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!