Di Lio (The River) (written 8/9/10)

Today my new friend Zoozlen took me to the river to teach me how to “hooko” (fish). She had her 5 children, a big bucket of dirty dishes, a fishing pole and some cassava in tow. There are two places on the bank of the river in our village that women go 2-3 times a day to wash clothes, dishes, their children, and themselves. Many people have durotanks that catch rainwater, but that water is reserved mostly for drinking. Also, our village has community sinks throughout, but I have only seen a few women use these (mostly the older women...and me!). They do not work all the time, so, out of habit, the women go where they know the water will always work- the river.

When we arrive at the river, Zoozlen walks down the cement stairs that end in the river, so I follow, soaking the hem of our koosus. She has the fishing pole that she's made just today, a stick with line and a hook on the end. She attaches a ball of flour mixed with water, throws it out into the river and hands me the stick. I caught one big fish pretty quickly. I have no idea what kind in English, but in Saramaccan it is called waku. By the end of our adventure, we caught about 7 fish: 2 big ones and 5 small ones. I thought I was being pretty tough by being able to unhook the fish and carry them back to our bucket with my bare hands. Then I watched as Zoozlen's 9-year-old daughter starts to scale and gut one of the fish and I have to turn away as I notice the fish is still gasping for oxygen as she rips out his entrails. For about the fiftieth time since I have been here, I marvel at how different the world I grew up in is from the reality these kids grow up in.

We are at the water's edge for about 2 hours and during that time numerous other women come with their dirty dishes and clothes. They all bend in half with no effort and grate their clothes against a flat stone while rubbing with soap. There are kids running around everywhere. The older ones are trying their hand at fishing as well. I observe everything and by the time we leave, I have seen women wash clothes, wash dishes, wash their children, wash themselves, fish, gut fish, clean and cut chicken, throw away garbage, clean fresh cassava and pee in the same 11 foot bank of the river. This is their way of life here. The Suriname River runs through some of the most pristine rainforest in the world. It is also the main water source and only mode of transportation for the thousands of Saramaacan people that have lived along it's banks for hundreds of years. It is amazing to me how these people have carved out a life for themselves deep in the jungle and how that life is evolving as influences from “the west” are coming face to face with their traditional way of life.

Here is one of the big fish that we caught. My friend came over and showed me how the locals fry them up. Have you ever eaten a fish that was looking at you? I have.

Doing Well! (written 8-03-10)

A week and a half in, Ryan and I are doing well in our new village. We are thankful that our house is set in a nice, quiet spot next to an older couple's house. I am getting to know some of the women better and we've gone on a couple walks to talk to people and see the village. This will take a lot of time. We have a larger village compared to other PC volunteers. I am trying so hard to remember people's names, but it's tough. Everyone seems excited to visit with us and is happy we are here to learn about their way of life. There is so much to learn and experience but we have plenty of time! I am relishing not being inside an office building everyday (although that would be air conditioned!) and actually having time to relax, read, not eat breakfast in my car or at my desk, just sit and talk with people and enjoy the cool mornings and evenings. A lot of the time I feel like we've traveled back in time to the pioneer days in North America. There are a LOT of challenges here and not knowing the language and culture can be very frustrating at times, but I would say overall we are doing well and enjoying the adventure. We LOVE getting calls, letters and packages from home and truly appreciate the encouragement and interest in our lives in this fascinating country from friends and family back home.

Random things I'm experiencing:

• Washing my dishes and clothes by hand all the time. My back is not feeling it.
• Having random people that I don't know ask what I cooked today. This is an everyday conversation starter. In general, I don't answer chicken and rice, which is what most people cook everyday, so lots of bewildered looks ensue.
• Having every door and window open all day in the house for air (without screens) but having to close them at dusk to avoid mice entering the house. Even at night the house is hot but when the electricity comes on at 7pm we have our fan.
• Being able to see a billion stars at night. It's beautiful if I have enough deet on to protect me from the mosquitoes so I can enjoy standing still and gazing up.
• Greeting everyone I see with the scripted lines that depend on what time of day it is. Many PCVs find this annoying but I kind of like it. It's nice that everyone acknowledges everyone.
• Preparing every meal from canned or dry goods. I try to ignore the thought of my sodium intake for the next two years. I am used to shopping in the produce and frozen food sections at the grocery store. Neither one is possible here. Fruits and vegetables are only abundant in the city and they go bad really quickly due to the weather. We hope to start a garden (though it will take a while for anything to fruit) and find some people in our village who have gardens and are willing to sell us some things. We do have a baker in our village who sells bread and some of the little stores sell eggs, so we are thankful for that.
• Having to put on sunscreen everyday and mosquito repellent literally ALL the time. You'll be happy to know that I've only mildly burned once in the entire 3 months I've been living on the equator, Mom, which is pretty damn good. All of the locals get a big kick out of the fact that I am way more white than Ryan. Many people in our village have asked if he is American and where his family comes from. I'm still working on light conversation vocab, so try going into a politically correct ethnicity discussion in a language you barely know.
  
  
  Here are a few pictures of our house and from our first week in our village, complete with captions explaining what is going on. Enjoy!

Tu Dede Sembe Aqui (written 7-25-10)

The title of this post is the phrase that Ryan and I kept hearing the first day we arrived in our new village. It means two dead people here. Apparently, two men died right before our arrival and their bodies were being brought from the capitol city to our village. A couple PC trainees in our group had experienced deaths in their village during training, so we had some ideas as to what might happen. It was definitely still an experience.

So, the first day at site we put all our stuff in one of the two rooms that our little hut consists of and pitched our hammocks in the other. Sidenote: we have mosquito nets that are made specifically for hammocks, so you look like a giant cocoon once inside. It's pretty sweet. Here is a picture of Ryan tying them up with his headlamp on.

Oh, and I saw a huge spider in the second room right when we finished unloading our stuff into the house. Ryan grabbed our insect spray and went for it, saying it was the same brown spider that our friend Jack had in his house. I replied that this one had a big white bottom part of his body, though. My sexily smart, knows random ish husband replies the white thing is an egg sac. Wonderful. He proceeds to hit the spider with the spray and from where I was standing it looked like a million little ants went running in every direction. They weren't ants. They were teeny tiny spider babies. Welcome to your house in the jungle.

The next day we cleaned the empty room with bleach water (the unfinished wood walls and cement floor) to try to disinfect everything and get the funky stink out. Due to the intense humidity, it takes forever for anything to dry in this country, including our house. Ryan took this time to try to fill every hole big enough for a mouse to come into the house with some hardening foam the PC gave us. To give you a visual on how many holes we had in our house that were big enough for a mouse to come in, if you are standing outside, it looks like a giant marshmallow creature is trying to burst out of every crack. If you're standing inside, it looks like it's trying to get in. We're not really going for aesthetics here in the jungle, though, are we?

By nightfall, the floor and walls were thankfully dry, so we were able to set up our bed and mosquito net to sleep in for the night, which made it feel much more like a home. I was planning on doing the same with the other room the next day. However, the captain of our village informed us that the bodies of the deceased men were arriving midday, so the men of the village were going into the jungle at 9am to dig the graves and he would come get Ryan to help. Here he is looking all ready for the jungle with his machete (in an American way-most of the locals were wearing flipflops). * I will still take a picture of Ryan and I both with our machetes, Vincent, but here is a start!

I decided to try to organize a few things before I ventured out to see what the women were doing (all activities are split by gender here). An 11-year-old boy named Zidani came by and was chatting it up with me while watching me organize our food in meat buckets (they are the only containers that keep out both mice and bugs).

Then two adorable little old ladies came by, Mmma and Dii and sat with me a little while. When I was getting ready to walk to my neighbor's, Ryan comes walking up to let me know that he needed something to pay with I order to go back to helping dig the graves. Apparently, all the men who were working together brought something to contribute to the group such as cigarettes, beer, rum, etc. Very 1950s army-ish, huh? Anyways, we had bought a bottle of Palm Rum before we came, as we were told we should have it on hand to offer our captain or basias (they are the council below the captain; we have 8 in our village) whenever they come over to visit. That stuff is like 80 proof and they just sip a shot or two like it's tea. So, I gave him that to take, which ended up being a hit with the men.

I went over to our neighbor's house, who sent me with another woman to go cook food for all the men who were digging the graves. That was nice because I had some one on one time practicing my language and asking questions about the village. It turns out that one of the dead men was our contact person's big brother and he killed himself by drinking pesticide. The other man was older, in the military and had been sick for a long time (I don't know with what, the people here don't really differentiate between illness, they just say “sick”. Another girl told me maybe it was AIDS, which started my first informal discussion on how HIV/AIDS is trasmitted). After we finished cooking, we carried the food to a central meeting place where I met back up with Ryan. He and the other men were served food there and then went to the family of the other dead man where they were served another meal.

After awhile more people came from the city for the funeral and the bodies arrived. Then the wailing started. I'm talking head thrown to the sky, mouth open, tearing of the clothes wailing. After a few hours we were told we could go home to wash and everyone was meeting in the public, outdoor hall around 8pm for “booko di dia” which literally means breaking the daylight. Basically, we came back and everyone sang for 3 hours straight. One guy would call out a line and everyone would sing it back. No music. Very traditional hymn sounding. Three hours. Let me just say that every day since we've been here Ryan and I have been completely exhausted by about 9pm. So by midnight I felt like I'd been awake for about 3 days. Thankfully, just before my breaking point, women came with sandwiches, cake and coffee and served everyone. Then a guy stood up and proceeded to do standup in Saramaccan for about 4 hours. Considering we only understood random words and no jokes, I focused on trying not to fall asleep and praying fervently that it would end soon. By 4am about ¼ of the people had gone home and we realized the rest were staying through the next day. We hoped our effort was appreciated by the village and quietly left. We decided there was no way in hell we'd be able to get up at 5:30 to come back for the burial so we'd just sleep in. Of course, that meant two different neighbors coming by to wake us up because they were concerned why we had not come out of the house yet.

About midday, we learned that only one of the bodies was buried in the morning as military personnel were coming in from the city in the afternoon for the second burial. We decided to quickly bleach the second room so we could go to the second burial. I was surprised how many people from the military showed up, how many hindustani people are in the military (this shouldn't surprise me, I think they are the majority in Suriname, but for 90% of our time here, we've only been around maroons, so other ethnicities throw me off) and how many women were in the military, especially for how genderfied society is here. I was even more surprised that they brought the military band! After some singing and speeches, a processional started through the village and then into the jungle with the band playing the entire way. They started out playing slowing and solemnly, then it changed to almost jazz and the soldiers were dancing with the casket. Finally, at the grave site, the bugle player did a solo, much like military funerals in the states. The soldiers lowered the casket and left. Then the village men laid freshly cut logs over a lip in the ground they made a couple feet above the casket. Then they laid a sheet of fake linoleum, then put the dirt on top of that. I found it interesting that they did not want any dirt directly on top of the casket. I wonder if there is a specific belief behind that. As you can tell, I did not take any pictures of the cultural events. I didn't want to be another white person with a camera right away but I promise more pictures of our village as time goes on.

There are two things I learned from this experience: one, all the women wear white, blue and black to funeral events, but mostly white. And since all the women here wear plaid koosus (just a piece of cloth that you wrap around your waist as a skirt) all the time, everyone looked like they were wearing the same uniform of some kind, which did not make it any easier to pick out the few women I knew in the crowd. Unfortunately, I stuck out a bit (you know, more than being the only tall, skinny white girl) as I need to invest in a matching funeral koosu. Two, either come early to the booko di dia, go home to nap and come back, or sleep first and then come around midnight with a couple Red Bulls. There is no reason my body wants to stay up for 24 hours straight.