the rapids…I opened my eyes under the water, saw yellow, and realized I was underneath the boat. Luckily in my moment of panic came a wave of calmness that told me to just let the river take me instead of fighting it. It happened so fast, and before I knew it I was down river and above water, but that moment when I opened my eyes under the water and realized I was underneath the raft kept coming back to me all day, and the more I thought about it the more all the ‘what if’s’ started freaking me out. At least I had that helmet on.
So overall the break was fun and I fell in love with Venezuela. We ended up meeting so many cool people that were travelling around for a year, 6 months, 5 years, who were all in Santa Elena either having just come down from Mount Roriama or about to head up it. I was envious of these people and decided that I will just have to go back since I didn’t have enough time to hike it myself…


Back in Annai for the second half of the month…

While I was looking forward to going home I knew that the variety I had had over the past 2 weeks was going to be null and void in Annai, however, after two weeks of being away from home my own bed and space were calling my name. Upon returning home I realized that this was the home stretch, the last term, and I am left in disbelief as I begin to look back on a year that has gone by so fast and start wrapping my thoughts and feelings of this experience up.

Journal entry 4/14/2007:
So, home sweet home, no food, no food. For lunch I had 10 cloves of sautéed garlic and a cup of coffee. I am going to run to Rock View to try to get to the garden and check the post before 4…otherwise the only possibility for dinner is beans.
…It’s crazy to look at the calendar to try to make some final journeys out to some villages… flipping the calendar to June and seeing ‘last week of new material, review and revision, exams…’It’s nuts how little time is actually left. I was anxious to get back and start this term to finish out this year. While I am enjoying it, and in the end I will have enjoyed it all, I am getting ready to get back to a less privative life style, although I do not see myself fully re-adapting back to the excessiveness of Western ways. Here though, I have definitely learned to appreciate certain ones, like selections of food, refrigerators, things to do, internet access…Guyana has been great up to this point and I am so glad that I came to do this- I have learned so much about myself and have experienced such a different sort of life than anything I am used to, and I have been given the opportunity to be able to see diversity, both culturally and environmentally.

Journal entry 4/17/2007

“Back to school today. It’s strange that I feel much the same as I did at the beginning of last term after I had come back to Annai from Chicago, wishing time away, anxious to get home. I keep telling myself that in 2 months I will probably be wishing for more time here, and I will most definitely be about to miss this place and be sad this experience has come to an end. I know July 7th is going to be unbelievable in so many ways. But I am getting bored here at the same time…I can never venture out very far, and even less on my own. I am starting to need a bit more variety and will appreciate it so much when I get home. Variety of so many things…people, food, attractions, things to do…I just feel like every day is too much of the same. However, I know these 2 months will go fast, and I also know that soon after I return to Chicago I will be wishing for savannah and mountain views, this lifestyle that is so simple yet challenging in so many ways. I will be longing to be curled up in my hammock reading a good book and taking in the breeze…
…The thing I will miss the most here are the nice people. The locals are so nice and understanding, so patient with each other sometimes in ways I cannot understand, and they are giving. They might not be the most academically educated people, but when you weigh the qualities and characteristics you would most desire in people, I think they tip the balance in the positive direction with all their attributes you wouldn’t find so abundantly in other places…
…One thing I have realized in my travels in the past few weeks is that people don’t really like Americans. I have known about U.S. sentiments, however, I don’t know if I have really realized it. People generalize Americans based on how our politicians run our country (how we let our politicians run our country). I do not like this and do not like how I am type-casted based on where I come from. There were times over the past few weeks where I would just assume to tell someone I was Canadian as opposed to an American in order to delete the stereotyping. I think so many of the negative connotations come out of this long war that we are in, and the true nature of the beast that seems to be more and more evident as time goes on. I would hate that someone would assume that because I am an American I would put a price tag on a person’s life, that I would choose the almighty dollar over the spilling of red blood, and I am sure that most Americans would not want to be dressed in the same ugly stereotypes.

Making farine in Surama

The last weekend of April we went to Surama to make farine with a woman named Paulette Allicock. It was such a great experience that was an eye-opening experience about how life exists out here.
Farine is made out of cassava, and it is a 2 day process to make it. We arrived at Paulette’s house at about 8 a.m., and after some bread, bananas, and coffee we headed out to the farm to get the cassava (Paulette and her family are lucky-last year’s rains just about wiped out most people’s cassava plant, so farine and all other cassava foods are in limited supply this year). Her farm is huge. It was planted using a slash-and-burn method, and if I remember correctly it had just been done 2 years prior. We went to the back of the farm to find the mature cassava crop, and then we started hacking away with our cutlasses. You cut down the stem part of the tree and then pull the tubers out of the ground. Once they were up, someone else cut a bit at then to see if they were good to use. After gathering a bunch, we packed the cassava into these things called warshees that you carry on your back. They are made out of plant fibers, and resemble a backpack. They have a head strap and 2 arm straps. The one I carried up didn’t have working arm straps though, so I tried just using my arms and my head to carry it back up to the house. I left the farm in an upright position, however, when reached the house I was fully bent over using my back muscles to carry up that heavy load. Halfway through the trip I thought I was going to have to pass the load off, but I was bound and determined to do it by myself. By the time we got back to the house, which was about a 15 minute walk, I felt as though I had already accomplished such a hard task, and this was only the beginning. My arms already felt like Jell-O. In the end this was the hardest part.
The next step is to peel the cassava. This part got to be a little meticulous at the end because only the small little tubers that were a pain in the ass to peel were left. Once the peeling was done, it was time to wash them in the bucket, and grate them. They have contrived this novel craft to assist in the grating. Most people grate on a grating board into a bucket…the Allicock’s however (and I think most people in Surama), have made a bike that you petal to spin this metal cylinder that grates the cassava. One person sits on the bike and petals, which isn’t that easy at times, and the other people push the cassava through the grater…watch your fingers though! It spins so fast and it is really sharp, and with one wrong movement your fingers could be getting grated. I think Paulette was getting really nervous watching us push it through, but don’t worry, we all still have 5 full fingers on each hand.
Once it was grated it gets put into this box where it sits over night. Paulette had some cassava soaking for a few days that we added as a source of yeast. This is the difference between Brazilian farinha and Guyanese farine. Guyanese farine is better…it’s not as fine as the Brazilian and it tastes better. So we left that to sit until the next morning. While we were working she was making us lunch. We had picked a pumpkin while we were down on the farm and she cooked that up as a stew, and she also curried some fish that her husband Daniel had caught that morning. It was so good and all 5 of us sat that and ate our little hearts out. Firsts, seconds, thirds…I don’t know, maybe some of us even had fourths, and it was all so good.
The next morning we arrived at about the same time, but started much slower than the day before. By the time we had got there Paulette had already strained the juice out of the grated cassava…it is poison. Once it was strained it was in blocks that had to be sifted. This part was nice. It made your hands so soft, and for some reason it was one of those tasks that seems like it should be a chore, but you actually find some satisfying pleasure in it. Before we sifted it though, we had to go back down to the farm and gather some fire wood. I think they were laughing at the quantity we managed to scrounge up, but nonetheless the fire was started. Finally it was roasting time. The farine gets added slowly to this giant metal plate that sits on a framework of bricks and has a hot, hot fire underneath. When the farine gets added it has to be stirred constantly. The more you add the harder the stirring gets because it is so heavy. It needs to be stirred constantly for two hours…so while the farine is getting roasted, well, so are you. The fire gets hot and if you are not careful the smoke coming from the fire below will burn your eyes. As time went on and the water vaporized out of the cassava, it became lighter and easier to stir, and it became edible farine. When we were all done and all the farine was in one large bucket, we got together as a group and took a picture with such a sense of accomplishment. Making farine is very hard work, and it was cool to be able to experience something that has been such an integral part of their society’s subsistence for all this time. Paulette was nice enough to let us take home 2 giant bags, which was a nice treat considering that it is hard to come by, as I mentioned earlier.

Form 5 Exams

Well, this is it for Form 5…They start taking their exams in the first week of May. I marked their SBA books and sent the results into the Ministry the day I got back from break…and I was very happy to do so, thinking that the SBA madness was all over. However, I realized that the same madness is going to be taking place with form 4 until the end of this term, especially now that I have an extra 6 periods to prepare for them…I want to make sure that they are not in the same position as 5th form was this year when they get to 5th form. When I started working with the current 5th formers they only had 6 chapters out of 24 in the book covered (and not very well), and they had not a single SBA done. I will feel a sense of accomplishment here when I am done with the fourth formers though, because when I leave they will have 12 out of the 24 SBA’s done and marked, and at least 8 chapters of the book covered extensively. I thought that 5th formers that are writing their CXC’s (the final exams to leave school that determine what kind of jobs they can get) was going to be my big achievement that I could be proud of when I left, but I realized that they are not ready, despite how hard we worked, and sadly enough I just don’t think that they will do that great on the exam. I accept this, and I understand that there just wasn’t enough time-all I can do is wish them the best at this point. What I can do though, is I can get the fourth formers in a good position so they will not have to go through the same thing that this year’s 5th formers did, and they can be at a pace that is not as stressful and can actually take the time to really learn the material.

Well, this is all for April…Oh, one more thing I didn’t mention…I am now a non-smoker. I quit when I came back from break, and I was also hypnotized by Grace’s mom, who is a doctor, to help me. And Mrs. Lindsay, I just wanted to let you know that I still haven’t smoked (and between you and me it is the middle of May, but shhh…I don’t want to ruin the story for the rest, so just casually act like April just ended). She told me when we started the process that I should just consider myself a non-smoker from this point on, and gave me ways to help in the process. And it worked! I was ready, and with that experience to help me, quitting has actually been kind of easy. There were a few moments that weren’t but for the most part having the mentality right away that I was a non-smoker helped a lot. Woo-hoo for my lungs!! (That’s another thing she said…every time I want a cigarette imagine what my lungs must look like, and then when I don’t smoke, imagine that a piece of black lung tissue has healed itself and is now renewed as the pink tissue it is supposed to be. Calm, control, confidence!

Hope all is well and that sunshine is warming your cold winter blues…Until next time…take care!