ostrich love

so... some interesting information has surfaced regarding the basketcase colonial woman from the U.K., mentioned in my aptly named "on the 12th" post.

apparently this lady has her ph.d. in biology or something, and actually won the nobel prize in the 1990s because of some work she and her husband did on a particular ostrich farm. the ostriches on this farm weren't mating, so this lady and her partner tried to find out why, and discovered that the ostriches were becoming romantically infatuated with their human caretakers. wtf!? just something to keep your brain occupied for a while...

pocket full of rye

to add to my list of "darcy coincidences": one of the leaders of the group of canadian youth who are coming for 6 weeks in november is a good friend/former co-worker of darcy. it just seems odd to me. but i guess it isn't that odd: AFL and ghost river rediscovery are both alberta-based aboriginal youth leadership programs. but at the same time... i'm in the middle of nowhere! anyways...

highlights of the last few days include:
-being able to french braid my hair for the first time in several years
-facilitating some public speaking workshops/games for my youth and being proud of the job i did
-corresponding with friends and family, some of whom have promised care-mail!
-spending more time with my book (my dad bought me "a thousand barrels a second" just before i left calgary, and it's a really good book, but i have a really difficult time reading here because there is nowhere comfortable to sit/lay (lie?))
-a semi-windy day today! there are only two temperatures here: hot and too hot. thankfully, today was just "hot"
-radio paiwomak 97.1 (the station broadcast from our building) blasting "bittersweet symphony" into the warm rupununi darkness
-finding a way to sleep somewhat successfully on my stomach in my hammock
-one of my youth helping me bake whole wheat bread! EVERYTHING here is white: pasta, bread, rice.

on a significantly less celebratory note, my little sister's boyfriend was in a bad, bad accident, reminiscent of last september's vermilion mishap. pray that things will be better for josh, as well as for little lizzy, who has had an exceptionally bad year, losing our grandma, our cat, as well as various other things.

'i' is for incredibly cute

for the last 10 days, a group of 9 amerindian medics have been doing information technology training at bina hill institute. today they had their "graduation," and we all attended to support them. after they received their certificates, four of the women and one of the men got up and made a little acrostic out of the name "ivor" (who was their instructor). they each held up a piece of paper with the appropriate letter and gave a little presentation:`"'i' stands for information technology that ivor taught us." sooo cute.

splendor in the grass

a chronological review of the last week:

monday:
-planned to get on the bus to take the 3-hour ride to lethem, so i could open a bank account and buy chocolate (no one sells chocolate around here, and i am addicted)
-packed up and went to wait for the bus at 9:30, which is about when the bus usually arrives
-waited at Oasis (nearby restaurant/bus station) until 2 p.m. - the bus had gotten stuck in the mud in the forest, and we (crystal and i) didn't want to miss it, so we waited around
-finally gave up waiting at 2 p.m. and came back to bina hill and showered.
-someone saw the bus drive by, so we went back to the bus station and hopped on the bus at about 4 p.m.
-got into lethem around 8 p.m. the drive was really beautiful. the savannah is so HUGE. it was more prairie and sky than i knew what to do with. one of the most magical things about the rupununi savannah nights is the starry sky seemingly reflected by scores of fireflies. it is amazing. slept at rawle's (our supervisor's) wife's house - on a bed!!! beds are a pretty big deal for us - our hammocks are neat, but not always comfortable, and bina hill doesn't have any "lounging" furniture, so beds are always appreciated.

tuesday:
-felt terrible for declining the breakfast rawle's wife had made for us (an egg and a hot dog - i had not eaten one of either for probably 10 years, and i had no intentions of starting)
-crystal and i were driven around lethem (in the back of a truck) by one of rawle's friends. we tried opening bank accounts, which was the worst and most impossible thing ever. the only bank within 12 hours of driving does not take VISA, and cannot transfer funds from other banks. awesome. so, not very helpful. but the teller did flirt with me, and asked how he could get in contact with me. i told him to face east and yell really loud. he had already taken down my e-mail for my account information, so i couldn't really get out of that one. yikes.
-bought chocolate, fruit, and whole wheat flour at a grocery store. so exciting! everything we eat is either white (white bread/bake/roti; white rice; white pasta) or is chicken or beef. we sometimes get fruit from "town," but this time, i bought some grapes and apples and a pineapple. hey emily, guess what? i decided i like pineapple! now we can buy and share the same groceries! and i stocked up on m&m's, to satisfy my addiction.
-we thought we were going to bus back to bina hill in the evening, but someone from B.H. was in lethem and saw us, so we got in the truck for a ride home. it wasn't sketchy - we knew them well - but the ride ended up lasting about 10 hours. we had to pick up youth from remote villages for the youth forum we were hosting the next day. so the ride was awesome in some ways - 4x4ing through the rupununi was a rare and beautiful experience. we saw termite mounds everywhere, and got to visit a few really neat villages. but by the end of the trip, we were really cramped up (we got to ride in the cab of the truck - all the youth were in the back of truck), and crystal puked out the window near the end of the trip. sick. it was good to be "home."
-when we stopped in yupukari, one of the rural villages, crystal and i got out to go pee. it was really dark, and we just squatted, and there must have been some weird bugs, because now i have a ton of red bug bites all over my bottom. how embarrassing/inconvenient. i went to the hospital in annai on friday to get some antibiotics and cream. additionally, my legs are really cut up and scarred/scabbed from all the mosquito bites i itch. i am pretty constantly physically uncomfortable.

wednesday/thursday/friday:
-we (the Youth Leadership Programme) hosted a youth forum at bina hill, so that the institute could gather information to help put together a training program for youth that will start this october.

saturday:
-tried (unsuccessfully) to transfer funds from my canadian bank to my guyana bank account. boo.
-crystal and i had our bikes put together/greased yesterday, so we biked to rockview resort for postcards and cold water; to annai for crackers/oranges/bananas; and to oasis for some coca-cola for crystal. the bike ride was really nice, and better than expected.


i need to go! the mosquitos are out!

grandma and gido

*hearts*

bina hill institute: what is this!? a centre for ants!?

esg,
how i long to be sitting in the apartment formerly known as "ours," watching zoolander and eating m&m's and other various snackfoods from mac's and being emilonely.

the ants here are crazy. they are everywhere. in high school, kds used to have an irrational fear of ants, and was certain that one day they would work together and form a human-like structure (like the fish who make shapes in "finding nemo") and terrorize humans. or something like that. anyway, fear of ants. they are everywhere, and they can sense food from a million miles away. if i leave my tea cup out too long, they attack it. spills on tables are other good targets. however, my favorite ant experience thus far has been watching them on the walls in the bathroom. it's super funny and almost indescribable. without fail, if two ants are coming from different directions, they will head STRAIGHT TOWARDS each other, stop briefly about 1 mm from each other, and then continue on in the direction they were initially heading:
EVERY SINGLE ANT did this. even if one was coming from the top right side of the wall, and the other was coming from the bottom left, they would find a way to meet head-on, stop, and then continue. weird, cute, and highly entertaining.

the 16th

excuse the colloquialism, but some pretty bad shit went down last night.

essentially, crystal, my work partner, got assaulted at amerindian heritage days. it happened at about 3 in the morning, when i had already gone back to our place to sleep. basically, two men trapped her in an outhouse stall with a knife. she thought quickly and pushed her way out, cutting her hand on the knife before the assault could get any worse. i'm not sure if the intent was a robbery, or sexual. either way...

we're pretty shaken. i might be even more shaken than she is. send prayers for strength and wisdom as we figure out what to do. i don't want to leave, and this was most likely a one-time thing (it was late, with a large crowd and a lot of drunk people - a scene we probably won't be in again), but i still feel pretty freakin' scared.


also, we found out today that we probably won't be getting the room we were supposed to. so for the next 7 months, we'll basically be homeless, moving around whenever the administrators want the space we are occupying. which will be really hard on me. i thought a lot about "home" and "space" this year, and it's pretty psychologically necessary to have a "place," even if it's really small or really basic, to call your own. eff. well, thank you, learning experience.

lime in the coconut

today's highlights (besides birthday cake and presents, including yellow string and a bottle of water) have mostly revolved around food, and the fact that it was all a change from the monotony of chicken and rice. we had "bake" this morning, which is what the guyanese call fry bread. we also had a chocolate cake i made right after breakfast. at heritage days, one of the girls bought me a delicious banana. i came back to bina hill and had fries and fried chicken and tea. so many flavours!!! i can hardly handle it!!! also, bina hill had some visitors from brazil today - 2 researchers and their 2 interns. the interns were very excited about the fact that they could buy peanut butter from the shop here - i guess they can't get it in brazil. funny how flavour is such a huge thing to us.

one thing i haven't mentioned yet is our juice source - we have a few lime trees growing around the yard, so we often make lime juice with limes, sugar, and water. rumor has it there are mangoes around here, but it isn't mango season yet, so i'm not sure how true those rumors are. it is orange season, though, so i buy as many oranges as i can when i see people who are selling freshly-picked ones.

in time of daffodils

with hopes of satisfying my crafting addiction, and unable to bring all my crochet gear, i brought some seed beads and thread to guyana to make beaded bracelets. yesterday and today i've been making bracelets at the heritage day grounds, just for something to do while nothing else is going on, and about 10 different women have come up to me to just sit and watch and talk beading. so cute. i've really struggled this year with issues of "identity" and finding out who i am. i think it's pretty safe to say i'm a crafter. and i like that. i love the global community of people (women especially) who are just compelled to create with their hands. i love that all those women were so friendly and smiley and wanting to share techniques and patterns. so awesome. even young girls and some boys would come watch me. i liked it a lot. i hope that i can learn some traditional crafts here, particularly basket weaving.

in response to emilonely's "p.s. tell me about your job, dangit!":
basically, i've had a hard time figuring out exactly what my job is. crystal and i are working as "assistant coordinators," under the Youth Leadership Program's coordinator rawle. rawle is a great guy, but VERY disorganized and CONSTANTLY late. right now, the YLP has 5 youth, aged 19-23, who are from various villages in the north rupununi region of guyana. these youth started the program last september, and will be in the program for another year. basically, the program was created to help aid guyanese youth in finding a voice. we do leadership training, public speaking workshops, awareness of social issues, things like that. it is actually a pretty sweet program. the youth are great, but they are very quiet (kind of darcy-esque). so... we work with these 5 youth, and then those 5 youth go out into their communities and other surrounding communities, and take what they've learned to the youth there. it's neat. but we haven't done a whole lot of work yet because of heritage days.

next week, we are helping to host a youth forum for the youth of north rupununi. it should be good, if we can just get organized. that's one of my major frustrations. rawle has good intentions, but NEVER gets things organized or done on time, and i wouldn't mind getting those things done, except that he doesn't really give us any direction. so, i either avoid stepping on toes and do nothing, or i just bulldoze my way in and take over a project. hmm. the week after the youth forum, we are hosting a youth-elder conference. after that, we are going to a cultural camp a few hours away from here with youth from the south or south central district. then we do a little bit of "training," then our youth go to their communities for a week, then we have a week off, then we get ready for the canadian youth to come (a group of canadian indigenous youth are coming for the month of november to help do training and stuff in the communities. they are part of ghost river rediscovery, too). then... back in the communities, and then christmas!

on the 12th

yesterday i was trying to rest on the bleachers at the heritage days festival, and this guy came up to me and asked for water. he kept talking to me and flirting and touching my skin and being a general annoyance, but i am too naive and polite to make men like that leave me alone, so he ended up following me around (and trying to touch me) for an hour or two. i feel so uncomfortable around males in the first place, but foreign men trying to flirt with me makes me sick to my head and my stomach. guyanese men are a little more flirtatiously reserved than the men in cuba or the dominican republic, but if i strain my ear when i walk, i can hear "tsk tsks" and "ey white garl" being quietly called. i really don't like it, and it leads me to spend even more time by myself than i already normally do.

i went for a walk by myself along a sand roadway in the savannah. without exception, every single person i passed smiled brightly at me and greeted me with a "good morning" or "good afternoon." so friendly. even walking around heritage days, i will smile a small smile at people and be met with a huge grin. cute. they kind of remind me of the people i saw in eden valley. so shy and humble, but curious and friendly.

i'm finding it hard to have conversations with people. guyana is the only english-as-a-first-language nation in south america, but their english is very carribbean, and i have a REALLY hard time understanding it. they also speak quite softly, so most people have to repeat what they say 2 or 3 times before i understand it. boo.

also, i forgot to write about my experience on the first morning i was here. in true colonial fashion, a white lady from the UK made it quite clear to me and crystal that we and other non-locals, herself excluded, of course, were not welcome in the north rupununi. she has continued to make little comments here and there and just generally make us feel like garbage. to make matters worse, she is the reason we are still "homeless" - she is staying in our "room" for the next week or so, so we have to sleep in a little shack a few buildings over. nice. anyways, she's a basketcase, and i don't let her get to me too much. i have talked to her a little bit about starting a recycling program here, which i am REALLY excited about.

anyways. going for tea.

linger

God bless the soul who fished my toothbrush out of the mud under the shower planks, rinsed it off, and left it on the shower shelf for me to find it this morning. now i have to decide whether i want to attempt to disinfect it by putting it in boiling water, or if i should just throw it out. (i did buy a new toothbrush yesterday, which makes me think i should just throw the old one out. but the old one is one of those ones where you keep the stem and just change the bristles every few weeks, and i still have 3 extra bristles that will fit. dilemma.)

i was looking through the computer here today to try to find some files, and i came across TWO letters saved on this computer that were addressed to darcy. a girl who worked for AFL this summer had volunteered here in guyana a few years ago, and the letters were cover letters and stuff. eff. i seriously can't get away from him, wherever i go. it sucks.

september wish list

last night was our first night in annai. i had a shower just before i went to sleep, and managed to drop my toothbrush in the process. awesome. so i had a little cry over that. but it was good, too, because i had to realize pretty fast that things aren't going to be easy around here, so i'd better get used to that. i feel better today (i was also feeling pretty gross yesterday because one of the girls was saying that we will inevitably get worms, and parasites, and bugs burrowing into our skin. awesome.)

anyways, here is my wish list for september, in case you'd like to mail me something useful (e-mail me if you don't have my address):
-gatorade powder (preferably "blue" - everything that is available to drink here is SUPER sugary, and we don't really have any real fruit juices. so gatorade seems like the best in terms of flavour + energy)
-blue pens (i like "BIC ultra round stic grip" ones)
-pad of lined paper
-snack foods ("special k" granola bars (in chocolate, vanilla or strawberry); maybe pretzels or licorice or something; ; granola mix (maybe with almonds and honey or something))
-vanilla bean hot chocolate mix from second cup
-pictures of your fine selves
-pictures of autumn in alberta


that's all for now - i'll probably add more later.
love cayliedawn

winter

so... i am finally at the bina hill institute in annai, guyana. i still don't officially have a place to call "home" yet, though - my partner, crystal, and i don't get to move into our shared "bedroom" until next week, because amerindian heritage celebrations are taking place here next week, and our room is being used by visitors. so currently, we are sharing a room with 2 or 3 other girls.

anyway, since i wrote last, a LOT has happened.

i attended a 10-day wilderness training for my job at a camp called wolf dreamers. the camp was near banff. there were about 16 of us, mostly girls, and it was really neat and crazy. at times, it felt like the most relaxed camp ever, because we didn't have a super intense schedule that we had to follow. but it was pretty exhausting anyway. highlights for me include...
-sleeping in a tipi with a fire every night. genius.
-playing barefoot in the forest
-playing cute games in the forest like "eagle eyes" and "deer ears"
-starting a fire with A PIECE OF FUNGUS. we learned how to make fires in a variety of ways, including scraping off a bit of fungus from a birch tree, getting the fungus to burn as a coal after lighting it with a flint-and-steel thing, placing the coal in a bundle of dry grass, and blowing steadily on the coals until the grass caught fire. i singed some of my hair in the process.
-sitting nekkid in the forest by myself. awesome and highly advisable.
-being delighted by some spongey moss on a mountain
-walking in the river
-eating all organic food and bison meat.
-setting up my tarp so that i stayed dry for my entire solo
-going on a 45-hour solo (10 a.m. tuesday to 7 a.m. thursday) and not being freaked out by the dark or the forest or the idea of being by myself for so long.
-surviving my solo and the freezing cold, the thunder and lightning, and the threat of snow that had come to the mountains above my solo spot.
-seeing snow one more time, because i am going to miss it this year.
-going to sweat at 5:30 a.m. and seeing the sun come up between rounds. best ever.
-earnestly seeking to let things go. i hold on to too much. it's no good.

some lowlights:
-ridiculous, painful, itchy skin allergies on my hands, elbows, feet, and knees that started on friday, august 25 and continued on until about two days ago.
-thinking about darcy a lot - one of the girls in the program worked for darcy this summer, which just served to make things worse. no, no good.

i came back to kelsey's for a night, and then mom and dad came to calgary. we drove to canmore to stay in my uncle's condo for the night, and then we stayed in a hotel on sunday night, and then monday at noon i flew out of calgary to new york. crystal and i had a 12-hour layover in new york, which was brutal. people were rude and unhelpful, benches were cold and hard, and we were exhausted. we flew out of new york early in the morning on tuesday, arriving in georgetown, guyana after a quick stop in trinidad.

we stayed in a rented house in georgetown for two nights. i bought two hammocks (one for bina hill, and the other for travelling) and a pink bicycle. last night we left georgetown on the bus, and took the 12-hour trip through the rainforest to arrive in annai at 9 this morning. we haven't done a whole lot today, except try to get settled. some of the boys assembled crystal's bike for her, but mine is still in the box. i did have a shower outside, which was really nice. there are a couple of flush toilets and indoor showers here, but i think i'll be using the outdoor shower most of the time. there's no hot water, but the water we do have isn't super cold, so the showers are just perfect in the sun.

i am going to go see if someone will help me with my bicycle.