63 Beach

63 Beach is a stretch of hard brown sand that meets the chocolate brown water at the junction of the Corentyne River and the Atlantic Ocean. The wind blows continuously off the water packing the sand, which is as fine as flour, into a surface nearly as flat and hard as concrete. Peering into the distance, one can just barely make out the black treetops on the coast of Suriname. Although not considered as picturesque as the white sand and blue water found in other Caribbean countries, the beach is a major tourist destination in Guyana. Every weekend, families park their minivans just out of reach of the waves and go for afternoon swims while behind them men in sports cars or on motorcycles race.

Caroline and I made our first trip to 63 Beach last weekend with a VSO friend who says he has made the journey “loads of times”. Traveling by minibus in early afternoon, we made our way from New Amsterdam curving north and then southeast along the coast, through Good Hope, Leeds, Benab, Village 62, and a variety of other small towns. The beach is not geographically far from New Amsterdam, only about 30 miles if one were to cut through further inland, but because the only road there hugs the Atlantic, our trip was stretched to over an hour and a half.
Unless one has a car or a lot of money, the preferred way to travel long-distance in Guyana is by minibus. Most of my students catch them daily to get to and from school, but for me, riding in one is more akin to playing an extreme sport. Although exhilarating, it is not something I want to do more than a few times in my life.

Minibuses can most accurately be described as sardine-can deathtraps on wheels. To maximize profits, the 15-passenger vans have been known to cram 30 or more people aboard. They travel at speeds upwards of 70 miles per hour on pothole-riddled roads, somehow negotiating cattle and feral dogs. The stink rising from 30 sweating bodies in the unconditioned cab is unsuccessfully masked by bundles of pine tree air fresheners hanging from the ceiling. Reggae music and horn continually blaring, complete strangers sit practically on each other’s laps using the noise to ignore each other.

Still, traveling for the first time by minibus was liberating for me. I finally felt like I was getting the true Guyanese experience. We averaged 24 people on our trip—as soon as one person got off at some middle of nowhere destination, another always got on. They always seemed to know exactly where they were going and how much they owed the driver, even though there seemed to be no clear system for calculating fares. Arriving at my planned destination and paying the correct amount felt like a success in itself.

From the edge of Village 63 we caught a ride in a Tapir, a small box-like van and the only automobile made in Guyana, to the middle of the beach. The three of us settled in a spot where a large log had fallen and hard wet sand met powdery garbage-covered dunes. Nearby, a dilapidated shack was dissolving slowly into the ground. We put down our things and scanned the horizon. A man and a woman were selling food and drinks from a light blue horse-drawn cart. My VSO friend and I bought a snack before Caroline and I braved the salty brown water.
Like every afternoon in Guyana, that Sunday’s was warm and pleasant. After swimming for a while Caroline and our friend built a sandcastle while I explored the dunes with my camera. The area around the beach is undeveloped, though a few small businesses have sprung up, calling themselves resorts. Where we had put our things, there was not even a road nearby. It was refreshing to be able to experience a little of the natural beauty of this country without the intrusion of car horns and loud soca music.

On our walk back to the main road to catch a bus home to New Amsterdam our friend stopped at a stand and bought a coconut. The milk from a coconut is a refreshing drink that tastes like thick lemonade. It is consumed straight from the husk, which has had the top hacked off with a machete. Tired and sun beaten, we at last caught a bus. I stared at the countryside until it was too dark to see.




A shadow has been cast over my day at the beach: on Monday, Caroline and I received an unusual text about remembering someone who had just died from a friend who lives across the street from our house. It was not until Tuesday, when we saw an article in the paper, that we made the connection between this poor kid and our trip to 63 Beach. Apparently, just as the three of us were leaving the beach, 16-year-old Vivian Singh and a 15-year-old girl he was there with were attacked. The two had stolen a watermelon from a field near the beach and were subsequently beaten by the farmer with a length of bamboo. The two kids were rushed to the hospital where the boy died of his injuries. Singh and our neighbor both graduated from New Amsterdam Multilateral Secondary, the school where I live.

Hey Whitey!

“Miss, miss, hey! Miss!” “Whitey! White girl!” “Hello, blondie.” “Hey, Sunshine!”

These are some of the nicer things called after me everywhere I go. Men sitting in their taxis and fruit stands, or walking down the road yell tenaciously at me as if their lives depended on my propitiatory sideways smile. If I ignore them, they make sucking noises until I look in their general direction. “Afternoon,” I reply each time, with a slight wave and a grimace.

I do not understand the urgency with which these men seem to need my attention. It is as if they expect me to stop what I am doing, even to neglect to steer my bicycle, to respond. Where I am from, saying hello is supposed to be a courtesy, not an inconvenience. Furthermore, though I am unusual-looking with my white skin, I am nothing in terms of beauty in comparison to many of the women of this country. Some of the most beautiful women I have ever seen are Guyanese.

I finally began to understand the importance of looks several weeks ago when Moses, Caroline and I went to Georgetown for the weekend to get our work visas stamped into our passports. We stayed in the house of another two WorldTeach volunteers, a large townhouse apartment with exposed timber framing and hollow-sounding wooden floors. It was exciting to get the chance to reminisce, commiserate, and share a few experiences with fellow volunteers.

That Saturday was my birthday, which made the day feel special despite the lack of any particular celebration. I celebrated by going shopping with Caroline and Zoe, my field director, in Bourda Market, which is one of the two big open-air markets in Georgetown. The other is Starbroek, which we were told it was unsafe for foreigners. I felt rumpled and dowdy in my hastily packed clothes. It was difficult for me to find anything in the high-fashion shops that suited my somewhat simple taste. That is to say, there was nothing in earth tones or without some sort of gaudy embellishment. Although the day of shopping was relatively unsuccessful, being back in the city somehow felt a little like going home.

That Sunday, I awoke, 23 years old and no longer my birthday to make it special. I’m 23. Just 23. Caroline was fluttering around me outside of the mosquito net we had shared, preparing for her day trip to Kaieteur and Orinduik Falls. A little sad I could not afford the trip, I consoled myself by gathering my computer and walking the few familiar blocks to my favorite coffee shop in Georgetown, Oasis. On my way to the air conditioned café, I heard the occasional catcall and felt a few stares. I laughed to myself about the attention I was drawing: I am short and always a bit disheveled. My skin is now a light golden-brown, but compared to Guyanese women, I look sickly pale. At the time, I was sweating profusely and my sunglasses kept sliding off my nose. When I finally reached Oasis, I noticed a patch of sweat blooming out from my navel like a Rorschach blot. I thought about how much I contrasted with the beauty pageant contestants I had seen the previous weekend.

The weekend before our excursion to Georgetown, Caroline and I had gone to the Miss Sari Beauty Pageant at a fairground in Canje, north of New Amsterdam. At the pageant, young girls ranging in age from thirteen to their early twenties were to compete at the skill of modeling those long, intricately embroidered lengths of silk. The atmosphere of the event itself was much like a county fair in Iowa, except there were no rides, corndogs, or livestock. A stage draped with streamers and flanked by towers of amplifiers was set up at the far end of the grounds, opposite the stands by the gate. In the field between were brightly colored tents sheltering barbeque stands, beer vendors, and carnival games.

Unsure of when the event was actually going to begin, we arrived early in the evening, shortly after the gates opened at 7:30. We had to yell to each other over the medley of American pop and Indian rock music thumping from the stage as we waited. In typical Guyanese fashion, the actual modeling of saris did not begin until almost midnight. I stood in the audience, just in front of the massive subwoofers, which blared the same clip of music for each of the eight contestants as she paraded across the stage. One by one, the girls strode by, glittering with gold hanging from their ears and around their necks, embellishing their saris, and even woven into their hair. I was struck by their transformation from young students in crisp white shirts, long pleated skirts, and Mary Janes to ageless golden statues.

Although amazed by the appearance of the pageant contestants, the largest impression was made on me that night by the crowd, itself. Overwhelmed when we first arrived by the mass of people, Caroline and I decided to sit in the stands for a while to observe. Uncertain of whether or not the pageant was going to be a formal affair, she and I had agonized over what to wear. We settled for slightly nicer clothing than usual and were afraid we might be overdressed. People-watching in the stands, we were relieved to find we had nothing to worry about: the Guyanese put a great deal of emphasis on appearance. Rich or poor, it’s impossible to tell the difference. They are all dressed up, all the time.

With image being so highly valued, I have often wondered why out of a crowd Caroline and I, as well as other volunteers, seem to draw so much attention. It isn’t that we’re particularly attractive or even dressed as well as the locals. I have come to the conclusion that it is because we look shockingly different. Where I am from, this idea would have never sunk in properly, as I had never known what it was like to be a minority. However, the other day I was looking out over the edge of a balcony at school when I saw Caroline crossing the grounds with a group of students. In comparison to their uniform darkness, she practically gave off light. We are like those queer fish with translucent skin living at the bottom of the ocean, out of the sun’s reach. When we are seen unexpectedly, we surprise people so that their only reflex is to let out a yell.

Climate Change

View from my front door on a smoky Saturday afternoon.

The lifeblood of Guyana is its rivers. Though the dark brown waters are not bordered by white sand like other parts of the Caribbean, they are, nonetheless, striking. Several waterfalls are located in Guyana, including Kaieteur Falls, the largest single-drop waterfall in the world. More than just for sightseeing, in a country with few well-paved roads, the rivers are highways to the interior. For the Amerindian community, canoeing is a major form of transportation. For the communities on the coast, the rivers are important shipping routes. Being such an important geographical feature, Guyanese are proud of their rivers and love their bridges, especially the new floating toll bridge, which traverses the Berbice River. A couple of weeks ago at an assembly I even heard the Guyanese mention some rivers in a patriotic song. To the tune of This Land is My Land, they sang “From the Rupununi to the Corentyne, this land was made for you and me.”

On Sunday morning, Caroline and I went for a bike ride, traveling north of the Canje, a tributary of the Berbice which bisects New Amsterdam. When we reached the huge arching concrete bridge, like the men who cycled ahead of us while carrying weed-whackers and plastic racks of bottles, we had to dismount for the walk to the top. The exertion from riding up the steep slope in the sun caused me to sweat; my heavy tee-shirt clung between my shoulder blades. I savored the steady wind blowing over the river as I took in the view.

The top of the bridge is possibly the highest elevation I’ve been to since I arrived in Guyana—it provides the best view of New Amsterdam. I was unprepared for my first sight of the Canje, though I’ve crossed it by car several times. The main part of town runs parallel to the Berbice, obscuring any view of the water, so it is easy to forget there are even rivers there at all. For the first time, I got a real sense of how flat this country is. Spread out below were dilapidated wooden houses, palm trees, and fields of rice and sugar cane. Like in Louisiana, much of the country is below sea level and continues to sink as more land is carried out to sea. Though the vegetation along the river was a rich green, the further from the water, the more the grass looked parched and brown. Smoke and dust clouded the air, making everything in the distance look pastel.

Saturday night, Moses, Caroline, and I had gone to a small gathering of volunteers at a VSO’s house. We all got to talking about the market and how to get the best price for your produce: the way to do it is to go to the same vendor every time. To keep your loyalty, the seller will cut you deals. Unfortunately, I found out, because the rainy season never came this year, produce is much more expensive now than it had been even in the recent past. The price of tomatoes has jumped from about $60 a pound to over $300 since our host arrived. I thought about the price of tomatoes as I looked from the top of the bridge at the dusty landscape.

They say global warming is the cause of the new weather patterns in the country. Although this is a country is approximately 80% pristine rainforest, there has been little rain since I’ve lived here. I have heard some say that countries closer to the equator are more vulnerable to changes in global climate. After only being here a month and a half, I am beginning to believe from firsthand experience that this is true. On Monday, I was sitting at my desk in the staffroom at school when I noticed the sky begin to darken in the distance. It was not a rainstorm, but a massive cloud of dust. The wind began to build and kicked up sand from the cricket field, blinding and choking me as I tried to teach my afternoon lessons. Today we finally had rain. It came down in torrents during the mid-morning cricket match, but had mostly dried up by early afternoon. Although the rain helped, this country has a long way to go before it makes up for the recent lack of precipitation.

Though many adults have noticed the changes in the weather, my students are blissfully ignorant of the rapidly occurring changes in their climate. From my perspective things seem ominous. In my human and social biology class, I did an activity in which the students were to pick a social or environmental problem in Guyana, predict what could happen if the problem is not addressed, and explain how we might use our understanding of science to help fix the problem. Many of the students picked global warming as their problem. I quickly learned the children here do not have a good understanding of the causes of global warming. One even asked me: Is global warming because the sun is moving closer to the earth, or because the earth is moving closer to the sun? I was flabbergasted, but tried to calmly explain about greenhouse gases. He did not know what a greenhouse was.

In addition to not understanding the causes of global climate change, the students could think of little wrong with the prospect. I reminded them that Georgetown is currently eight feet below sea level and is only being protected by a seawall. They must feel too at home among rivers, because when I informed them that if global warming continues and the ice caps melt, much of the coast, including Georgetown, will flood, they did not seem terribly concerned.

Blackout

Saturday, September 19, 2009

While it feels like I have been here quite some time, I am still constantly discovering new secret realities in unexpected places. These past few weeks, one of those places has been the walls of our house. The four Project Trust girls who lived in my house last year were young, fresh out of secondary school, and had written on the walls in ink, chalk, and paint. We found a few of the girls’ possessions scattered here and there throughout the house and yard: a framed picture of a middle-aged woman, a Karl Marx pin, a calendar with reminders like “Mum’s birthday”, a chest x-ray with the age listed as 19. The school did what they could to scrub away the markings, but some traces of them remain, permanent. Occasionally, as I am doing something about the house, sunlight will strike the wall at an angle I had not seen yet, and reveal new words written there in chalk.

A couple of weeks ago I first discovered words were hidden in our yellow paint. I was in the shower when it happened: scrubbing my face with a washcloth, I looked up and saw the words “Don’t forget to wash behind your ears!!” emerge in faint blue chalk from the wall beside the door. In spite of myself, I began to do as they said; I felt a bit like the woman from The Yellow Wallpaper.

The word “help” is scrawled on the sea foam-green kitchen wall beside the window overlooking the front gate. Too magenta to be blood, too tidy to be written in fear, the letters are splattered and drip marks reach all the way to the floor. Upon arriving in this strange place, I was disturbed at the sight of the word, taking it to be a possible bad omen. This afternoon I was doing dishes when I noticed there are more words a bit above and to the left of it, but they are difficult to decipher. I can only clearly make out “love you.” In light those and of the other words I have noticed, I have become as indifferent to the “help” as one is to an old freckle.

Last night we experienced the longest blackout since we arrived in the country. It began at around 5:30 PM and ended some time after 1:00 AM. Being a Friday night, we had over a couple of guests, one young Guyanese teacher and one VSO volunteer, whom we had met in Georgetown. Sitting around our small coffee table drinking warm Banks Beer, we played Texas Hold ’Em by the light of a candle stuck in a guava jam jar. The VSO was telling us about his day-to-day activities, he’s here for two years to try to put some sort of special education program in place. Currently, there is little being done for children with learning disabilities here in Berbice. He was saying he was in awe of the teachers around here: many are young, fresh out of secondary school, underpaid and untrained. They do their best to make it up as they go along—it must be frustrating to do something as difficult as teach without proper experience.

His words rang true for more people than I think he knew. Our Guyanese friend shifted uneasily, subconsciously taking on a defensive posture. I thought of the Project Trust girls. I thought of myself. Even with my small amount of experience living on my own, I still feel lost most of the time. How could these girls be expected to cope with the stress? I thought of the word “help” on the wall of the kitchen. Help. Was it simply a joke, or did it mean something more? An outlet for frustration? A small act of retribution?

Laundry

“But the Christmas vacation was very far away: but one time it would come because the earth moved round the sun always.”

I’ve begun to read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce and this line struck a particular chord with me.

As of when I am writing this, the 13^th of September, it has been a month to the day since I arrived in Guyana. I can’t exactly say that time has flown, but it is hard for me to believe I’ve made it this far. The days here are very long; the sun rises early. I usually wake up at sunup, 6 AM, and must look for ways to fill my time until I can go to bed again. As a result, I have begun to take pleasure in performing what used to be time-consuming, mundane household tasks: cooking, cleaning the kitchen, sweeping the living room, etc. With my formerly busy schedule, I used to think of these responsibilities as a burden. Now, I am thankful for them.

Today I spent the afternoon doing laundry. Around here, not many people have washing machines, so they do their laundry in tubs in their yard. This is exactly how I do mine. Sitting on an overturned bucket by the spigot in my front yard, I scrub my laundry on a washboard, rinse it, wring it, and then hang it on the line. Because of the water shortage in Berbice, we only have running water at designated times during the day. I must race to get my laundry rinsed before the water is turned off again. As happens from time to time, long strips of ash from the leaves burned off the sugarcane floated over from the fields and came down like black snow as I worked. They landed in the washtub and clung to clothes on the line. By the time I finished today, I could barely lift my arms, but I enjoy being absorbed in the quiet comfort of manual labor.

As I washed clothes today, I reflected on what Caroline, Moses, and I did last night. We were supposed to meet a Peace Corps volunteer and her friends at a bar called Sher’s. The volunteer did not show up, but I did meet a few other people and learned a bit more about the local culture. In Trench Town Rock, Bob Marley croons, “One good thing about music is when it hits you, you feel no pain.” This is not the case in Guyanese bars—the music is played so loudly, it makes your ears ring and changes the rhythm of your heartbeat. I did not enjoy the bar atmosphere, but it was good for me to get out of the house. As much as I enjoy being domestic, I need to start making the rest of this town my home. It’s hard, but I need to remind myself that I’m going to be here a long time.
These are a couple of pictures of my shower. We deal with the water shortage by always keeping a few buckets filled and we deal with the constantly leaking shower by using the drips to fill the bucket. Pretty clever, eh?

I'm Magically Adapting

As a result of being a former British colony, Guyanese schools follow the British system. The students have a different schedule every day, which keeps life exciting for me. Until they get the timetable straightened out for the year, I won’t know for sure what I’m going to be teaching the next day.

Speaking of things being unpredictable, Caroline is a bit upset today. After almost two weeks of teaching at New Amsterdam Multilateral Secondary (NAMS), she was informed last night that since Berbice High School (BHS) had originally requested her, she is obligated to teach there. BHS decided this a day or so ago while making payroll arrangements for me. NAMS has already made a timetable for her in which she was scheduled for 36 out of the 40 weekly periods. Instead, she spent the day today in the BHS staffroom doing basically nothing. On the upside, I now have company and moral support at BHS. Another happy thing: I found out that I am going to get paid more than I had originally been told, about the equivalent of $300 US versus $225. Hooray! I need groceries.

I am beginning to understand how the Guyanese school system works overall, though I have to admit the only way I’ve been able to keep things straight is by drawing parallels to Harry Potter. Like Hogwart’s, Berbice High School is a secondary school, meaning the students begin at level seven and are called first-formers. The oldest students are in level 12 and are in the sixth form. The students wear uniforms and belong to houses with funny names; I have been assigned to Pugsley House. Also, like in Harry Potter, the houses compete against each other in sports. I don’t really know what else the houses are for, though, since the students don’t matriculate. The lab reminds me of the potions lab because in the stockroom there are many irregularly-shaped bottles filled with mystery liquids and in a nearby room are several jars with preserved animal specimens in them. One jar contains a human fetus and ovary from an aborted ectopic pregnancy. Unfortunately, unlike in Harry Potter, the students do not wear robes, cast magic spells, or fight evil wizards.

I finally learned my address:

New Amsterdam Multilateral Secondary School Compound
Cummingsville, New Amsterdam
Berbice, Guyana
South America

Apparently, it is very important that you specify South America, because there have been instances where things have been shipped to Ghana by mistake.

Greetings from Guyana!

For those of you who don’t know, I came here through the Harvard-based NGO WorldTeach. I will be here until July 2010 teaching biology and chemistry at Berbice High School in Region 6. I live in a house on the compound of New Amsterdam Multilateral Secondary School with two roommates: Moses and Caroline. They are from the Dominican Republic and Canada, respectively. There are six other WT volunteers placed in various locations throughout Guyana, all of whom were recruited to teach math and science at Guyanese secondary schools.

The reason we, and volunteers from many other organizations such as the Peace Corps, VSO, and Project Trust, are here is because of a severe teacher shortage in Guyana caused by teachers being lured away to other countries by higher wages.

I have been here approximately 24 days so far, but it feels like much longer. I am quickly finding out that this trip is not the idealized majestic and beautiful journey most would imagine. Instead, I am finding the stress of living abroad, which I knew was inevitable but thought I could easily handle, in fact, is very real. Despite the fact that I am able to keep in contact with home through readily available internet access at the internet café across the street, a luxury not enjoyed by many volunteers, I find I am missing family and friends much more than I expected. Luckily, whenever I begin to feel down, I am able to disappear into a book. So far, I have read Green City in the Sun, Notes from Underground, and am halfway through A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. By the end of the year I should be very well-read.

While the school year began on Tuesday and I have taught a few biology classes, I don’t have a set teaching schedule yet. Even though I am supposed to be the teacher, I find I am learning more than I expected—about myself. Up until this point, I was the student, which makes it difficult to switch suddenly to being in the position of authority. The chorus of “Good morning, Miss,” I am greeted with daily by the students makes me uncomfortable, as I am unaccustomed to so much formality. An additional challenge is the unexpected language barrier. Being of African, East Indian, Dutch, Portuguese, and Amerindian descent, the English of the students is colored by a unique accent I have never before encountered and often struggle with.

There are some bright spots. Walking down the street, I enjoy watching cows graze in ditches filled with pink water lilies the size of two outstretched hands. Though people have yelled “white girl” at me more than once, in general people have been very friendly and supportive. They are happy I am here to teach and consider it a great personal sacrifice.

Getting to learn my way around the market has been interesting. Moses, Caroline, and I explored it yesterday morning. There is ample fresh produce, which we have used to make some delicious dishes. I tried my hand at fried plantains last night and have decided they should be a regular part of my diet. Also, yesterday afternoon I bought a bicycle for $13,000 GD (about $70 US) to serve as my primary mode of transportation. It is a beautiful thing. When it comes time for me to leave, I look forward to giving it away.

I am something of a spectacle when I ride it. In addition to me being a small white girl in a black neighborhood, not many other people can afford such a nice bike. As I was riding it home for the first time, a woman yelled at me "Ride that bike, white girl!"