Site visit

Hello again!
Training is getting close to wrapping up! We only have less than a month before we are sworn in and start our service!

We have been back at NAKS for a little over a week now. Prior to coming back to NAKS we did a portion of training that involved visiting a current PCV at their site and then visiting our future sites for a few days. The purpose behind visiting a current PCV is so that we can see how they live in their villages. We were able to see how they set up their houses and witness their daily routine. I was super nervous before I arrived to the PCV’s site that I was visiting. It was just weird that I was actually finally in the area of my future site! After a 5 hour wagi (a van) ride down a partially paved road and then a one hour boat ride I finally arrived at the current PCV’s site. She was waiting at the waters edge for me when the boat pulled up. Side note – the boats are about 25 feet long canoes with a big out board motor. There were women of her village washing clothes and dishes at the water front while I was awkwardly trying to get out of the boat without falling into the water!
The visit was great! I loved the PCV I got to visit with and she was a HUGE help. I made a list of everything she had in her little house that I want to buy for my own house. We also cooked a lot so it was great to see what she cooked with and get ideas for cooking at my future site. You have to be creative since fresh food is hard to come by in the interior. I’m going to load up on canned veggies and tuna. We made tuna melts one day and they were delicious! Cheese doesn’t last long so that’ll be something I treat myself to my first week at sight.

After a few days of visiting with the PCV it was time for me to hop on another boat and head to my site. I was very nervous but super excited too. My village is about 45 minutes away from the PCV I was visiting. The boat pulled up and two young girls from my village helped me carry my stuff up the ramp to the village entrance. It was weird to finally be by myself with no other trainees or volunteers with me. It was an adjustment but a good one. As the girls took me farther into the village more and more people started coming out of their houses to greet me. It was overwhelming how excited they were to have me there. All the women gave me hugs and were super nice to me. By the time I reached my house I had a crowd of probably 20 women and children with me. Everyone took me into my house to show me around. I’ll put up a picture! It’s a wood house with a thatch roof. Super small but cute! The crowd of women huddled together to discuss what my name should be. I think I’ve mentioned before that in their culture they think it’s bad to use someone’s name too much so they call each other by a nickname. So after they discussed it my new name for the next two years is Bajamai. It means “Good hips woman”. Ha!

After being naming me they helped me set up my water filter and my hammock. The women of the village then brought me some food. Rice and Sopropo (super bitter cucumber thing) with an egg. It was awesome that they brought me some food. I didn't have anything to cook with or on. I did bring food but i had no way to prepare it. The rest of the day i hung out with the leader of the village's wife. Her name is Mama and I love her. She's super old and very sweet. They walked me around my village which takes about 10 minutes to walk around the whole thing. It's super small.

So eventually evening rolled around and it was truth time for me. Everyone probably knows that my biggest phobia is the dark. Yep i'm scared of the dark and always have been. I knew it was coming that i would be by myself in the jungle at night but i was still nervous. The ladies of the village brought me a kerosene lantern after they saw me fumbling around with my headlamp. So i had a little bit of light! I locked up my little house with me in it at about 8pm and hopped in my hammock. My heart was racing! My village has electricity but my house does not. Maybe one day! So the rest of the village was still up watching movies and listening to music SUPER LOUD. I couldn't sleep... I was scared. :) So grand total that night i got about 2 hours of sleep. Maybe! The next night was MUCH better since i was exhausted from the previous night/day. I'm proud of myself that I made it through it! And i'm excited to go back so i'm totally conquering my fear of the dark! Having the lantern on all night was what saved me though. So i need to make sure i bring plenty of kerosene with me when i go back.

During my visit i hung out with different women of the village and tried to talk as much as possible. My language is still lacking so I didn't talk much. I decided it would be better if I tried whatever they were doing. So one day I banged rice with a huge club thing, banged a nut open to get the seed out so that they could make cooking fat with the seed and carried lumber on my head! My village seemed to be impressed with me trying out their chores. Two women invited me to go to their grounds with them. Grounds is where they grow their veggies and rice. We walked for about 20 minutes through the jungle on a path that i could not see! I don't know how they know where they are going, it must just be instincts. Finally we came to a clearing and they showed me around their grounds. They grow rice, bananas, okra, tayauwii (looks like elephant ears) and a bunch of other stuff. It was super hot when we were there so we came back pretty soon. Each night i slept a little bit better than the previous night. The women would wake me up at 6:30am each morning by walking to my door and yelling "BAJAMAI, I WEKI NO????????????". I loved it! i'm sure i'll get tired of that but it made me feel great that they were excited for me to be there. i'm also getting numb to creepy crawlies. My house has spiders called House Spiders that are literally the size of your palm. They are so big you can hear them running on the walls! but they eat other bugs so you learn to love them.

I loved my village and i'm excited to go back. Next time i'll take pictures of the actual village not just my house. :)

This week we are headed back to our host families for another visit then we go to Paramaribo for swearing in! I can't believe training is coming to an end! I officially move to my site on July 16th! I have a lot to buy since my house is completely empty. But i'm super excited about it.

Well i'm out of time and need to make my way back to NAKS. I miss everyone! Love you guys!

I know my site now!!

I'll be headed to a small village on the Upper Suriname River. It's actually the southern part of the Suriname River but the river flows from south to north so thats why they call it the Upper Suriname.

My site does not have running water and does not have electricity. There is a chance that occasionally it will have electricity because they have a generator but it depends on if they have fuel for it. I'm not sure what kind of projects i'll be doing but that will come later. I'm super excited and ready to meet people of my village. I'll be visiting them this week!

I'll update you guys on the flip side! I need to go pack AGAIN and go grocery shopping for the week.

I got two packages today! It was the first mail i've gotten and it made my week! If you want to write me or send a package here is my address:

Peace Corps Suriname
c/o Jamie Cliburn
PO Box 9500
Franchepanestraat 12 - 16
Paramaribo-Zuid, Suriname
SOUTH AMERICA

Love you all and miss you!!!!

Home Stay

Hey yall!
Last week we did the portion of training called Home Stay. During home stay you live with a family in a community similar to the community you will eventually live in. The day we were supposed to leave for home stay all our “host moms” came to NAKS to pick us up. My mom is a sweet little old. It was awkward meeting her at first since I still don’t know much of the language but we were able to make small conversation. Everyone boarded the buses and we went to a Sunday market to buy food for the week. My mom grabbed my hand when we got there and off we went in search of chicken. The meat portion of the market is just gross but I’m embracing the differences of Suriname. It’s an open air market with no refrigeration and the meat is butchered and bagged on tables right in front of you. There are flies flying around and it smells BAD! My mom picked out a huge bag of chopped up chicken, bought it and put it in her little cooler she brought with her. She grabbed my hand again and it was time to pick out veggies for the week. I told her I loved veggies so she bought me all kinds. I have since learned my lesson and there are a few veggies here that I do NOT like. Sopropo is a lumpy looking cucumber that is super bitter. It’s nasty. Unfortunately she bought a lot of that so I ate that a lot this week. My favorite veggie so far here is Kosubanti – Long Beans. It’s a SUPER long green bean that is absolutely delicious. After shopping at the market it was time to head to our Home Stay sites. I was one of the last people to get dropped off the bus. My village has one big street that all the houses are situated around. We walked down a path to our little house and I immediately got super nervous. It’s nerve-racking to live with strangers but add to that a different culture and limited language communication and you have one heck of an awkward situation. My mom showed me to my room and I put away all my stuff. My mom went to change her clothes so I sat down to talk with my little sister – Shayna. I called her Shayna because I can’t pronounce her real name. By the end of the week I could though! Anyway, my little sister is 12 years old and is really good at speaking English so that made me feel much more comfortable. Shayna decided we needed to go on a walk through the community so that’s what we did. We met up with the other trainees and their host siblings along our walk and checked out the village we would all be living in for the next week. I’ll put up pictures!
Eventually it was time to head back to the house for dinner. In their culture here you have to wash before you eat so you wash SEVERAL times a day. We got back from our walk around the village and my mom met me at the door to tell me to go wash then I would eat dinner. As I was washing in the wash house behind the house I realized that I really should have practiced bucket bathing because it was terribly frustrating. I got soap in my eyes and in my ears! Then there were bugs and geckos chilling in the wash house with me so that made me want to wash faster and just made the situation worse. I had a small bucket, a kuyaa – a bowl made from a thing that’s similar to a gourd, and the water came from a spigot in the wall. I splished and splashed and eventually I was all clean! I went to the kitchen where my mom had already fixed me my meal. I ate fish soup and cassava bread that first night. Cassava bread is a super hard flat bread that you break into pieces then dip in broth to eat. The soup was super yummy but the part of the fish she served me was the face so I didn’t eat much of it. It was looking at me the whole time! Yuck! After dinner I watched Bring It On with my little sister because she loves watching movies. So by now you can probably gather that the house I was staying at had electricity and running water. It was pretty sweet. Other trainees in different areas were not so fortunate. I had a flushing toilet out behind my house but most trainees had latrines. Once the movie was over I went to bed. All cuddled up in my bed under a mosquito net, I tried to go to sleep. I didn’t fall asleep until 3am. I had one of those nights where I couldn’t stop thinking and freaking out about whatever animal just made my pee pot scoot across the floor! I could hear things in my room but not see them. I chose not to look since nothing could be done. Side note – you pee in a pee pot at night in your room then empty it out in the morning.
The next morning started bright and early thanks to the FREAKING ROOSTERS!!!!!!!!!! Those are the most obnoxious animals ever. Luckily I needed to get up anyway. I woke up and ran to the bathroom then swept the house then washed then ate breakfast all before 7am! Yea! My host mom went to work so I spent my first full day hanging out with my host dad. He is super quiet but eventually he started talking to me more. It was cool to just sit with him on the porch and chat all day. The other trainees and I decided to go exploring in our new village so we went on a long walk through the community. It was great since we all got a chance to practice the language, mainly the greeting. You greet everyone in this culture and not just a “Hey!” when you see them. You either ask them how they woke if it’s morning or how their day is if its afternoon. Then you have a short conversation about where you are going and where you came from. Here’s a taste:
Me: I de no? (greeting for afternoon)
Villager: Ai u de. (response)
Me: Unfa I de? (how’s your day)
Villager: Mi de bunu. I seei tu? (My day is good. And you?)
Me: Me de bunu. Mi nango. (My day is good. I’m going.)

So you do this conversation a whole lot with the people you see but it’s a great way for people to get used to you being in their village.

I learned a lot this past week and I had a blast. I basically just chilled out with my family and helped out when I could. My dad played a lot of “What’s this” with me. So he would point to a chair and ask me what it was so I would respond with the right word in Saramaccan. We ran out of stuff to talk about so that’s when he would just start asking me what everything was. My mom showed me how to cook chicken, sopropo (yuck), lalu (okra), kosubanti, bamie (noodles), and rice. She seemed to have a fun time laughing at me and the way I acted. I got really excited when I understood what she was saying and she thought it was hilarious. My sister tried to braid my hair multiple times but my hair just won’t braid. She said it was too slippery. For fun we would walk down to the river to swim, I wouldn’t swim because my parents told me not to but the kids would. The river was gorgeous! It was the first time we really saw the river we kept hearing about. While everyone was swimming I washed my clothes in the river. A little girl watched me wash my clothes and she definitely had a face on her that said she disapproved of the way I was washing them.

Some of the other highlights from the week include seeing a monkey jump from one tree to the next, seeing a HUGE iguana chilling at the top of a tree, seeing an Anaconda eat a bird, realizing I know more of the language than I thought, quietly washing dishes with my mom, my mom bringing me popsicles, watching movies with my little sister (piki sisa), talking with little old ladies in the village, going grocery shopping with my mom in the city, figuring out how to pee in a chamber pot, getting the hang of bucket bathing, going to the Suriname River dam, having conversations with women that are not wearing anything to cover their boobs (in the interior women hardly cover their chest so old saggy boobs are everywhere!), learning more about sewing from my host mom, watching her sew a traditional koosu (sarong type skirt that women wear), washing with HOT water (my mom brought me hot water and it was amazing! It was the first hot water I’ve had in over a month!), I sprained my ankle after falling – not exactly a highlight but definitely something I’ll remember, and comparing home stay stories with other trainees.

The day we left Home Stay we had to have more safety training so it was time for life vest training! All 23 of us hopped on a long boat and went out the middle of the river and jumped into the water. We had to prove that we could swim with a life vest on in the event that a boat should flip. It was a super hard swim thanks to the stinking life vest and a super strong current in the middle of the river. We all did it though! Yea! Funny thing was that the part of the river we were swimming in was the same spot where I saw the Anaconda the day before.  But luckily we didn’t see any snakes or piranhas while swimming. After swimming we drove back to NAKS in Lelydorp. I miss my little family and I’m looking forward to going back there in a few weeks. We are at NAKS for two days then we head out to visit a current volunteer’s site then we go visit our future site! I find out where my site will be in 2 days!!!!! I can’t wait!