Bananas are cheap and delicious here

"Some day I shall fly the rut and build a small, bucolic hut, trim a hedge and hop astile, walk my camel for a mile, milk a mid-victorian cow--eventually, but now."

-- Samuel Hoffenstein

From a little book about travel

Traditional Dance Performance

Some traditional dancing that was very impressive. My legs got tired watching them. Some of the moves they looked like spiders. Also at times it was incredibly sexual--which made most of the crowd in the first two rows quite bashful (this included me).

Apparently it was pretty traditional, so not like all the young kids are doing this in the village all the time. I mean, that would be me gettting people together to do polka dancing for fun. hahaha right.

We'll see though, all villages are different. I'm still hoping to learn some dancing, if anything for the exercise.

pangie time

This is the night we arrived to Suriname. At 1:00am we were greeted by a group of energetic Sur-16s (they've been here one year) who each gave us a pangie. This is Christine who gave me my pangie. They draped it over our necks, but the females where them as skirts in the village.

Just wait, I'll do way more writing and pictures eventually about the pangies.

It’s like a crash course in Boy Scouts (on steroids) preparing us for village life in the Amazon.

The rivers are the lifeline. Almost all villages are located along rivers and that is how we will travel to them via canoe or motorized canoe. Dang, I should have packed more dry bags. The river will be our source to good hygiene and health by acting as our drinking water, bath water, and laundry use. They also have eels, sting rays, and piranhas to keep us on guard. I guess I won’t needing my goggles.

In preparation, we had a demonstration in hand washing clothes and tried it ourselves. We were all quite terrible being constantly corrected. J Apparently it is easier at the river with rocks and such versus our buckets and brushes.

Mosquitoes, baat flies, and siekas …OH MY!

Today, we had a presentation from “doc” as we call him, the peace corps medical officer, about infectious diseases here presenting what we potentially will get and what we will inevitably get. Sigh… It was gross. If a creepy crawly burrows into me and peeps out its worm like head to get some air I might be lucky if I can finish throwing up before I faint. Ew. Malaria and Dengue are probably far more miserable, but far less scary at this point.

Wish me luck...

Mi e leli Okinisi Tongo!

I am learning Aucan! This language is spoken by few. Basically, I’m becoming an elitist by knowing this language. It is one way to look at it right?

Unfortunately, they are not teaching anyone Dutch—even though it is the countries official language. Dutch is definitely used, but only in the cities and even then it isn’t really worth it because most people in the city also speak English. Since most of us aren’t going to be in the cities anyway—we are going to be in villages that are all located along rivers in the interior (Amazon rainforest)—it is not an efficient use of time or energy.

The language is full of super fun words. My first favorite word is “sweti” pronounced “schweti” for sweat/sweaty. The fun ones are the words that sound the most like the English word. Aaaand there are a lot.

Famii (famee) = family

Mi piisii fu miti yu = I’m pleased to meet you.

Mi abi wan akisi = I have a question

Bii = beer

Mi a siibi mooi = I slept well

Mi lafu = I’m laughing

Wi lobi lafu = We love to laugh

The ARRIVAL

SUR-17 is how you refer to my group--which is a group of 23 people with 8 great males and the rest amazing females. So far we all get along great. It truly is impressive and actually surprising I think to all of us.

Adjusting to the temperature is pretty intense, but not really outside of what I expected. So far weather and food is the most we’ve had to deal with so far. Otherwise, they have pretty much babysat us and held our hand—which is great and I am not complaining. From what I gather, we will be on our own soon enough in some crazy conditions. So I definitely appreciate the easing in approach.