Three Nights on the River

"Jerky crumbs? Gold bonds?"

I recently spent the last three nights in the interior of the country along the Suriname River.

To get to the interior the other 7 volunteers and I had to bus and then boat out to our sites--we all stayed at differed villages. After our bus ride, we had lunch in a small boating town. Here, I had my first taste of monkey meat which I believe is ordered as baboon. The best way to describe it is that it does not taste like chicken. The taste is fairly strong but the texture was the most unusual part of the piece of meat. After lunch, the other 7 volunteers and I got on our "motorized canoe" as Peace Corps refers to it and headed up river to our volunteer sites. And so I spent the past few days with a volunteer named haansepai.

As a Peace Corps volunteer, you are given a nickname by your village. In this case, haansepai means handsome son. And in every village, just as in haansepai's, there is a social hierarchy within the village. First, there is the captain who is like the mayor of the village. Captain's are established by bloodlines on the mother's side. Then, there are the bashas who are essentially the captain's right hand guys. I am not sure if there is any method to these appointments. Anyways, when there is business to be attended to the captain and bashas are involved. Below these folks you have the other adult villagers who are growing agriculture products, fishing, carving wood or helping to build something in the community. Then, there are kids. Kids who are old enough to go to school leave the village on boat by 7 or 8 o'clock and are gone until school gets out, which is at 1. So until they arrive back in the village, usually around 2 pm, things are very quiet and still. But once the kids are back in the village, things start to pick up, most notably the local soccer games. My first impression of the river is that life moves at a pretty slow pace. There is going to be a LOT of downtime, much more than I expected so I am going to make a plea for movies/books/music.

Finally, now that I am back in the city, I am getting treated by the doctor. I am having some kind of allergy problem and my skin is getting rashes and is covered with bug bites. So, the fun begins...