Swearing-In Week
Our swearing-in ceremony took place on the balcony of the Peace Corps office in Paramaribo on July 13th. In addition to representatives of Suriname’s Ministry of Interior Development, the ceremony was also attended by Ambassador John Nay and several Peace Corps Volunteers and staff.
The week of our swearing-in ceremony, my training group—now PCVs—took full advantage of all the city has to offer. We sang karaoke, went salsa dancing and were hosted by the parent of a friend of a friend’s at his home in Paramaribo where he served us tons of food and drink and played music videos on his massive projector screen. The night prior to our departure, Patrick and Jeremy, two other Sur17s, were gracious enough to host us at their place in the city for pizza, beer and ice cream. All in all, it was quite a bang-up week.
Of course, the highlight of the week (for me) was our visit to Tulips, the American grocery store in foto. We received our living allowance (a.k.a. food money) last week and went buck-wild at Tulips. Ironically, we spent only half of our allowance and our cart was completely full. Treats included: Gatorade, cold cuts, taco shells, Grape Nuts cereal, Earl Grey tea, cantelope and parmesean cheese. YUMMMMM.
Move to Site
After our colossal food purchase we left for site. The first week has been admittedly chaotic since Suzie Kay and I had to go to a UNICEF training in another village the day after we moved in. As a result, we had little time to chat with the neighbors and settle in. The training, held in Abadukondee, went very well. It’s a grassroots program called WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) that is facilitated by locals in the various communities. Our trainer, Jake Pinas, works for the Red Cross and was able to switch back and forth between Dutch, Aucan and English to ensure that everyone understood. Thankfully, I understood about 90% of the Aucan spoken and picked up several Dutch words throughout the training as well.
Not so thankfully, the guesthouse at which we were hosted was infested with cockroaches, bats, rats and tarantulas. Sharing our bottom bunk (because the top bunk was covered in bat and rat poop), Suzie Kay and I did not sleep and quickly got sick.
For those that don’t already know, Rica is built more-or-less on the water table—meaning that, in addition to the mud problem, any septic system or latrine built in Rica will leak into the drinking water. More unfortunately, several residents have built latrines and installed septic tanks within only a few feet of the river, so the runoff waste goes directly into their drinking and washing water source. Needless to say, it’s a real challenge and not one that I’m sure either of us is qualified to address.
In other news, settling in at our house has been (for the most part) a huge success. We’ve found a place for most everything and have regular visits from our neighbors. “Zingo,” a young child’s version of Bingo, is the game of choice among the 12-and-unders, who congregate at our house every day after school. As the owners of crayons, playing cards and books, we are the Leaps & Bounds of Suriname—our balcony is the ball pit. I am absolutely positive that the world’s cutest babies (i.e. Jairis, Suti and Mogana) live in Rica. Pictures to follow…
Besides the children, I think that a couple of the young women in town will become good friends. Two in particular have come to our house to chat every day since we’ve arrived and have been very patient with our language learning. Another two came to the house to teach me crochet and a 14-year-old expectant mother kindly braided my hair on my birthday. With all of the support we’ve received from the community we are all the more excited to become a part of it!
Challenges
I am, and hopefully will continue to be, surprised and disturbed by the frequency and severity of violence used to discipline children in the interior of Suriname. Beating a child/teen with a switch or a belt to the point that they are screaming, bruised and/or bleeding seems to be very common. Young children are told to “hold their mouth” when they cry and, if they cannot, are whipped with a reed across the face. It seems to me that you can make your point in some other way…
Peace Corps aks a lot of many of its single volunteers by asking them to live on site together with someone they’ve known for only three months. Suzie Kay and I are two distinctly different people with different preferences, strengths and weaknesses. The latter has the potential to make us an excellent team, but it is also a yet another challenge that we have to overcome in that we are still discovering each other while we’re going through an otherwise already stressful transition into our lives as volunteers.
Moreover, we are still learning to find a balance in the amount of time that we spend together in the community and that which we spend independent of each other. We need to carve out our own space in the house and identities among the people with whom we will be working. Also, we need to make time to practice the language and built local relationships separate from one another. All of this needs to take place as we are acclimating to a completely new lifestyle, in a hot climate away from the comforts of home.
I’m lucky to be living with such a brilliant, motivated woman, but we are not a married couple. Nor do we have years of friendship under our belt to serve as the basis of our partnership in Ricanaumoffo. We’re excited to be living and working together but it’s somewhat exhausting trying to figure out each other at a time when we are under the pressure of so many external stressors.
Thankfully, Suzie Kay and I share a lot of the same values. Likewise, we are both committed to having a positive impact in our community. I’m confident that these two elements will help carry us through the next two years and make our friendship all the more stronger for it.
More to come. Stay tuned :)
Side Note
I am writing this blog by the light of my headlamp while roosters crow and the baby next store screams. It’s only 5:00 AM. In order to add this blog post, I will take the 30 minute boat ride to Moengo and pay the local middle school teacher to let me use one of the school’s computers. Ahh the joys of Suriname….
