Just about every person over the age of 30 to whom I informed of my impending trip to Guyana mentioned the one thing they knew about the country: Kool-Aid suicide cults. Now granted, that was more than I knew about the place before I was accepted to work there in my latest Peace Corps Response gig. In fact, like most of my other under-30 friends, I was barely familiar with what continent it was on. The first thing I learned about Guyana, other than its location, was that it's distinguishing landmark was the inspiration for "Paradise Falls" in Disney's Up. I love that movie, and I think the first 15 minute segment is one of the greatest love stories ever filmed, which is why it seemed rather unfair for the second thing I learned about Guyana to be the 1978 Jonestown Massacre, in which over 900 people died of suicide poisoning at the hands of Jim Jones and his People's Temple cult.
However, the first things I saw firsthand in Guyana happened as the captain woke the passengers up at 5:00am to inform the us that we were beginning our descent, and the sky above the clouds was a brilliant psychedelic rainbow horizon, unlike anything I've ever seen. A band of ROYGBIV stretched in a thick line across the sky, darkening down into a flat plain of tarnished-silver colored clouds. As we descended into the clouds and the sun rose higher above the horizon, we flew through an iridescent golden-gray nebula of wisps and puffs, broke through the bottom, and saw an endless deciduous-green shag carpet, like something from the Disco era. I've never seen, at least from that height, such thick jungle, such an impenetrable canopy of treetops which were only occasionally sliced open by the dull glitter of murky rivers. The captain announced that we were about to land, and thanked us for our patronage, and with about four seconds and 100 feet of altitude to spare, the jungle broke and the runway began not an inch too soon.
We were picked up at the airport by Flavio, the PCR supervisor, who drove us through the capital, Georgetown, to our hotel, and then to the PC Bureau. It was my first glimpse of anything in the Western Hemisphere south of Florida, and looked as new to me as Mali did my first time there. Most of the houses have a similar look; squat and wide, with almost flat, barely triangular roofs, and virtually no buildings exceeding five stories, except for St Georges' Anglican Cathedral, which was once the tallest wooden building in the world. They also drive on the "wrong" side of the road (as opposed to the right side), which was a tough transition to make in terms of not completely freaking out when I would see a car barreling straight towards us on our right side.
The next few days flew by in a tizzy of orientations and introductions to just about everyone on PC Guyana staff. Elizabeth, the other Response volunteer who arrived with me (and also happens to come from a Philadelphia suburb near mine), and I were given the skinny on the rules and administrative issues, most of which were familiar, if slightly different from our previous PC posts. For example, the idea of having weekends off from work and not counting towards vacation days as we travel is different from Mali where we are considered to be officially always on duty, though not necessarily always working. We also were warned of the new social protocols we would have to get used to, such as how inviting a girl into my house is just a hop, skip, and a jump away from inviting them into bed, regardless of how innocent my intentions might be (and I am nothing if not a man of innocent intentions!).
After three days of orientation, plus a "safety and security" tour of Georgetown, I was ready to be sent off to my site. We took a taxi to the Essequibo River, which we were then obliged to cross the water by way of a half-hour speedboat ride weaving through islands and bouncing on the waves. We landed in a town called Supenaam, which I am disappointed to admit was not actually called Superman, and then drove off to the town of Affiance.
Affiance is located right on the coast, but sadly, the beaches are mostly just grassy mud and shallow water. However, the whole area is absolutely gorgeous, with the strip of towns along the coast, of which Affiance is one, being just a long row of houses and businesses along a single main road, and nothing beyond that road but the sea on one side and rice fields on the other. The palm trees are plentiful, the livestock are ubiquitous, the heavy gray rainy season clouds loom dramatically, and walking down the street, I keep getting a strong but anonymous scent of something that smells just like Mali, but with a slightly curried flavor to it, which I assume is on account of the predominantly East Indian population here.
It's been less than a week but I already have a million thoughts of this new home of mine and plenty that I want to write. In consideration to your attention span, I think I will just leave off here, and update you all next week after I've begun my work at the Imam Bacchus Library.
But before you go, I have some great news! If you thought something like a military coup d'etat and temporary evacuation of the executive staff meant the end of Mali Health Organizing Project, think again! The local staff are still on the ground in Sikoroni, Bamako, carrying out their normal routines and continuing to implement their programs. They have a weekly radio program dealing with health issues that gets heard by potentially millions of listeners. Their Community Health Workers are still diligently making weekly visits to families to check up on the health of the Action For Health program members and training them in early intervention for illness control. And my pet project in the short time I worked for them, the Three-Legged Stool of Nutrition, was used during a recent nutrition fair which you can see at their blog. In order for MHOP to keep maximizing their great work, they need funding, and this month, they are running a special fundraising campaign, which you can see all the details about on their newly redesigned website, malihealth.org. I don't like to plug things needlessly on this blog, be cause let's face it, it's mostly about shameless self-promotion, but MHOP is really a great organization with some creative and capable people running it, and they're not just working to improve the health situation in one part of Bamako, but to create a template for other similar NGOs to learn from. So donate, already!
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