The Last Dance

"It would hurt me not to come to your party."--Franklin Adipi

After two weeks of anticipation and 1000 SRD later (about 330 USD), all the supplies for my going away party had arrived in the village. The main course of white rice, chicken boiled in fat and maggi cubes, sliced cucumbers with pepper and vinegar and brown beans with onion and garlic (and probably maggi the cooks didn't tell me about). Desert would be cake with frosting, the first time I think any one in my village had ever seen frosting because no one knew what the heck to call it except suti sondi (sweet thing).

My party had originally been scheduled for August 5 but due to a nasty flew I cancelled and pushed it back a week. Due to potential conflicts with end of the school year events, I did not know until the evening of Wednesday before Saturday the 12th that I would be throwing a party. Hence, I woke up early and caught a boat to the port town, Atjoni, to buy food and four cases of beer with my boat man, Tudi. My last trip in Atjoni was one of my better ones. I went and visited Franklin, my counterpart for the condom project who told me he would do his best to come to the party, and eventually did attend on Saturday which delighted me. I also went and visited some other friends in the area for the last time before buying my supplies in the afternoon when my boat would take off. Transporting chicken on the river is quite comical. You buy three frozen bags just before your boat leaves and since no one has an ice chest to put the bags in you just throw them in the boat underneath a tarp. That definitely would break some American health codes I think.

When I got back to the village disaster struck. One of the guys slipped and we lost half a crate of beers. We were down to 42 beers, tragedy. We stored the beers in three different freezers in the village and put the chicken in the Captain's freezer. Although we tried our best to sort out who would cook what by Friday, that didn't happen. One woman showed up at my house as planned on Saturday morning to cut, marinade and cook the chicken. For the rest of the food, I ended up walking around the village on Saturday morning with a sack of rice on my head asking women if they wouldn't mind cooking some food for everyone for that evening.
Luckily I found some volunteers quickly otherwise I probably would've been too tired to dance after carrying the rice around.

My afternoon was spent hanging out with another volunteer and baking a strawberry and chocolate cake--the funfetti was baked by my counterpart's woman. In classic CRod fashion, we fingered a little frosting off the top of the can, it was delicious. After the Peace Corps gang had showed up for the party, I finally realized I had not many any deal to set-up the sound system, one of many of my mistakes on the night. So I had to rush through the village around 5 pm and find a couple of guys who could set-up chairs and bring speakers and the CD system from their hour to play some music. Everything was finally cooked and set-up at 6:30 pm for the 7 pm party. Unfortunately, the men had not washed at the river yet. You'd have expected this to go quickly but food wasn't passed out until the men were ready, after 8:30 pm.

Once 8:30 hit it was kind of a mad house. The village fed the volunteers in attendance first and then gave the kids food until the guests from other villages and finally some of the Gunzi villagers were served. This process was made more difficult than usual because I had forgotten to buy any plastic plates, utensils or cups for drinks. Luckily the village women were in a good mood because there was free food and music and lent out their own dishes.

After the men's attempt at DJing went poorly, the men's village drumming band, Tei Wei Sponsorr, began to play. Then the party took off. I was pulled out on the floor by a woman named Siki and then the rest of the Peace Corps gang followed, being pulled out by a few of the kids and older women. As I was dancing, the woman started bringing me the gifts they had made for me, I had received four bandja koosus (fabric men traditionally wear over their shoulders and covers the chest) by the end of the night. The highlight of the night was definitely when one of my Peace Corps friends began dancing with the teachers in the village. He's a crowd pleaser and everyone was pretty impressed until suddenly he fell on his butt which cracked everyone up. The dance went on until about 1:30 in the morning and my usual dance partner, a 50+ year old woman named Samai was shaking her stuff around the zaal all night one last time. When I finally snuck home, I was relieved and gave a fist pump because after a rough week of being sick and two years of service I felt like I had finally put the final touch on my service here in Suriname. The last dance.