Bats, Rats and Tarantulas

Site is still going good. I'm still figuring things out and making my life there. I've been keeping track of the highlights that happen at site but ofcourse I don't have my little note book with me at the moment.

Lets see...

One night I was woken up by someone ringing a bell at about 1am. I was super confused on why someone would be ringing a bell in the middle of the night. Then I heard the people of my village walking to the center of the village, which is directly next to my house. I was thinking that it was incredibly bizaare to have a community meeting in the middle of the night. I heard my captain (the leader of my village) speaking to everyone, I stayed in my house the whole time, but I couldn't really make out what he was saying. Then everyone at the meeting began to scream and wail extremely loudly. I was pretty scared. Turns out that a woman in a neighboring village had passed away and my captain was letting everyone know. In their culture they wail loudly when someone passes away. The next week involved a lot of traditional ceremonies that they do when someone passes away.

I went to a ceremonial washing in the neighboring village with the volunteer that lives there. First I walked 30 minutes through the jungle with the women of my village to get there. The jungle is beautiful and scary all at the same time. I could barely see the path that we were walking on that the women seemed to know by instinct. There are enormous trees and huge butterflies that are bright purple. Eventually we made it to the opening to the river and we caught a boat to take us across the river. After a few hours of everyone from Carolines village and everyone from my village washing, a little old man came and took Caroline and I to wash where everyone else was washing. However, a little woman stopped us and tried to get us to take our shirts off... Nope didn't happen! We washed with our shirts still on, thank you very much. Anyway, we stood at a little alter thing they built while two old men poured water with leaves all over our heads. We were completly soaked! It was really neat to be able to be a part of their traditions.

Instead of walking back to my village I rode back in a boat with several people. On our way back one of the men on my boat saw an iguana swimming across the river. Iguana's are highly saught after out here. They LOVE to eat them. Especially a female iguana that has eggs. Yum! The driver of the boat turned the boat around so we could chase after it. We chased it for about 5 minutes but it got away. It was highly entertaining though.

I celebrated my birthday with my villagers on September 23rd. In their culture you are supposed to buy lots of food, drinks and provide the entertainment for your birthday. I told them I didn't have enough money to do that but that I would cook a little for a few people. I cooked bamie - spaghetti noodles with soy sauce, terriyaki sauce, maggi cubs and oil. When it was done cooking I called my neighbors over and everyone brought their own plate and I served everyone some bamie. They loved it! But they told me that next year I needed to buy some chicken and soft drinks. Ha!

Recently we had our early service training in Paramaribo. During the training we (all the volunteers) played a soccer game that had no rules. I didn't have shoes to wear so I played bare foot... Inevitably my foot got stomped by another player that was wearing shoes. I had to get it x-rayed but luckily nothing was broken. However, when I got back to site a week ago one of my friends in my village noticed that I was still limping. She asked me what happened and told me she had something that would make it get better. She came back to my house and poured kerosene on my foot... Other than make me flammable, it didn't do anything.

I'm getting a little more used to all the critters in my house. The newest two are the tarantula that lives outside my front door and the bats that moved in the day before I left to the city again. I'm okay with the tarantula because he's pretty chill and just sits there quietly. The bats on the other hand are obnoxious and need to go. They crawl in my roof making a ton of noise and then fly chaotically around the INSIDE of my house. I told my neighbor that I had bats and he responded with "be careful they bite" THANKS!!! sheesh! So hopefully they will have moved out by the time I get back to site.

This week i'll be helping with Camp Glow. Camp Glow is a 4 day camp for 6th grade girls. We'll play games, have HIV/AIDS awareness stuff and career/life motivation talks. I'm excited to hang out with the girls and have fun.

Soon i'll begin writing my rain catchment system project for my village. My village does not have access to clean drinking water yet so we've decided to write a project for Durotanks. Durotanks catch rain water and store it for clean drinking and cooking water. Right now my village uses creek water to drink. The creek is very unsanitary and causes a lot of health problems. Stay tuned for more information on my project!

I hope everyone is enjoying fall! Carve a pumpkin for me!

I've had a lot of people ask for my address. Here ya go!

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

PS - I love getting letters!!!