gesa, our "program officer" (a.k.a. the girl who hired me for this position) from calgary has been visiting us for the last couple of days. it has been really nice. nice to talk with someone without having to sift through a strange accent to decipher words, and nice just being able to talk with a white girl from alberta.
after gesa arrived on friday, we all (YLP youth, crystal, rawle, gesa and i) went to annai for sports days. i never really like sitting around, and it was very hot, so i went home after about an hour. the kids were pretty cute, though. they all had white undershirts on and colored matching shorts and hairties. each school had to draw and color their own banner, and they were all very well done. EVERYONE shows up to sports days. old ladies, horses, babies, donkeys. this was the regional meet. the craziest event was high jump, because they don't have any crash mats. kids just flew over the bar and crashed into the sand. awesome. we ate supper at oasis that night. i'm pretty sure i am averaging 10 meals of fried chicken per week. ah, well. better than eating fish.
on saturday we had meetings with gesa in the morning. then we drove to annai and aranaputa and kwatamang landing. the best part about saturday was barbecue, though. i think i've written about it before. anyways, it's this family from aranaputa who sells fried rice and barbecued chicken and cold drinks on the side of the road from 5-7 p.m. every saturday. they have a generator that powers one light, and they have benches and chairs set up. it is the cutest thing ever, and it is really amazing food. i look forward to it every week.
on sunday we stuffed 20 people into the cab and box of an extended-cab truck and drove to surama and the iwokrama canopy walkway. we visited the animal sanctuary in surama again and played with the monkeys there again. gesa and rawle held the anaconda. i saw a red-footed tortoise (like the ones we were going to get, kelsa!) there too. then we went to the benab at the top of the hill and had an AMAZING picnic of fried chicken, fries, mashed potatoes, and lime juice. our youth had prepared it all just before we left. delish. oh! and, while we were eating, we watched my celebrity crush pepe moreno on dvd. EVERYONE was mesmerized. apparently the kids just watch that dvd on repeat all day long, every day. ha. what a dreamboat, that pepe. it's so funny to me. my brain can't handle how ridiculous he is, or how incredibly in love with him everyone is. after pepe, we went to the canopy walkway. to be honest, it was kind of a letdown. we only saw a few green parakeets, and nothing else. but it was wonderful to walk through the forest. i love it. when we were walking down the mountain, i fell behind the group to take some pictures of the trees, and i was far enough behind that i couldn't see anyone ahead or behind me. it was wonderful. i love the forest. i like to walk barefoot in the boreal forest, but i was kind of afraid to here because i might have stepped on a snake or scorpion or something. the trees had neat clingy vines all over them.
oh! i forgot. driving to surama was especially nice, because there were MILLIONS of yellow butterflies fluttering around. it was like driving through a galaxy of stars. pretty.
driving back from iwokrama, i was tired and cranky and hungry and squished. gesa and crystal and i aren't allowed to sit in the box of the truck (thankfully) because of ghost river's safety policies, so the three of us were squished in the back of the cab with another girl and her baby. we stopped in surama to drop a few things off, and the girl with the baby asked me to hold the baby while she stretched or something like that. so, i am the only person on this entire trip who doesn't like babies, and who doesn't coo over them and talk in silly voices and make faces at them and want to touch them always. but i am sitting in the back of the truck with this tiny baby, the first baby i've held in years, and she pees on me. awesome.
today we practiced our activities for our after-school program during the morning, and then at 4:00 we had our first session for the program. it was great! apparently, all week the kids had been asking their teachers when we were going to come back, and were also asking if they had to dress up again like last time. the teachers explained that, no, dressing up was just a special thing for halloween. haha. so anyways, today we played a few wide games and then split up into 4 groups, and those of us in YLP led an activity either in pairs or individually. the kids each attended 2 activities today. afterwards, as the schoolchildren ran for supper, i was walking back with my youth and i asked them how it went. kevin bounded over to me, grinning wildly, and exclaimed, "perfect! awesome beyond awesome!" cute!!! it's so neat to have our kids be so excited and empowered by this project. i hope we can continue and expand it.
tonight might be our last night with gesa, so we had a special supper. rawle even had some brown bread made for us! what a treat!
he temperature here is a few degrees cooler than it had been in september/october, which is such a relief. i have even had to pull my second blanket over me for the last couple of nights! so nice!
one of the nicest things here are rupununi full moons. i usually wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, but i don't mind doing it when the moon is full. i like to stop on the way to the outhouse and just stand alone at midnight with myself and the moon and my shadow. the mountains are silhouettes. my shadow hugs my feet. everything is illuminated.
anyways, i am super tired, and i need to sleep.
love cdg
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13 years ago
2 comments:
oh, your adventure sounds particularly awesome beyond awesome right now, especially the food.
here is a billy collins poem in appreciation (did i mention that i got his older books? also that they're awesome? well i hope i did).
The Return of the Key
It was a drowsy summer afternoon,
hotwind stirring up the papers in the room,
smoke slanting up from my cigarette
as from a tiny factory that only produced smoke.
I was reading William Carlos Williams,
growing weary of the note on the kitchen table
and the broken glass on the roadside,
so I reached into one of his small poems
and lifted out a tiny key
lying on a glass tray next to a glass tumbler
in a room of an inn where someone stood
in the doorway holding a suitcase.
I knew all things come in threes,
so I was not discouraged when the key
did not open the golden lock
on my daughter's diary,
or the empty strongbox under the bed,
and I knew I was getting warm
when I entered the orangerie
and stood before the birdcage on its metal stand.
Small wonder that the bird
fluttered into the air
and circled the chandelier
as soon as the little door swung open.
Smaller wonder
that it banked sharply
against a background of windows,
then dove and disappeard
into the anthology of American poetry
that lay open on the table-
the key clenched in its beak,
the pages lifting like many wings in the breeze.
lovely! thanks for sharing, joel! i will have to buy some of those older books.
also, i misquoted kevin. he said "excellent beyond excellent," not "awesome beyond awesome." oops.
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