9/17/14
Good
morning everyone. It’s 5:30AM Guyana time, do you know where Tim is? He’s
sitting in front of his computer with barely working internet checking
Oregonlive for Beaver news. Sipping a cup of coffee. Relaxing in the early
morning stillness punctuated by the god damn annoying cries of the local
roosters.
Nearby,
a small bottle of mosquito repellent taunts him. It says, “Hey, put me on!” The
repellent here is quite an interesting beast. It’s basically an industrial
strength solvent. It might as well say “Do not apply to skin.” Because it burns
as soon as you put it on. It’s like a chemical peel in a bottle. My eyelids are
on fire but I feel 10 years younger.
I’m
getting real tired of being asked if I can type. When I went down to the
records department that ill-fated day that was one of the first things they
asked me. When I went to the Regional Health Officer’s office and asked for
something to do they asked me if I could type. When I went to the regional
Medex office she asked me if I could type. Embarrassingly, the answer is not
well. I didn’t join the Peace Corps to have adventures, see the world, and
become a secretary.
My
supervisors at PC Guyana, who are really sweet people, linked me with the
regional Medex and said she would have some work for me where I would get to
travel into the interior and visit health centers. I went to meet the regional
Medex the only thing she wanted help with was writing reports, hence the typing
question. I don’t think PC lied to me, I really don’t. I imagine the Medex told
them one thing to impress them, they told me, and when I actually showed up all
of a sudden the Medex had nothing for me to do. That’s the culture here, no one
expects anyone to follow through on anything. This leads to a complex in which
the expectations are so low, people try to boost their own self-concept by
blowing other things out of proportion. So, finally, when someone follows
through, nothing goes the way it should. People here know that they should show
up on time, go to appointments, and generally do what they say they’re going to
do but the culture is too permissive, forgiving, and without real punishments
for not sticking to commitments. Avoidance has few consequences here.
9/23/14
A stroke of good luck today. When I
first got here, I may have mentioned this, but I heard about this place called
the New Opportunities Corps. From what I’ve understand it’s essentially a
reform program for at risk youth. This sounded great because this is,
essentially, the type of kids that I was working with back home. I talked to my
supervisor about it, she’s the Regional Health Officer, and she said that she
had to send them a letter, it’s right down the road, they had to send a letter
into Georgetown and then a letter would be sent back approving me to volunteer
there.
Well, last week my PC supervisors
came to town to check up on me. They asked me about the NOC and I told them I
hadn’t heard anything. Simone then told me that there had been a volunteer
placed there a few years ago and that she knew the supervisor back then and
that if he was still there all it would take is a phone call from her for me to
be allowed there. Today, I called her about what happened in my last blog post
and mentioned I hadn’t heard from NOC yet. Simone promised to make the call
today and lo and behold she called me back probably an hour later saying I was
good to go at the NOC. Apparently, a letter had been mailed from Georgetown and
arrived somewhere in my vicinity but no one had ever told me. But to be fair,
the RHO has been on vacation for the last 4 weeks and my counterpart was on
vacation for the 4 weeks previous to that.
So hopefully this pans out and
turns into something. I just feel like I’m doing so little these days so I hope
this can fill up some of my time. I’m going there tomorrow afternoon. I’ll
check back in with y’all tomorrow. Thanks, Simone!
9/24/13
Hi
everybody, kind of a lot to talk about today.
I’ve
had this cough/cold like disease for almost 3 weeks now. I felt sick this
morning so I called in to the Bacchus School and said I wasn’t coming in. I
planned on going to the NOC in the afternoon anyway so I figured I would take
the morning off and try to feel better.
About
12:00 my friend, and fellow volunteer, Iris called and asked me if I wanted to
come down to the Chinese restaurant by the post office. I accepted and headed
over. We hung out for a little while, she had a meeting to go to for school at
1 so we both left a little before then.
I
approached the NOC campus on foot, it was about a 20 minute walk from my house
on the main road. It didn’t seem like anyone was there, kids or adults. As I
got closer to the campus I saw a car drop off an adult and watched him walk
into a building. I followed him in. There was no lock on the gate, no guard
just an open gate. On a juvenile detention center. Not a great first
impression.
The first
building I entered turned out to be a recreation room and the staff was just
restocking the juice. He directed me to another building on the other side of
campus. I walked that direction and some of the kids called out to me, “White
man, white man!” I acknowledged them, smiled to myself, and kept walking. I
knew these were my type of kids.
After
introducing myself to a few of the wrong staff members I finally met the head
honcho. Mr. Dover. He told me a little about what the NOC was all about.
Essentially, kids either go to regular school, which judging by the size of the
classrooms is not many, or go to one of the training programs. There are
programs in IT, Agriculture, Catering and other things. Internally, I question
how these are better than regular school.
I
talked with some of the staff, then they kind of abandoned me for a meeting.
After that, I just wandered around for a little while. None of the kids seemed
interested in talking. Most of them wanted to stare me down. It reminded me of
some of my times at YES House and CFH. I felt kind of homesick.
One kid
stopped and talked with me for a little bit. Nicholas, he was 14, from
Georgetown and he had several tattoos. Some were on his face. But the way he
talked about staff and the facility really was just like the kids I worked with
back home. He was a nice kid for the most part.
I
stopped by the shop on the way home. There were two white people at the store
which was interesting. I stopped and introduced myself. I wasn’t sure they were
white until I got closer. There are some light skinned Portuguese and Cubans
that I sometimes mistake for white people. The white peope I met at the store
were Jehovah’s Witnesses missionaries from Holland, Roy and Marionne. They had
real thick Dutch accents, tried to convert me, and were really nice people. I
hope I run into them again. The only other Jehovah’s Witness that I can think
of was girl named Salem in 6th grade.
I
bought a Coke from the shop and finished walking home. I had a long swallow of
the soda and I was reminded of something. When I was younger, my Dad would tell
his sons stories. Driving to the beach, driving up to the mountains, just any
sort of long time period in which we would all be together. He really only told
two stories. The one I was thinking about while I was having a long, cool drink
of Coke was the one about Harry. Harry was in the military or something.
Through some circumstances, he comes to being a boat captain that rents his
boat out to some guys that want to do some diving. I think they find a treasure
ship or something and they don’t want Harry to know so they go to shoot him and
he jumps overboard. Harry then resurfaces, pulls himself onto the boat ends up
passing out in the sun while the bad guys leave. Then, when Harry wakes up he
goes to the galley and drinks 3 Cokes back to back to back. There’s more to the
story but I don’t want to give it away all in one shot. Also, years later I
read the book that my dad got this story from. It’s called Eye of the Tiger, if
you want to know what happens.
So what
I’m trying to say is that it was so damn hot today that when I took a drink of
Coke I felt like I had been shot and then unconscious in the sun for several
hours.
9/25/14
Something
else happened the other day that I wanted to write about. I was talking to
another volunteer, I don’t want to mention any names this time, and they said
that they understood why teachers hit their students. Here, the method of
discipline is a fair departure from what it is back home. Teachers here are allowed
to “give lashes.” That is, hit their students with a stick. The method
sometimes varies with the school, sometimes only the headmistress is allowed to
give lashes but he intent remains the same.
I was
talking with this volunteer and somehow this came up. The volunteer, who I’ll
call Sam from here on out for brevity’s sake, said that hitting students is the
only way they know how to learn not to do something. I’ll concede that in this
culture it’s a very real possibility that with all the violence that children
are exposed to, both at home and at school, it’s possible they have been
conditioned to learn that violence is an acceptable form of punishment. From
that they’ve learned that if they’re really not meant to do something then
someone, generally an adult, will threaten them with or carry out violence
against the child. I’ll concede that. What I won’t concede that it is the only
way kids here can learn. When Sam said that, I just got outrageously upset.
I’ve known so many kids that have been in violent and abusive situations and
I’ve never had to use violence to get my point across.
Now I
know that when Sam said that they weren’t encouraging violence or sanctioning it,
they were only stating that they understood why it was used. Sam, you know who
you are, I know you don’t condone violence but I wanted to highlight your
opinion. I don’t think you’re entirely wrong and I wanted to use your statement
as a jumping off point to make my own.
I guess I was just outraged that Sam wasn’t
outraged. But you could also chalk that up to a difference in convictions. Some
things that I really care about maybe Sam doesn’t care so much about. This
might jst be one of those personal growth moments everyone keeps talking about,
Matt.
I’m truly of the opinion that
hitting children shouldn’t be allowed in schools. I feel like I have enough
context to make that statement. In private, at home, I would condemn excessive
violence with prejudice. Something like spanking, while I will say I am against
it, I’ve never been a parent and I wouldn’t feel comfortable passing judgment
on parents when I haven’t had that experience.
But I
have been in schools here and in the US. And I can see no earthly reason why
violence in classrooms is necessary for or beneficial. A child doesn’t learn
better with a threat of violence looming over them in the form of a teacher.
A lot
of schools here have a problem with attendance, here’s a pro tip; don’t hit
kids. They get scared of coming to school.
10/1/14
I know,
I know, I was supposed to post today. I just got caught up this morning working
on other stuff that I didn’t get a chance to post. Let me update you on a few
things that have happened first, then I’ll upload this.
I did
an HIV workshop/presentation with some other volunteers at a secondary school
on Monday. It went really well and I really enjoyed doing it. The best part is
that I went to NOC the next day and asked if they would like to have us do the
same presentation there. They couldn’t accept fast enough. They seem to really
be starved for programming or maybe they have a quota or something. I’m not
sure what their motives are but I imagine I’ll find out quickly as I spend more
time there.
Peace
Corps funds a few committees and task forces lead by and made up of volunteers.
Before yesterday I was just on Peer Support Network, we just work on supporting
volunteers. There’s no budget, I’m quickly finding out that it is kind of
designed like the party planning committee but I’ve got plans to change that. Yesterday,
I found out that I got selected for the GAD task force. The Gender And
Development Task Force. Anyone that knows me knows I’m all about gender issues.
I’ve been lucky enough to have a lot of opportunities to work in gender
equality fields and I’m really excited to do that in a developing country.
I have
lots of mental health ideas that I’m moving forward with. Depression
screenings, suicide prevention workshops, individual counseling. There’s a lot
to do in the mental health department here. Actually, there’s everything to do
here since so little has been done. The country of 700,000 or so people only
has one psychiatrist in the entire country and no psychologists. I don’t blame
them though, according to Maslow there’s a lot of things they need to work on
first before mental health becomes a main issue. But I’ll do what I can until
then. I can feel myself getting busier. That’s a good thing.
I still miss you all, and
everything familiar back home. With the other volunteers we constantly talk
about how there’s no one big difference here just a lot of little ones. Staying
in Peace Corps is really just how many little inconveniences can you deal with
before you can’t anymore. I’ve definitely had days that I wanted to come home.
Every day, actually. Most times I can talk myself out of it. Sometimes I can’t
and those days suck. It’s not easy in any sense of the word. I definitely
joined for different reasons than I’m staying for. All the support I get from
everyone back home helps a ton. It was my birthday on Sunday, the big quarter
century. I’ve now been friends with John Kammerzelt for 10 years or just about.
Thanks for being there, bud.
If you feel like it, shoot me an
email at timdaniel25@gmail.com. Tell
me what you’re up to. I can’t always answer right away but if I can, I will.
Alternatively, if you have a smart phone you can download whatsapp and put my
phone number in, 592-674-8145.
