once again, i've made the 400 km trip from annai to georgetown in a mere 17 hours. sweet. and all because i had to get my flights figured out with air canada, and they refused to deal with me through anything other than the phone (which we most certainly do not have at bina hill - so strange, that we have high-speed satellite internet and no telephones) (also, if yer hip with technology and gonna try to suggest skype: don't. i tried, i got disconnected every time).

we had to stop midway through the trip at a kind of truck-stop place, because our battery needed to charge for 4 hours because it didn't have enough current to power our headlights. so i watched "the lords of dogtown" or whatever on t.v. i was saddened to realize that it's not really appropriate for me to have crushes on teenage skateboarders anymore.

in g-town... i talked to my ma-jah and fa-jah. i ate some fried chicken and mashed potatoes and a strawberry smoothie. i (blasphemously?) read voltaire on the steps of st. george's cathedral. i beaded.

while i was reading, this man came up to me and started out with the whole, "oh miss, you're beautiful" etc. etc.... which you KNOW means that he wants something. he went on to show me some sores on his foot, and told me about how he's getting surgery and needs just a little bit of money to buy soap and toothpaste. i had a few hundred dollars (guyanese, which means, like, $3 CDN), but i turned him down. and the biggest emotion i felt was not compassion, but guilt. so self-centred. so ugly. i hope i can learn to change that sometime soon.

mashramani

okay...
on thursday and friday YLP helped the annai secondary school host a fundraiser/mashramani celebrations. mash is a national holiday: basically, it's the guyanese version of carnivale. i had considered spending mash in georgetown, but i'm really glad i didn't.

YLP prepared two carnival games to have alongside the games the teachers had planned. they were not the highlight of the celebration, so i'm not gonna waste time writing about them, mmkay?

there were "cultural presentations" both nights (think: summer camp talent shows). i hate them, to be honest. they are usually pretty painful to watch. mostly it was just people dancing on the stage to pépe. there was one 12-year-old girl who did a strip tease both nights. fan-friggin-tastic. it makes me really sick to think about it. i hope she smartens up soon before something bad happens.

the stage itself was really cute, with some kokerite palm spires used for decoration.

we had football and volleyball competitions, but i didn't watch them.

they held a big bonfire on thursday night, but i spent most of the time both days selling food and drinks, so i wasn't really a part of that. i didn't really want to be anyways.

we paid our cooks to prepare food for us to sell. we sold drinks both days. on thursday we sold bbq'd chicken shishkebobs, and on friday we sold fried rice and baked chicken. so good. it was amazing to have cold drinks and tons of food readily available. that's just not something that happens regularly at bina hill. mostly the best thing ever was just sitting in the sun (or later, in the warm dark), eating chicken and fried rice and listening to sean paul. i am really really ridiculously into sean paul now.

so... i'm not into martial arts, and i never have been, and i never will be. but... the schoolboys around here have been so cute lately. they are so into it (it = the kung fu hao taught them while he was here), and they practice diligently. one of the boys even did a performance of it for mashramani yesterday (which i will write more about later). it's just amazing to walk around and see them in groups of 6 or 7, spinning their sticks and taking pride in themselves. i really hate the school here because it is so residential-school-esque, and the kids don't really have any adult figures that pay a whole lot of attention to them. but i think they really felt, i don't know, cared for in that class. because really, how many teenage boys are up at the crack of dawn to do exercises? besides NHL hopefuls? awesomeness. i hope ghost river gets a male to work here as an intern next year. grown-up boys just bring a different energy to things. i just can't relate with teenage boys. and they can't relate with how awesome crocheting and crafting are. jerks.

up until about a month ago, i didn't really realize just how poor people living in the rupununi are. i was trying to figure out if i could fundraise some money to fund a salary for one person to take over coordinating my after-school program after i leave. i asked rawle what the average salary for people working in the rupununi was. he said that very few people actually have steady jobs, and for those who do have jobs, the yearly salary is about $2000 CDN. holé. i'm not really sensitive to issues like poverty, but i think that's because if i let myself be vulnerable to them, i'd totally just cry all the time and be depressed and hopeless. as it is, i'm only like that some of the time.

a lot of the trees have wood ants (i think that's what they are) who make these little tunnels on the underside of tree branches and buildings. i like it so much. it makes it look like everything has seams on it. i like seams. maybe because i sew a lot. maybe because i like to think about cutting things open and laying them flat and 2-dimensional and seeing what shapes they take (and then re-using those shapes in crafts). maybe because it's a "velveteen rabbit"/pinnochio-esque reminder that things need to be loved to be real - trees and buildings included.

post script: i really like the name "wood ants." at elk island park, they have "wood bison" on the south side of the highway, and "plains bison" on the north side (which seems strange to me, because i associate the woodland cree with the north and the plains cree with the south). i wish i had a word like that to put in front of my name, to describe who i am and where i'm from and what influences me. "highway 16 caylie." nope. "plain caylie"? crystal sometimes calls me "prairiedawn." maybe...

this is something that has been bothering me for a long time: i don't know how to say this correctly:

"a friend of a friend's"? "a friend of a friend"? is the "apostrophe 's'" redundant because of the "of"?

similarly:
"the attention span of the children's"? "the attention span of the children"?

panic attack. somebody let me know.

i have a mazillion things to write about, and i am in the middle of writing a massive report for ghost river. so i'll be on the computer all day, and writing on this intermittently as time and energy allow. i'll put each entry under a separate post, because i know how daunting big posts can be. sound good?

for starters...
there's this boy at the secondary school who everyone calls "grandpa." he's about 15. i don't even know his real name. but they call him grandpa because he acts and dresses like an old man. i wished i had a cute nickname like that, and then i realized my sisters call me "grandma caylie" all the time, on account of my tea-drinking, crocheting, early-bedtime ways.

buds know better than books don't grow

ylp went to lethem yesterday. i love going to lethem. really, i like going anywhere, especially when i don't have to talk to anyone. there were 10 of us who went in the bina hill truck, but most of us were in the back/on top of the cab, and the wind was so loud that conversation was pretty much useless. debbie and i sat on top of the cab (sorry mom and dad) both ways, which was wicked awesome. i just like thinking and moving. i thought a lot about kelseydawn. man, i love that girl. we are thinking about driving to washington this summer for something to do. i am so excited. i like that we can drive for miles and miles and not talk, and that she lets me listen to all sufjan when she would rather listen to a broader range of musicians. i hope i hang out with her lots when i get back.

back to lethem. we had to buy some groceries for the mashramani event we are putting on on friday. the entire trip lasted 12 hours. 12 hours for groceries. if this had happened during my first three months in guyana, i probably would have raged out and set something on fire. but i am considerably more patient now, or something. i just had fun. i bought some cake mix and orange tang mix and some supplies for stencilling, which i am going to teach my youth to do next week. i had to substitute real stencil brushes with toothbrushes. i hope they work.

at one of the stores we were at, a group of 4 white boys got out of a truck and walked by, and we kind of watched each other, because, hey, we're white, and nobody else is. then they left or something and crystal and larisa and i were talking, and one of them came back out of nowhere and gave me a business card. then he reached for my hand and i tried to shake his, but he tried to kiss mine. yikes. i am so awkward. then he walked away. the business card had some portuguese writing and an e-mail address on it. so funny. i was so flustered by it.

one of the dogs here is looking totally gross this morning. i thought that maybe he had rabies (he's all drool-ey, and his jaw looks like it's broken or something), but some of the boys say he ate a big frog yesterday and that's why he's sick. dumb dog. i feel really bad for him, though. he just looks totally miserable.

a few of us watched the longest yard last night. strangely, i am hopelessly attracted to nelly in it.

the other morning, i was eating some bake with cinnamon and sugar, and i was thinking about my grandparents, because my grandma used to always make donuts and serve them with cinnamon and sugar. i thought about easter at my grandparents', and the rice krispy bunnies we used to have every year with the little construction paper ears and feet added on, and the walks we'd all take down to the pond after eating. and i think i realized something.

maybe the reason i feel so deeply about the prairies is that every year for the first, what, 17 year of my life, we spent the most "special" days (ie. christmas and easter) heading out to the farm. the "holiness" i experienced each year on those days had more to do with the land, the rural drive, and my family than it ever had to do with church or Jesus.

(some know; some don't: i don't really self-identify as "christian" anymore. i still am deeply, desperately, and eternally in love with my creator, who i know best as "God." i still really dig Jesus, and believe he lived 2000 years ago, and was a social revolutionary, teacher, prophet, healer, etc. i don't know if he was divine, or if he knew he was divine. i think the bible is true; i think all the other cultural stories and in the world are true too, just maybe in different ways.)

anyway. a million more things are running through my head regarding both these issues (connection between land and "sacred" holidays; my state of post-christianity), but i don't feel like writing anything else right now. i just wanted to get it down somewhere.

yesterday our new friend hao taught our youth this wicked awesome class on neurology. it was amazing. it was just a one-hour class, where he taught them (us) the parts of the brain and what each part does. he also taught them how to actually teach back the class. so today our youth taught it back to the group of boys who have been coming to hao's kung-fu classes. awesome. it was so interesting and neat.

one of the books i got from hao is "the yellow wallpaper" (by charlotte perkins gilman). strange, because i was just thinking about it last week. it's not really a book i think about a whole lot. nice to re-read, though. but the book has an illustration of some yellow wallpaper on the cover. i don't think they should have done that. it kind of ruins the story.

i finished reading "the hours" a while ago. now i miss kaylin. for some reason i've always associated her with virginia woolf. so now that i'm done my book, i miss virginia woolf, and, by extension, kaylin.

on monday we played macushi bingo with the schoolkids for our after school program. i think it went well. some of them speak macushi fluently, but a lot don't. hopefully we can teach them some words in a fun way.

on tuesday we played handball with the schoolkids. we rotate every week, playing handball, kickball, and soccer. a lot of kids come out. it's wicked.

50 more sleeps until i come home. i've been accused of always looking ahead and not living in the moment. it's true, though. i am so excited about coming home. i am excited about eating food that i like and playing sports that i like and travelling to neat places in alberta and b.c. and maybe washington. i am excited to see people i love lots and to make lots of crafts. i am excited about maybe finding a new place to live and about starting school. i hope i find a good summer job and a good school-year job. i want to volunteer at the royal alberta museum, and maybe some more places.

i am excited about the rest of my time here too, though. we held our valentine's day dinner at rockview lodge, and the guy in charge there was so impressed with us that he asked us to hold another event like that sometime in the near future. lovely! i enjoy doing things like that so much. i don't need to socialize with anyone at all at them; i just like running around and making sure things that need to get done get done. i think we're going to run a few soccer camps. we might go fishing this weekend. we will be doing first aid/CPR training in march. i might go to a cricket world cup game just before i leave in april (the west indies are hosting it then. i don't even really know how cricket is played, but it's pretty huge here, and it's world cup). pépe might be playing a concert in boa vista next weekend! we might go! so i guess he's not the pépe moreno that died. whew.

i realize now that i may have hyped up my red dress too much. i like it, but it's definitely nothing spectacular. anyway, here it is:



in case you were concerned, crazy charles didn't show up last night. whew. and i had a really good time. i seriously love putting on events. do they have university programs for that?

one of my favorite things about the rupununi is when people try to fit lots of things into little spaces. yesterday, we fit 15 tables, 32 chairs (none of these were the folding kind), and 7 people in/on a pickup truck to take over to rockview lodge. before christmas, we took 90 people in three pickup trucks to go swimming about 10 miles away. fun times.

today is our valentine's day dinner. i am grumpy because rawle said we aren't supposed to wear red because crazy charles is back in town and he'll rage out on anyone wearing red if he happens to come by. apparently he will "destroy" any red he sees. but what about my dress!? i'm just going to wear it anyway. i will take an extra shirt, just in case.

my grumpiness got a little better because this guevarian boy (man) crystal and i met last week in georgetown is visiting here for a week before he goes home to australia, and he gave me a stack of books (tied up with a shoelace) for v-day. so nice. i'm a little disappointed he didn't write in the books; i really really like it when people write in books before they give them as gifts. or if they write their own marginalia in their own copies, and then give away those copies. special.

so. i hope it doesn't rain tonight. i hope no one rages out on my dress. i hope my legs don't hurt so much that i have to stop dancing (hao, the boy mentioned above, is leading some kung fu classes for ylp and the schoolkids while he's here, and my legs hurt like mad because of last night's class).

come on now.

to those responsible for the list of 2007's grammy nominees:

how did james blunt rack up so many nominations? y'all are saps. saps.

sincerely,
cayliedawn

over christmas, the computer at my apartment (in edgemonton) got super fried somehow, and now it's total garbage. which means all 4000 of the untransferable songs on my ipod are lost (some were from my cds. a lot were from friends' cds, some of whom i am no longer friends with.). they're still on my ipod, but i can't transfer them off there onto another computer, and i can't add any more to the ipod without deleting those ones. so, if yer keen on it, i would wholeheartedly welcome any music cds/dvds you might be able to burn for me. preferably few disks with lots of songs on them, in whatever format works best. i hope i don't get taken to jail for saying that. quite honestly, all i really really need are pre-avalanche sufjan stevens albums. i could live with just that. sorry for being such an musically uncultured embarrassment.

in georgetown

so, as i said earlier, we were in georgetown last weekend. it's a pretty sketchy place. there's a lot of poverty, a lot of racial tension (mostly between the africans and the east indians), and a lot of violence and crime. when i was there over christmas, staying in a hotel waiting for my flights to/from canada, i only left my hotel once in 4 days. this time was different. it was really nice. crystal was there, so we went for some walks and got comfortable with the downtown area. i even walked around a bit by myself!
highlights:
-church's chicken. apparently, there are church's chicken restaurants in canada, but i ain't neva' been to one. there was one just three blocks from where we stayed. i ate there twice a day, every day. the first time i went, i asked for a plain chicken burger. they gave me one with everything on it. i took it back. they gave me one with cheese. i took it back. they gave me another one with everything on it. i took it back. finally, they gave me a plain one. whew. i'm such a north american brat. they're amazing, though. i kind of wish there was one that i could go to in edmonton, but i also kind of like that church's chicken will always = guyana for me. like how in & out burger can never exist outside of vegas/california for me. also, they had mashed potatoes. you just can't argue with that kind of menu at a fast food place.
-fried chicken in general. i complain about the monotony of the food, but at the end of the day, i've gotta admit: i love fried chicken. apparently, caribbeaners (caribs? caribbeanites?) have a love affair with fried chicken. i read an article about it in a trinidadian magazine a few months ago. all truth. jenni-girl, i wish you would confirm or disprove this myth. yo' momma: she like fried chicken? hmm?
-watching the super bowl. what!? i know, that's a weird one. i really don't like football all that much. but, i don't know. maybe it was the cultural familiarity. maybe it's that major sporting events are interesting social phenomena. maybe it was the english guy (who was like a cross between chris sims and the boss guy on the british "the office") who just talked incessantly through the whole game about prince and "purple rain." maybe because it made me think of how much i love the grey cup parties my family goes to every year with all those ukrainian farm families around innisfree. odd that i equate football with ukrainian farmers.
-talking to my ma-jah and fa-jah on the phone. we don't have a phone at bina hill. only high-speed, satellite internet. so strange. anyways, it was nice to talk to them and even nicer that they accepted the collect charges.

affirming lotion

i realized why i love school so much. i am in constant need of validation and affirmation.

there's a simpsons episode where the teachers are on strike and lisa begs her mom, "grade me!" marge hurridly scribbles an A. that's my life. is it because my mom is a teacher? i don't know.

so red the recon of caylie

we (YLP) might be hosting a valentine's day dinner next week, where we would have to be servers and stuff like that and therefore dress in red or white. i have no red or white clothes here, so when i was in g-town on the weekend, i bought a 4XL "air jordan" t-shirt (i know, lame, but it was the nicest shade of red i could find) to recon into a cute dress. i cut it up and sewed it yesterday - by hand! - and i'm really excited about it. but... apparently, there's this guy around here named charles who goes crazy every february (yeah, i don't know...), and apparently he gets really mad if people wear red. i hope he's not around next week so i can wear my shirt-dress. i will try to post a picture soon. try to ignore the lameness of the air jorden-ness. that's the charm of reconned clothes, i guess. turning lameness into cuteness.

friday, february 2

last friday, the NRDDB (north rupununi district development board) bus had to take a trip to georgetown to get some paperwork or mechanic work or something done, so crystal and i caught a ride.


the trip through the rainforest to the coast normally takes about 12 hours. we did it in 17. it wasn't too bad, though, because there were only 8 of us on the 48-seater bus. and we had pépe and 80's non-top-40 pop to listen to all the way. shortly after the river crossing at kurupukari, we tried to drive through a massive, foot-and-a-half deep puddle. the engine flooded. some of the guys tinkered around with the engine, and then we pushed the bus most of the way out of the puddle, and then there were three and a half more hours of tinkering before the engine started up again. we drove for about half an hour, and then came across two more giant, muddy puddles. we had to wait for a big truck to come by to tow us through both of them. it was all really neat though, because that night there was a full moon. how many people can say they've been in the middle of the rainforest in the middle of the night under a full moon?

no segway...

the forest has these funny pods that hang from some of the trees. they make the whole forest seem like it is decorated for a high school graduation or something. i like it.

ugh, i have some pictures of the bus being stuck and of the moon-pods, but i can't upload them right now. i will try to post them later. alternatively, you can check out my pictures on facebook. i know, it's a pain in the ass because you have to register for it (go to www.facebook.com to register), but it lets me put on more pictures than flickr did. mmmkay?

wednesday, january 31

last wednesday, crystal and i went to lethem to go to the bank and buy chocolate and fruit and escape bina hill for a bit. i was in one of the grocery stores when a boy's (boy = approximately 25 years old. not young boy, but not really man-ish either) voice behind me says, "hey, haven't seen you for a while." i thought there was only one boy in lethem who would recognize me, but when i turned around, it wasn't him. i recognized the boy, but i couldn't remember from where. so i asked, "how... do i know you?" and right as i asked it i remembered i had a crush on him the first week i was in guyana, at amerindian heritage days in annai. we had never ever spoken before and i don't even know his name. he must have just noticed me checking him out then. yikes. i got really sweaty and nervous and pretended to be VERY interested in the shelves of powdered milk in front of me, and after i had fumbled through some small talk, i think he recognized how awkwarded out i was and he went away. yeesh. i need to learn to be more discreet in my crushing. but it made me excited for more all the awkwardness i hope to encounter when i come back to edmonton.