Around the 1st of January, our village holds an annual meeting to discuss what is going on in the village and address any issues. Many people come out from the city. From my experience, it is the only time of the year that men wear traditional clothing and out number the women at a village meeting. This year it was 5 hours long. We took some great pictures, though!
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| Meeting |
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| Traditional Saramaccan dress for men: badja koto and camisa (Giyer and Gio). Cross stitched by their wives, of course. |
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| Tante Fe, Me, Basia Shirley and Jei |
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| Me and Basia Simon- he is over 90 and so sweet! That is the official basia (village leader) uniform. |
During this meeting, Ryan announced to our village that Peace Corps is phasing out of Suriname due to budgetary issues. Unfortunately, several small, expensive Peace Corps countries are being shut down, at least temporarily because Peace Corps worldwide was just not awarded enough money to keep all of their programs running in this year's budget. The group that arrived after ours (SUR 17s) is the last Peace Corps group for Suriname. When they finish their service in 2013 Peace Corps will pull out. This is an unfortunate and challenging addition to our Peace Corps experience. However, Ryan did an excellent job communicating this difficult and sensitive situation to our village, using the traditional Saramaccan meeting etiquette.
For more pictures, click
here.
For pictures from actual New Years Day in our village (the New Years meeting was held a couple weeks into January this year), click
here.
That picture of you and the basia is awesome! It's a keeper. 5 hour meetings, not so awesome.
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