Thanksgiving and Srefidensi

I'll provide a quick update while I have internet access in the capital:

• On November 19th I ran the Srefidensi Half Marathon at, admitedly, a very slow pace. I was, however, very pleased to finish and enjoyed the race and time spent with other Peace Corps volunteers.
• Yesterday the Ambassador and his wife kindly hosted the PCVs and a couple other American's in country to Thanksgiving dinner at their home. The food was excellent and it was a wonderful way to spend the holiday. Unfortunately I may have overdone it with the food--I very nearly had to be rolled out to the taxi!
• Today is Sredifensi Day, or Surinamese Independence Day. I will not be staying in the city for the festivities but am sure it's bound to be a wild time.
• Special thanks to Ringa Bulatovic for sending me a new camera! It's up and running so I should have a new batch of pictures to upload the next time I'm in the city. Very exciting :)
• The first week in December I will be attending a boys camp in a Saramaccan village on the Suriname River. I'm very excited to see how the camp is executed so that Suzie Kay and I can replicate it in our village to correspond to the Camp GLOW we plan to hold for the girls of Rica in the Spring.

More to come!

6 Months in Suriname

The last month at site has been, well, busy! On several occasions I accompanied women in my village to their grounds (i.e. jungle farms) to help them with their planting. The planting season here generally begins in late August and goes through early to mid-December. While labor is often paid, usually SRD $65/person for one day’s work, many individuals yuu themselves, or rent out their labor in exchange for a day’s worth of labor from the person to whom they have provided services.  Since I cannot accept payment and have no grounds of my own, I come along for free to learn, work and spend time with the people of Rica. Occasionally there is a cold soda or beer in the occasion as well, which I never turn down!

The day’s work is long and hard. Once at grounds, the day begins at 10:00 AM with a prayer, from which point the digging and planting continues (in the hot sun) until 12:00 PM. At noon a snack is served and workers observe a 30 minute break. At 12:30 PM, work resumes until the lunch break from 2:00 – 2:30 PM.  The work continues until 5:00 PM, or thereabouts, in order that the farmers can get back to the boats, load them up and return to Rica before sundown.

Keep in mind, grounds are often over 30 minutes to 2 hours away and the trip usually involves extensive boat and foot travel. This system originated in the years immediately after Suriname’s Maroon slaves escaped into the bush so that their former masters would not also be able to locate the villages if they happened across the planting grounds.

Watching my friends and acquaintances navigate oversized canoes powered by outboard motors through narrow jungle creeks, which are laden with sunken logs and thick reeds, has been nothing short of amazing. Moreover, I have really enjoyed seeing how people here manage to make what would otherwise be an endless continuum of exhausting days into something amusing and social: Song and dance often interrupts furious digging; two boats destined for the same grounds suddenly find themselves in a race.

Project work is occupying a fair amount of time as well. Now that SKB and I have passed the 3-month mark at site, we have Peace Corps’ official blessing to begin projects.  The primary task at hand at present is writing a detailed budget for the conversion of the old dance hall into a daycare. Thankfully our predecessors and a select group of community members did a lot of the leg work already, so we’re mostly fine-tuning and price checking.

I’ve also submitted a proposal to host a community meeting on or about World AIDS Day in which several children from the village will perform a skit on the various means of transmission of HIV. If the presentation is well-received, I hope to follow it up with a series of formal HIV/AIDS trainings for the various demographic subgroups in our community. The proposal includes an incentive, of course—food will be served to the first 100 individuals that come to see the performance. Cross your fingers!

Once the daycare project is completed the community will use what money is left from a previous project to build six to seven pour-flush, community toilets.  In the coming months, the schedule is also replete with personal travels and challenges. I plan to run the Sredefensi half marathon in Paramaribo on November 19^th. Under the circumstances (extreme heat & humidity, lack of an appropriate place to train, etc.), I have no intention of running under a certain time or setting any personal records—I just want to finish.  I’ve done two long runs thus far in preparation, both at a turtle’s pace, and I’m hoping the adrenaline will give me an extra boost.

In early December I hope to observe a camp similar to Peace Corps’ Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) in a Saramaccan village. This one is different, however, because it’s designed for boys. SKB has recently observed a Camp GLOW on the same river. Together, we hope to learn from our counterparts in Saramacca about some of the planning and logistics that go into these camps so that we can host two, one for the boys and one for the girls, on the Cottica River.  We also have the notes of the prior volunteers in Rica to help guide us through this process.

Perhaps most exciting, my parents are coming to visit over the Christmas holiday! We’ve planned a whirlwind itinerary that has them stopping in Paramaribo, Ricanaumoffo, Saint Laurent (French Guyana), Brookopondo and Company Creek. I’m very much looking forward to sharing a little bit of my life in Suriname with them, and to give them a sampling of some of the different cities and activities the country has to offer.

On the flipside of all this fun and exciting news, my patience (of which there was little to begin with) is running thinner and thinner with the behavior of some of Rica’s youth. An episode in the last week of October resulted in my writing and posting formal rules on the door of our house to be abided to by all children visiting our home. The kids have grown accustomed to braking the crayons and puzzles, leaving them strewn about on the balcony. In the aforementioned episode, a group of boys returned SKB’s brand new Adidas soccer ball flat with what appeared to be two razor blade cuts in the side. 

Many of the children here have a real difficulty with the concept of listening, much more than any American children I’ve ever encountered. They also seem not to understand the practice of taking turns. More importantly, several of the children, if not most, disregard all attempts at discipline unless there is a threat of physical violence. 

Unfortunately, the primary form of parenting here comes from the end of a reed or belt. Children are hit for crying, for misbehaving, for making mistakes, etc. In most cases, there are no rational conversations about their behavior, about what is acceptable and what is not and why. There are no warnings preceding the blows, apart from perhaps tapuu i mofu! (shut up) shouted from a distance. The system, in my opinion, does not breed obedient, conscientious children, but unruly ones that don’t understand social systems or behavioral norms, ones that seek power and respect in the form of a fist and are quick to question any authority that tries to maintain order otherwise.  One of the greatest detriments of this system is that it does not enable the children to analyze rewards and consequences because, apart from getting hit, there are none.  Example:

If I cut this ball, I won’t have a ball to play with anymore. If I break or lose the crayons, perhaps Kate/SKB won’t buy me new ones. If I return the ball in a good condition, they will lend it to me again tomorrow. If I put the crayons away, when they run out, Kate/SKB will buy more.

These types of thoughts are, for many but not all, completely non-existent. When we try to explain the rules and consequences, we’re either met with blank stares, ignored or mocked.  They know damn well that neither SKB nor I will ever beat them, so what’s the point of behaving?

There are, of course, a handful of kids who consistently have good manners, listen, clean up after themselves and follow the rules. We try to give these children extra attention and benefits, but the others often spoil their fun.

Another observation I’ve made of the children in our village is that they have an apparent lack of special intelligence with regard to certain specific tasks. Forget reading a map, completing a nine-piece Dora the Explorer puzzle that should take a five-year-old five minutes takes most of Rica’s ten, eleven and twelve-year-olds up to twenty minutes to complete—and that’s if they can do it. They don’t seem to understand that a corner piece has two straight edges, that both the picture and the shape need to fit. And these aren’t dumb kids I’m talking about either—they’re extremely bright. I can’t figure it out.

Lastly, I have two requests. The first is that you shoot me an email, blog comment or Facebook message with the kinds of content (topics or pictures) you would like to see on my blog. I’m not sure what interests people and I’d like to tailor the website to include things that you folks want to read. If you have any suggestions, please share!

Secondly, I’m assembling a reading list for myself and need your help. Kindly share with me (via email, blog comment or Facebook message) the title(s) of your favorite book(s). We have a pretty decent library in the Peace Corps office in Paramaribo and I need help filtering the quality from the garbage. If it helps at all, below I’ve included a list of literature I have enjoyed and that which I do not.

Likes: The Stieg Larsson series, Outliers (M. Gladwell), Half the Sky (N. Kristoff, S. WuDunn), The Kite Runner (K. Hosseini), Atlas Shrugged (A. Rand), Freakanomics (S. Levitt, S. Dubner), Brick Lane (M. Ali), most Shakespear, any and all poetry, short stories—especially anything my Alice Munroe, anything interesting regarding political thought or the history of social progress, themes of social trends

Dislikes: Anything written by Michel Foucault or H.D. Thoreau, books on American politics, most biographies/autobiographies

And for the ever eager philanthropists among you, the list of things I would love to receive in a care package ;)

·         Dried fruit, nuts (favorites are apples, cherries, pecans, almonds)

·         Maple syrup

·         Milk powder

·         Beef jerky

·         GrapeNuts cereal

·         Gatorade powder (in any flavor but grape)

·         Gallon ziplock bags

·         Any instant box salad mix (tabouleh, couscous, etc.)

·         Chocolate chips

·         And for the kids: Coloring books, markers and simple puzzles

That’s all for now! Stay tuned.