monster

i killed a centipede today. i think one of the girls in my room had tried to squish it earlier, but they didn't kill it completely. the centipedes here are big, scaly creatures, about 10-12 cm long, and apparently they can give a painful bite. they move really quickly and they are just generally creepy. anyway, this centipede was squished on one end, and kind of squiggling around his other end. i didn't want him in our room any more, so i picked him up on a piece of cardboard and threw him outside. then i thought really hard about if i wanted to kill it. i hate, hate, hate killing animals, even yucky ones, but i didn't like the idea of him being all dead and squished on one end. i don't know if centipedes feel pain, but i decided the best thing to do would be a mercy killing. the tough thing is that i wasn't very confident that it was the right thing to do. anyway, i found a little board and i put it on top of him and i stomped down. afterwards i felt kind of shaky. a little extreme, huh? PETA's got nothin' on me.

i think i'm going to lethem tomorrow, and i'm probably going to georgetown for a few days after that. so don't expect any posts until around monday, mmkay? feel free to post comments, though!

prairie fire that wanders about

i've written of fires before; i'll write of them again.

today there were four savannah fires burning within a 1/2 mile radius of bina hill. you know the fires are around because of the smell: you can smell the sweet smoke of burning foliage before you can see the flames. then the ash gets carried in on the wind. finally, wondering if the fire will engulf your surroundings, you get up and take a look around for the flames.

i watched some birds fly around the fire, presumably abandoning their homes. i liked watching that. i mean, i didn't like the fact that they were suffering or losing their homes, but i liked feeling the energy behind the panic. one of the most amazing experiences i've ever had was a few years ago, at the canadian finals rodeo, when one of the bullriders was knocked unconscious. his hand was still strapped to the bull, and his almost-lifeless body was flung around mercilessly for about 10 seconds. the energy in the coliseum (/skyreach/rexall place) was incredible. thousands of people were just completely panicked and terrified. women were screaming and crying. everyone was totally shocked. every second it was happening, i was praying for him (he ended up being in a coma for a few weeks, and then recovered), but also trying to stay acutely aware of the intense energy in the building. so. i digress. but the point is that i like feeling intense energies sometimes, and the fire brought out a panicked energy in the animals who were fleeing it. kay?

i like fires a lot. there's this sufjan stevens song called "prairie fire that wanders about." i don't really like the song, but i like the title; i identify with it. i sometimes feel like i have the same energy as fires: really intense energy that becomes passion if it's channelled well, and depression/anger if it's not. i also sometimes feel like i have this overwhelming destructive energy. i've always thought of it as a negative thing. but then, this summer, while i was at ghost river's training camp, our coordinator julian asked me if i knew what my name means. i said, yeah, it's a scottish dance. he said, yeah, but there's a more ancient form of the name. kali (long "a," long "i") is apparently a hindu goddess of transformation, destruction, and rebirth. i liked hearing that. i know that the whole thing about Jesus includes transformation, destruction, and rebirth, but i feel like i've been taught to mostly focus on the rebirth part. i like valuing destruction's place. i like how fires seem so destructive, how they transform an entire landscape, but also how they create new life. always on my way up north to sucker creek/grouard, i loved driving past the big forests near slave lake that had been ravaged by fires. their small new trees and little marshes seemed so much healthier than the ones that hadn't been touched by fires relatively recently.

i also like sufjan's title for the "wandering" part (and, of course, the "prairie" part). i feel like a wanderer. i stole a line from the hymn "come, thou fount of every blessing" - "prone to wander" - and sewed it on a t-shirt for myself a few years ago. i like wandering. physical wandering, mental wandering, and to a lesser extent, spiritual wandering. i've always had a hard time making goals for myself. i like making plans, but i don't like making goals. and i don't mind when my plans fall through or change. wandering feels like a solitary exercise. i like solitary exercises. and although i like wandering, i like coming home more.

buying the flowers myself

i pushed myself to get through "mrs. dalloway" this week, because i wanted to move onto "the hours" (my seesar alyssa bought me both for christmas). what i said earlier about female writers, let me rephrase: i do like female writers, some of them. i think virginia woolf was pretty neat-o. i like the story of her life. i like the things she did to transform literature. and she says some pretty neat things in some pretty neat ways. i just don't really like reading the novels that women write. i don't know why. maybe my intense hatred towards margaret atwood just affects how i see all fiction by women.

chris sims wrote me an e-mail last week, saying he stayed up into the wee hours of the night, reading my entire blog in chronological order. he said he liked that i wrote about all the details; that i talked about the mundane as well as the big, exciting things. so thanks, virginia, for paving the way so i could talk about punctuation and fried chicken and other such trivialities on my online journal.

i need to pace myself with "the hours." after this, the only books i have left are 2 anthropology textbooks and a couple of sudoku books.


i've really been missing hawrelak park lately for some reason. but i've been missing it more in summertime mode: feeding the ducks, trying to convince the geese to get up so we can see their eggs, playing soccer and kickball, going for walks in the trees, sneaking off from our friends so kaylin could smoke.... fun times. somebody go enjoy the park for me, please, even if it is still in winter mode. i think we should have a kickball party there in april as soon as the snow melts.

culture shock

when i was home over christmas, the only real "reverse culture shock" i experienced was when i went to get some sugar from the sugarbowl to add to my tea, and was genuinely surprised that a sea of ants was NOT inhabiting said sugar. but now i'm back in guyana, and ants are everywhere. yesterday, an army of them bore a hole through a ziplock bag, invading and effectively claiming my granola. i had to sift my granola, throwing the small bits and the ants out. then i tied up by ziplock bag of granola and hung it, bear-bag style, from an extra hammock string suspended from a clothesline. yeesh. then, today, the ants annexed one of my quaker instant oats packages. they seem really hard to get into (if you're an ant)! they're kind of paper-y. for some reason i thought papery packaging could stand up to ants. i guess i should have known better - they burrow into WOOD, hello. nothing is safe from them! i had really put my faith into north american product packaging, thinking that ziploc bags could stand up to some little ants. nope.

yesterday i ripped off a hemp bracelet that i've had on my right wrist for about a year and a half. i made it for myself when i started working for darcy. i'm glad it is gone, because of what it symbolized to me, but now my arm feels all nekkid without it. so now i am on the lookout for some new long-term apparel to clothe my wrist/define this time in my life. in other wrist apparel news, for those who are interested, the thin piece of black leather i've had wrapped around my left wrist since cornerstone 2003 is still keepin' on, and serving as a gauge of my real whiteness vs. rupununi savannah tan.

why do i speak!?

this morning, rawle and some of the boys were working on the volleyball court before breakfast. i came over and asked if i could help. rawle said, "well, we could use the hose" (he meant "hoes," i heard "hose"). i said, "oh, the blue one in our building?" he said, "no, the other kind of hoes." so, to clarify the spelling of "hoes," i said, "oh, like 'bitches and hoes'?" it was the first thing that came to my mind for the correct spelling of the garden-type of hoe (somehow the words "garden-type of hoe" escaped me at the moment) (and in the heat of the moment, i mis-pluralized "ho" anyway). how do i manage to keep jobs? no one rivals my foot-in-mouth-on-the-job syndrome, except maybe kelseydawn. and sometimes becky mcclelland. it's nice to have company in that respect, though.


for most of this morning, the bina hill staff has been cleaning up around the new benab ("gathering place" - kind of like a teepee; conical, with a thatched roof). there were about 30 of us moving boards and cleaning up garbage. a bunch of us girls were moving shingles from a huge pile into neat rows, and i guess a lot of frogs had liked to live under the shingles where it was cool. first we saw a a frog about the size of my palm, which was pretty exciting because it was the biggest live wild frog i've ever seen. but over the next hour, we came across about 7 other frogs (one as big as my whole hand!) and some lizards and roaches and centipedes, all who slithered/hopped very speedily around in any direction and elicited screams from most of us girls. usually i am not really creeped out by animals: i can totally handle the roaches or the spiders in our room, but all those frogs hopping around so quickly and unexpectedly was a little... i don't know. not scary. not creepy. but it made me jump. two big frogs even crawled across my feet.

smarty

msn'ing with my mom, regarding religion/faith/life:

"the right stuff is what is right and true across almost all time and cultures, and that is usually about caring for each other and the earth" - my mom. so smart.

500 pounds and a room of one's own

what do joel kelly, jesus, and virginia woolf have in common? probably a lot of things, but one is for sure: their words have been on my mind lately.

i recently received a letter from joel, saying, "i can see how one might want to take an adventure, not so much to explore a specific place but to allow time to have a life, experience personal growth, have bad haircuts and eat spicy food etc etc etc." that's exactly what my time in guyana is all about. i was hired as an intern to work in youth leadership, but i am finding that my professional life is taking a backseat to my personal experience. and the personal exterior experience is taking a backseat to the personal interior experience.

i'm having this fantastic chance to step outside my life for a brief window of time, and take a look at it from the sidelines. "losing my life to gain it," to paraphrase j.c. my life is still kind of existing in edmonton: my apartment is there, and will be there when i get back; my family and friends continue being and growing; my u of a applications and registrations wait patiently in registrars' inboxes. my tubes of paint have not dried up; the pages in my books have not become aged and brittle; my clothes (hopefully) still fit and are still (somewhat) in style. i will go back to a life that is, for the most part, familiar. but i will have had some much-needed time to think about who i am and what i want.

v.w. posited that, given a dependable source of income and a personal physical space in which to work, aspiring female writers could create fiction on par with shakespeare. guyana has given me my equivalent of "500 pounds and a room of [my] own." i have a steady income; i don't have to worry about finding work or getting specific tasks done (thanks to a non-existent job description). i don't have a lot of personal space, but the rupununi savannahs lend more than enough physical space to serve all my intents and purposes.

this short-term international journey has become the vision quest of the middle-class white westerner*. of course, the last couple centuries have been marked by adventurous young travellers, finding their way around the world. but it seems that, thanks to government grants and the physical/financial ease of travel today, more young people than ever are taking these short adventures as rites of passage after high school or university. i've kind of felt pressured, ever since high school, to do something like this (ie. an internship, a DTS with YWAM, etc.). i don't know if i have a point to this post. i've just been reading about rites of passage in my anthro text, and this seems to be one of contemporary north america's broadly-defined culture.

in conclusion: if 500 pounds and a room of your own presents itself to you, in whatever form, be sure to take it and see what is has to teach you about yourself. even if you're not a recent graduate.



*when i say middle-class white westerner, i don't mean only people from that demographic. i know non-white, non-middle-class, non-westerners travel. mmkay? but most of the people in my circle who have done trips like this are middle-class white westerners, so i only feel comfortable talking about us/them.

shake it like a polaroid picture

yesterday i got an e-mail from a friend, telling me about a summer job that would be right up my alley. i wrote him back, saying i appreciated the forward and the job seemed amazing, but i had already worked for the organization, dated the boss, and been told my work had been unsatisfactory. life is funny.

we went fishing today. my face is sunburned. i didn't catch any fish; i feel really yucky about catching and killing animals (i'm not a vegan, but i DO catch-and-release mosquitos i find in my mosquito net). i didn't eat any fish; i ate some trail mix and granola bars and gatorade. i liked to see how people catch fish, though, because i have never been fishing in canada. today, the boys set out big nets and then shook the bushes nearby so the fish would swim into the nets. they also shot some of the fish with a bow and arrow! the most exciting thing, though, was seeing another caimen right up close! it was less than 10 metres away from us! don't worry, mom and dad. we were in a motorboat. we slowed down to see the caimen as we passed it, but as we got closer, he sunk down under the water. then we sped away. i like seeing caimen. it is like the equivalent of seeing a bear when i am in alberta. neat and kind of scary.

green paper packages tied up with tape

dear joel and dr. e.,

thanks for the fantastic care packages! they (finally) arrived, and it seems like such a perfect time! it's nice to have a little surprise after christmas, and also nice to have some time to enjoy the contents (i'm rationing the granola bars to one every two days). crazy that they took over 3 months to get to me.


dear everyone,

go watch my seesar emily ukrainian dance at the jube on the 20th! you've never seen such perogy-fueled fury, i swear.



we played handball and soccer with the annai secondary school kids last night. it was sweet. i miss soccer. i think i will play again next year (if i can fit it in between rowing, dance lessons, school, crafts, art/french/editing/writing classes, a part-time job...). it is nice to play barefoot. i don't like playing barefoot in canada because all i can think about is this one time we were playing at camp and joel ellard was playing barefoot and he ran through a patch of prickly weeds and a bunch of prickles all got stuck between his toes. there are no prickly weeds on our pitch here. just hard, hard dirt.

we are building a volleyball court outside here. hopefully it will be done by the end of the week. they have to dig six inches into the aforementioned hard, hard dirt using two shovels and a small rototiller. good luck, boys. it should be fun to use once it's done, though.

we helped our youth revise their "social issues" presentations. one was on nature/culture, and another was on gender. i felt really good because i was able to help out with the content on those presentations (special props to dr. long's sociology courses). i'm not so helpful with the other presentations, like "effective communication" (i'm passive and antisocial) or "trafficking in persons."

also, i've been reading alyssa's first-year anthropology textbook (so i can skip the introductory courses next year at the u of a) and i'm totally loving it. i feel like i will really love anthropology. i can't wait for school.

dear dad,

it's us!

brought to you in part by ALT-1-3-0

first things first:
rumors have been circulating that pépe moréno was stabbed and killed a few weeks ago. now, there are about a million pépe morénos (morénoes?) in south america, so no one here is really sure if it was everybody's-celebrity-crush-pépe or someone else. i hope it was not our pépe.

my sister bought me Mrs. Dalloway for christmas, and i've been reading it over the past couple of days. i've never really liked female writers, and v.w. is no exception. at least in this book. i do, however, admire her use of punctuation, especially semicolons. if the bad news about pépe is true, then virginia and her semicolons take pépe's place on my celebrity crush list.

this summer, i began to realize that my lifelong attraction to socially awkward situations is most likely due to the fact that i am mildly addicted to adrenaline, and too safe/scared to do anything physical that, for most people, would induce adrenaline rushes. being socially awkward in guyana is difficult, because everyone either things i am just being flat out rude, or that it is just a "cultural difference." maybe that's why i loved places like high school and nakamun and university: so many places and situations to be awkward.

write-offs

i am back in guyana. here's an update on my last 2 weeks in canada:

1. i had a ridiculously good time with some ridiculously good people. highlights, in no particular order, are as follows:
-painting with kelseydawn
-making a million crafts by myself
-driving to edmonton and back by myself and kickin' it, in stereo, with sufjan stevens
-making masks, going shopping, hanging out, and partying down with kaylin
-lunch with dr. e and kelseydawn
-low-key visits with courtney, jen, joel, and kev
-sleigh ride with king's/vermilion friends and family
-hanging out with joel's family even though he wasn't there
-eating blueberry crumble/anything my mom made
-hanging out with my crazy grandparents
-hanging out with our new dog
-hanging out with my family

2. i was doing really, really well until the last friday i was in alberta, when i went to see darcy for ten minutes to tell him i'm really not crazy and that he should hire me this summer because i am fairly certain i will not freak out at him or blackmail him or do anything crazy. and he basically told me he wouldn't hire me, but only because i did a shit job when i worked for him last time and not because of any "personal issues" i think there might be between us. but i don't get it, because they gave me really good references. so, awesome. so i feel like garbage about the work i'm doing in guyana, because it's pretty much exactly the same thing i did when i worked for him before. i am so, so mad.

3. after seeing darcy and consequently feeling like total garbage, i wanted to talk or hang out with ANYONE. but all my girl friends in edmonton were not picking up their phones. but there was a message on my phone from dustan, who i have refused to speak to for the last two years. and he was in edmonton and wanted to hang out. crazy. under any other circumstances, i would have ignored the message, but i felt like total crap and wanted to talk to someone, so i called him. he came over and we drove around for an hour and just talked, and it was really low-key and nice. it was just neat how one relationship that i had counted as a total write-off was rebuilt, almost exactly as another relationship became a total write-off.