tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22100400316399625872024-03-14T04:46:16.790-07:00Hard CorpsA curated collection of hilarious, sad and completely unheroic Peace Corps storiesAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08306611902852202422noreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2210040031639962587.post-34475720420243959732013-11-21T03:26:00.002-08:002013-11-21T06:23:18.124-08:00On Kennedy, the Peace Corps, and a woman who was there<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> For work this week, I <a href="http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/229821/with-jfk50-the-dallas-morning-news-looks-back/" target="_blank">wrote about</a> the Dallas Morning News and their <a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/news/jfk50/" target="_blank">JFK50 project</a>, telling the story of Kennedy's assassination from the city where it took place and the journalists who covered it. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"> And in my reporting, I learned about Mary Woodward.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"> Her notes, and the notes of other reporters, photographers and staff, are now collected in a book, <a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/news/jfk50/explore/20130605-excerpt-from-jfk-assassination-the-reporters-notes.ece"><span class="s2">"JFK Assassination: The Reporters' Notes."</span></a> One of them was Woodward. The night before, she writes, she made sure to give herself a manicure.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"> "I knew the president wouldn’t see my hands reaching out from the crowd, but somehow I couldn’t bear the thought of going to cheer the president looking less than my best," her notes read <a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/news/jfk50/explore/20130605-excerpt-from-jfk-assassination-the-reporters-notes.ece"><span class="s2">from a June 5 piece</span></a>.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"> Woodward wrote this month about <a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/news/jfk50/reflect/20131116-witness-to-history-recounts-fateful-day-of-jfks-assassination.ece"><span class="s2">what happened next</span></a> for the Morning News. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"> "That particular Friday was Nov. 22, 1963, and on my 'extended' lunch break, while standing with three friends in front of the Texas School Book Depository, I witnessed (as the fifth-closest witness, according to an official source) the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy."</span></div>
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<span class="s1"> Woodward rushed back to the newsroom and wrote, what she called, the story of her life. And then, about one year later, she quit and joined the Peace Corps. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"> “I didn’t want my life to be over before I got the chance to do some of the things I never got to do,” said Pillsworth, 73, in a September 28th story about<span class="s2"><a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/news/jfk50/explore/20130928-covering-the-jfk-assassination-changed-the-careers-of-many-dallas-morning-news-journalists.ece"> </a><a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/news/jfk50/explore/20130928-covering-the-jfk-assassination-changed-the-careers-of-many-dallas-morning-news-journalists.ece" target="_blank">where the reporters who covered that day are no</a></span><a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/news/jfk50/explore/20130928-covering-the-jfk-assassination-changed-the-careers-of-many-dallas-morning-news-journalists.ece" target="_blank">w</a>. “I’d had a very sheltered life, and it just made such an effect on me in coming to grips with the reality on life.”</span></div>
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<span class="s1"> Pillsworth went to Brazil, met her husband, a fellow volunteer, and she continued being a journalist, starting a community newspaper, the story reports. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"> As the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination approaches, you can find a lot of great memories from people who were alive that day, including <a href="http://www.peacecorps.gov/volunteer/learn/whatlike/ownwords/8/"><span class="s2">this piece</span></a> from Peace Corps Worldwide's John Coyne, who was in service in Ethiopia. Coyne's also collecting and telling memories from other volunteers <a href="http://peacecorpsworldwide.org/babbles/2013/11/20/john-sherman/"><span class="s2">here</span></a>, and he writes about Kennedy and the start of the Peace Corps <a href="http://peacecorpsworldwide.org/babbles/2013/11/18/because-of-john-f-kennedy/"><span class="s2">here</span></a>.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"> That day in Dallas, writes Woodward, now Mary Woodward Pillsworth, she stayed to help translate for Spanish-speaking reporters.</span></div>
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"On my way to their home the next morning," she writes, "I took the dress I had worn that Friday to the cleaners. Strangely, I never picked it up."</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08306611902852202422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2210040031639962587.post-83714283302380975412013-11-06T05:14:00.000-08:002013-11-06T05:14:16.015-08:00Talking with Madeline in Kyrgyzstan<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4ZEcLCML4tv_UlPBd3ScmNG4fEl1XK7DlUSZenTxD0N7K6fqfSR1M-oJxO-EBQkPFa95Py1n9IY11D-BBQNtJi-vOtd4Dq6w3KXGGMyNdizhvCguLHG2pVbJlwuUGZ7TvF6FaJmVle_rj/s1600/madeline1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4ZEcLCML4tv_UlPBd3ScmNG4fEl1XK7DlUSZenTxD0N7K6fqfSR1M-oJxO-EBQkPFa95Py1n9IY11D-BBQNtJi-vOtd4Dq6w3KXGGMyNdizhvCguLHG2pVbJlwuUGZ7TvF6FaJmVle_rj/s640/madeline1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by Madeline Stoddard, Kyrgyzstan</td></tr>
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by Kristen Hare, Guyana, 2000-2002</span></div>
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<span class="s1"> Madeline Stoddard starts a recent <a href="http://maddiejane.wordpress.com/blog/"><span class="s2">blog post </span></a>with the above photo, and this: "My <a href="https://twitter.com/maddiejane/status/391783540557246464"><span class="s2">six-month mark</span></a> passed with little fanfare, many shots of vodka, and a reminder that my time here is moving much more quickly than I could have imagined."</span></div>
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<span class="s1"> During the start of the government shutdown, I shared Madeline's blog and her thoughts about the experience from a Peace Corps Volunteer's point of view. And I snooped around. In that snooping, I discovered some vivid writing, stunning photos and a video that took me into a yurt. After sharing one of her pieces a few weeks ago, I asked Madeline if she'd talk with me about her experience. She's the first volunteer featured here who is still in country. Via e-mail we talked about the role technology is playing in her experience, why she joined, and where she thinks she might be when this all ends. All the photos here, by the way, are hers.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b>KH: </b>You have had a ton of adventures already, from working for the president's reelection campaign to working as an admissions officer in Cairo to interning with the State Department in Syria. Why did you join the Peace Corps?</span></div>
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<b>MS:</b> I’ve talked a lot about my reasons for joining the Peace Corps – from the professional opportunities it provides, the desire for adventure that lives within, I think, all people, even my naive idea that I might that I might still <a href="http://maddiejane.wordpress.com/2011/06/07/big-news-part-ii/"><span class="s2">become a princess</span></a> – but what it really comes down to is this: this is a way that I can serve my country. I have been incredibly lucky to have been given so many opportunities in my life, and this a way that I can not only give back, but also explore my interests in community development, empowerment, and engagement.<span class="s1"></span></div>
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<span class="s1"> I am a big believer in the idea that those who truly love their country will work hard to improve it, and my hope is by empowering and developing countries in my service, I will be better equipped to do so when I return to the States. Peace Corps is my way to do that, and it is incredible to think about joining this legacy of over 50 years of individuals dedicated to their idea of service. Peace Corps is an amazing opportunity; no other organization offers an experience with so much support and training and investment in their volunteers, but also allowing your two years to be incredibly individual, so much about your community and your understanding of what progress means for your site and yourself. It is a challenge to be the best version of yourself, but also to find new pieces of yourself along the way. That’s why I joined – to be challenged and to serve my country in a way that makes sense with who I am as an individual. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b>KH:</b> How have your experiences in Kyrgyzstan compared with the other places you've traveled and lived?</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b>MS:</b> Obviously, every place is different – you see inescapable similarities and glaring differences everywhere. Not just the physical structures that exist, but the person you are when you see them. Like reading really good books, each place is experienced through some moment in your life where different things resonate, different things come to the forefront that you might not have even noticed as a young kid wandering around Northern India or a college student getting lost in Cairo’s markets. It’s part of what I love about traveling and living abroad, and I remind myself how lucky I am to be able to do so through the Peace Corps.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"> I think the starkest difference for my life in Kyrgyzstan is a control over the language, which despite my many attempts, never got to this level living anywhere else. And although I speak Russian and not Kyrgyz, I find myself able to connect more as a member of the community, although my foreign Americanness always seems to shine through in my interactions with others.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"> Kyrgyzstan is beautiful and almost ahistorical – not that it lacks a history, but that it actively tries to live within this history of what used to be true here while struggling to become this modern, technological society. There is this inherent contradiction in things like the education system – an incredibly well-preserved monument to Kyrgyzstan’s Soviet roots and frustratingly resistant to change – that asks donors (and volunteers) for new computers and technology, but does not know how to teach their students, or their teachers, to use them. (In fact, most volunteers describe immaculate technology rooms in their schools that are padlocked and unused, except as bragging rights against other schools in their community or region.) There is this huge rift between urban Kyrgyzstan and rural Kyrgyzstan, which is true in other places that I have lived, but I had never experienced it as intimately as I do here. You can drive through the country and see these crumbling edifices of Soviet rule – Lenin statues with their hands stretched forth, long barracks provided for now-defunct shoe leather and car part factories – which is something I have never seen before, all this infrastructure crumbling or held together with (in some cases literal) duct tape. There is the city center, and there is everything else, and village life here exists in a way that we don’t ever see in the US.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"> There are all these great contradictions in Kyrgyzstan, to the point that they are humorous and often endearing. Kyrgyzstan is incredibly beautiful – 80% of this country is some form of mountain, and the people here build their lives around hospitality towards others, despite the harshness of the climate and the vodka. In part, the contrasts that the country provides make that beauty and hospitality more transformative, more breathtaking. I can walk home and be surprised by the view of mountain ranges shining between buildings (but only if the smog clears for the day), or stumble upon unique pieces of history masked by new construction sites and 24-hour cafés. It’s all just a subtle reminder to keep looking and challenging yourself to see something new each time. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b>KH:</b> Your blog has all these wonderful pieces of your life there, from gorgeous portraits to essays and videos, but also your own social commentary on what's happening back home, such as the shutdown or the Trayvon Martin case, and issues you're discovering in Kyrgyzstan, such as bride kidnapping. Do people in your community have access to the internet, and do you know if they ever read what you're writing? One of the interesting things that's happened over time is we're seeing much more into the lives of volunteers through their own blogs, and I've wondered if their communities are tuned in to them.</span></div>
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<b>MS: </b>I think Peace Corps service has changed drastically with the level of internet penetration in the communities in which the majority of volunteers serve. We have this level of connection with home and the things going on there that is unprecedented, and offers so many opportunities to understand our service in context of something bigger. I am interested in policy, public service, and communities – so I can reflect on my ideas about all of those things as I experience them here and understand them from home. Whenever I am writing, I try to keep in mind what I would want to be reading, and I never wanted to have it be this daily rundown of “I did this, and then I did this and it was sooo interesting.” My generation has kind of been pegged with this oversharing obnoxiousness that I am always uncomfortable with (but admittedly sometimes play into) and I wanted to talk more about my experience holistically. Articulating that experience in context – of being an American abroad, about serving my country, learning about myself and this new community every day, and being able to communicate what I learn to open up Kyrgyzstan to the rest of the world – is as much a tool for me to make sense of my service as it is for updating people on what my life is like here.</div>
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<span class="s1"> Often, I don’t feel like I have anything really interesting to write about. There is this trap that exists when you talk about living abroad to someone back home. For the most part, your life here is just as mundane as anywhere – you get up, you drink a cup of coffee with breakfast, you go to work, you go to the market, you drink beer with your friends, you walk in your city’s parks, you think about bills or what is happening in the news or what you will make for dinner tomorrow – so much of it seems commonplace. You can sometimes slip out of it and forget you live somewhere entirely different. Except, perhaps, when you take a marshrutka (a local mini-bus) to work and have to share your seat with a sheep. It’s moments like that you realize, right – maybe I do have something to talk about.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"> Because I live in Kyrgyzstan’s capital, there is a pretty high level of internet access. It’s all relatively new; smartphones, internet clubs, and free wifi in cafés have grown exponentially in the past couple of years. Outside of Bishkek, I think that is less true – the villages and farther-flung oblasts are still newcomers to the internet party. I don’t know how much of our blogs as volunteers get out to Kyrgyz people, although I know Peace Corps host country staff regularly reads them. I think an equally large issue, beyond internet penetration in Kyrgyzstan, is the level of English language knowledge. Learning English is a big thing here, both as a marker of social status and an investment in economic opportunity, but is fairly limited and only really a hallmark of post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. And, as with most Post-Soviet Central Asia, there is a push to reduce Russian influence, including language. The internet, egalitarian and magical as it may be, is not really set-up for Kyrgyz speakers. So many of the resources on the internet are predominantly in English, not to mention almost every volunteer’s blog being exclusively in English, I’m not sure how much of it is read and absorbed by our communities. I think it’s definitely an interesting conversation to have, and a question that I plan to ask other volunteers. And maybe, over the next two years of my service, that will change dramatically. We’ll see.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"> What has been really interesting is insight into other volunteer’s experiences, both in Kyrgyzstan and in the 76 other countries where Peace Corps serves. It’s another opportunity to put my service in context, and offers new perspectives on challenges I am facing here. I’ve even been working on developing a potential project based on a project launched by Peace Corps volunteers in Nicaragua, sharing their project on a blog and being able to email them and ask a questions about it. I think if it were even 10 years ago, this type of conversation would be close to impossible, and it all comes down to being able to share our experiences and build this sense of online community as we are building community at site. It is exciting to think about the opportunities that that will provide for future volunteers. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b>KH:</b> So you're still there, and you're actually the first volunteer I've gotten to work with for Hard Corps who's currently in service. When do you come home, and what's next for you when that happens?</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b>MS:</b> My service won’t end until Summer of 2015, but I’ve already hit the six-month mark, and that date seems to be looming much closer than I thought it would be at this point. I think the biggest hallmark of Peace Corps service is time on your own to think – about your experience, about what it means to be a part of this organization and this community, and how to build the next steps of your life on your two years of service. I feel like its an ever-present conversation that goes on somewhere in my mind, “what’s next?” And the honest answer is, I’m not entirely sure. Everything depends on the opportunities that emerge over the next few years, and whether I am brave enough to take them or if they make sense at the time. I like being challenged and discovering new things, which sometimes leads to me doing a lot of different things, or moving around a lot. My two years living in Kyrgyzstan will be the longest I have lived in any one place since I started university in 2006, and, in all honesty, was one of my biggest concerns about committing to service.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"> I have looked at going back to school, most likely for a program that continues to allow me to investigate ways to engage communities with the policy process. I’ve also looked at careers with USAID, with the State Department, and other multinational organizations, as well as considered working with another political campaign. I’m most interested in the intersection of public engagement and policy development and implementation, so any chance I could build a career around that would be an incredible opportunity. But if, in the meantime, someone offered me a chance to travel more, take pictures, try new things, and write about it – I most certainly would not turn them down.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b>KH:</b> It's probably hard to say, since you're still in the middle of this experience, but what are the things you'll take away with you after this -- moments, changes in who you are or how you see things, even physical things. What are you bringing back here?</span><br />
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<span class="s1"><b>MS:</b> It is so early to think about bringing things back, but I imagine it will be a hefty balance of personal and professional. I hope to explore new approaches to problem solving, a pretty consistent part of my service, as well as practical experience from the work that I am doing. I also expect that the way I communicate ideas will be affected, not just in a new language, but in a different ways, with different audiences, and through different mediums. I hope to come back with enough stories to annoy friends and family with for the foreseeable future that all start with, “Well, when I was in the Peace Corps…”</span></div>
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<span class="s1"> I think some things are unavoidable to bring back, like a newfound respect for showers and effective use of turn signals and the glory that is hot sauce, but also being able to put your experience in context and perspective to what you want to do next – whether that is business or journalism or public service or teaching. There is this big misconception about Peace Corps service, I think, that volunteers are out there building schools and taking care of adorable, foreign-looking children in rural clinics – and while that might certainly be true in some volunteers’ experiences – but so much about being a volunteer is empowering others with new skills and new ideas to take on the challenges in their own communities and building partnerships to make those changes sustainable. That is the kind of approach to problems I want to have – how do we get others to recognize and realize their potential? How can I encourage individuals or groups with similar interests to work together to create something better?</span></div>
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<span class="s1"> And, of course, the relationships I am building here I hope can transcend the distance of going home. I want to be able to talk to my host family as my host brothers grow up and get married and have kids. I want to be able to witness my fellow volunteers doing great things, which I am certain they will. I want to know that my time mattered here, that I have learned something valuable, and that I have left something more significant and tangible than memories behind. </span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08306611902852202422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2210040031639962587.post-20207029261667417522013-10-23T08:07:00.002-07:002013-10-23T08:07:29.405-07:00Last day of teaching...<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPU3QBCrWzPaSwu91Hb4sYY5OsFSZkMSl-Tpq6V1NqtJBuJgIUQ-0R-PCeSmMkFO-0-Po2LG78LFcD804sFqoabCKaMU8j4HwxkzVdnZbq1IUrIdJmWj7OYMz5WnPzlsWOD6XPK-ME1Oek/s1600/jc.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPU3QBCrWzPaSwu91Hb4sYY5OsFSZkMSl-Tpq6V1NqtJBuJgIUQ-0R-PCeSmMkFO-0-Po2LG78LFcD804sFqoabCKaMU8j4HwxkzVdnZbq1IUrIdJmWj7OYMz5WnPzlsWOD6XPK-ME1Oek/s640/jc.JPG" width="392" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Guyana, by Kristen Hare</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
by Kristen Hare, Guyana, 2000-2002<br />
... and a student comes up to me and says the following:<br />
"Miss, Mommy says if you could please marry Daddy and take him back to America with you?"<br />
I gently told her no in about 17 different ways.<br />
Still, she seemed surprised.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08306611902852202422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2210040031639962587.post-18896701276430163462013-10-16T03:03:00.000-07:002013-10-16T03:03:43.979-07:00The two-year summer<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV0Orszj-15_DvICQGAtHo_KDX0caaWuHrw6o_hO7YS9oWeJ7luLCYT5gpy4PIy_FEQgMgmJoyjPiOZ0Ubh0qG2uyY17rwFW6-GSYpJAnyWZQkiJY4uQan0hH3yZFsniuFLh_hEWvzkdW3/s1600/guyana.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV0Orszj-15_DvICQGAtHo_KDX0caaWuHrw6o_hO7YS9oWeJ7luLCYT5gpy4PIy_FEQgMgmJoyjPiOZ0Ubh0qG2uyY17rwFW6-GSYpJAnyWZQkiJY4uQan0hH3yZFsniuFLh_hEWvzkdW3/s640/guyana.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Guyana, by Kristen Hare</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
by Kristen Hare, Guyana, 2000-2002</div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> It’s Sunday. It’s hot. My fan blows directly on me. The sun hangs heavy in the sky today. There is no promise of rain. I woke at 5:30 and fought with sleep again until 8. I swept and made some toast. I went to market. I waited for my mom’s Sunday call. I made lunch. Took a nap. At five, I will go on a walk. Come home. Shower. Watch the news. Cook dinner. Go to bed. It’s Sunday.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> Each day passes here with eerie regularity. I work, take care of myself, sleep and eat. It’s slow. It’s hot. I do not notice the time passing.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> This is life without seasons, one steamy day into the next, one smear of sweat that stretches through days, then weeks, then months.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> I’ll probably be the only one to celebrate American Thanksgiving on Guyana’s Essequibo Coast and plan to dine on duck curry. A local night club recently advertised a “Thanksgiving Feast and Grand Dance,” with stuffed turkey and sweet and sour chicken. I am tempted.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> The minibus drivers have begun playing reggae Christmas songs already, and it’s too early, I protest in my head on each ride. It doesn’t feel like November. It’s not nearly winter. It’s just hot.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> So far, this has been the longest summer of my life.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> I have forgotten what seasons feel like, forgotten how they measure time. A friend who works for the American Embassy told me of the Barney Halloween video her mother-in-law sent for Kelly, a 3-year-old. Barney crooned about the colors of the leaves in autumn, and when the video finished, Kelly turned to her father and said, “Daddy, can you buy me some autumn?”</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> Unlike that little girl, I’ve lived through seasons all my life. Until I came here. Now, the differences are slight. Are mangos in season? Is it time to harvest the endless fields of rice? Will rain fall soon?</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> Here, life is sweat, work, eat, rinse and repeat.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> Here, I have postcard sunsets, cool, rainy nights, and a breeze that is sometimes benevolent enough to circle my house. The day is framed by the open, wide sky, and tiny frogs sing lover’s songs to each other all night. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> It’s all making me forget that there’s any time but summer, and any place in the world for me but here.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> On a walk last Sunday, I wandered onto a dusty road that was being paved, newly covered with a white, powdery sand. It hurt my eyes for a moment, glowing brightly ahead for half a mile. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> “Miss,” my walking partner and young student asked, “is this what winter looks like?”</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> I nodded. I tried to explain snow days, snow boots and snow angels. I nearly plopped down on that road to flap and flutter in the white dust. My student chattered on, musing about a season and a chill she’d probably never feel. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> For a second, I stopped and looked back at the faux snow.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
Then, sighing with some feeling that hoovers between content and discontent, I trudged back home, sweating all the way. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08306611902852202422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2210040031639962587.post-12594454109670383672013-10-09T05:29:00.000-07:002013-10-09T05:29:03.780-07:00The Road to Toktogul<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7TImgdE6TqAZTvpL2kkyKehRFYBrQwVm_7Tl17mC-uIYxoh6AVlbqKvXIbfJypev6zs1oPpHtl7lE6IgLw3xubpdeX0sAbwp__Va6Cnzoo8hoFv0eCFqhyphenhyphenZD91nRK3pHIoso2RS98kDol/s1600/madeline1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="478" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7TImgdE6TqAZTvpL2kkyKehRFYBrQwVm_7Tl17mC-uIYxoh6AVlbqKvXIbfJypev6zs1oPpHtl7lE6IgLw3xubpdeX0sAbwp__Va6Cnzoo8hoFv0eCFqhyphenhyphenZD91nRK3pHIoso2RS98kDol/s640/madeline1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kyrgyzstan, photo by Madeline Stoddart</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
by <a href="http://maddiejane.wordpress.com/blog/" target="_blank">Madeline Stoddart</a>, <a href="http://kyrgyz.peacecorps.gov/" target="_blank">Kyrgyzstan</a><br />
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> The road to Toktogul begins hot and flat out of Chui, and then suddenly you begin to climb. First through the green and purple folds of mountains around the silverwhite seam of the Kara-Balta river. The edges of the mountains are rough-hemmed by the closeness of the clouds that begin to collect in droplets on the windows.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> As you weave back and forth between the mountains and clouds, you reach an apex and begin a steep and curvy descent. And suddenly, the sun breaks on the west side of the mountains, and you can see the brilliance of Kyrgyzstan for miles and miles.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> Our driver, Talai-Baike, would click his lighter and fill the car with the crisp, sharp smell of freshly-lit tobacco, holding cigarettes between the gap of his teeth and sparkling gold molars, letting the smoke be pulled from through the open window, blooming indistinguishable from the clouds crowning the mountains.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> Occasionally, he would call back in Kyrgyz, asking questions and telling jokes to <a href="http://maximilianbulkington.wordpress.com/"><span class="s2">Max</span></a>, our only Kyrgyz-speaking travel companion. Would we stop for kymyz, the traditional fermented mare’s milk that was served in yurts lining the road? Where did we work? Why had we come to Kyrgyzstan? Would Max play a song on the mandolin that bounced around on top of the luggage in the back?</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">Our car became a moving concert, songs spilled out in English, Russian Kyrgyz. Talai-Baike insisted on stopping for kymyz, bartering Max’s singing for free bowls of the sour, slightly carbonated, slightly alcoholic drink.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> The insides of yurts are all primary colors, dark and full of the smell of Kyrgyz mountains. Everything is slowed down inside of them, as if they prescribed to Kundera’s idea of slowness and memory. <a href="http://maximilianbulkington.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Max</a> tuned his mandolin, Sara and I sipped kymyz, and Talai-Baike convinced our host that simple songs could pay for our drinks and our time in her yurt. And then, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btFiGFpp_zM"><span class="s2">the music</span></a>.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> As we climbed back into the car from the roadside yurt, among laughter and astonishment that yes, this is what our lives look like when we are surrounded by the mountains of this country, Max said, “This is the best taxi."</span></div>
<div class="p2" style="text-align: start;">
<span style="text-align: center;"> Talai-Baike answered, “No,” thoughtfully shaking his head. “It’s the people in the car.”</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> After following the fork south, you see Toktogul breaking on through the hills, all cornfields and mountains and clouds. The deep blue of the lake, hiding Old Toktogul in its depths, amplifies the mountains that surround the city, isolating itself from both the hot south of Jalal-Abad and the desolate north of Talas.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> Even through car window’s and the steep, poorly-paved curves, you can tell that Toktogul is beholden to this magical sort of light that filters through the birches lining Lenin Street or casts the surface of the lake in sparkling, blue gemstones.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
It’s the crashing of a million moments and colors together, and it hits you on the road to Toktogul.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<h3>
<span class="s1"><i>This essay originally ran on Madeline's <a href="http://maddiejane.wordpress.com/about/" target="_blank">blog</a> and was used here with her permission. Check out her blog for more of her <a href="http://maddiejane.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/all-good-marriages-begin-in-tears/#more-2272" target="_blank">stories</a>, <a href="http://maddiejane.wordpress.com/2013/09/17/kyrgyz-portraits-cholpon/" target="_blank">photography</a> and <a href="http://maddiejane.wordpress.com/2013/06/15/usen-part-ii-serenading/" target="_blank">videos</a>. </i></span></h3>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08306611902852202422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2210040031639962587.post-87299750629697196342013-10-02T06:34:00.002-07:002013-10-02T06:34:21.872-07:00The shutdown...<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Going to pause this week from storytelling to share some links out there explaining how the government shutdown impacts the Peace Corps.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">-- <a href="http://www.peacecorpsconnect.org/"><span class="s2">The National Peace Corps Association </span></a>is doing a great job covering this, and they shared <a href="http://www.peacecorpsconnect.org/2011/04/peace-corps-prepares-for-shutdown/"><span class="s2">this</span></a> piece from 2011, looking at how that then-looming shutdown would impact volunteers.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">-- <a href="https://www.facebook.com/peacecorpshandbook"><span class="s2">Unofficial Peace Corps Handbook</span></a> also shared this posting from Peace Corps <a href="https://www.facebook.com/peacecorps/posts/10151804814255914"><span class="s2">Facebook page</span></a>: "Apologies, but we will not be posting updates or responding to comments during the government shutdown. All overseas Peace Corps operations are continuing without interruption to ensure the ongoing health, safety and security of Volunteers and the protection of property."</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">-- <a href="http://files.peacecorps.gov/multimedia/pdf/documents/Peace_Corps_Operations_Plan_in_the_Absence_of_Appropriations.pdf"><span class="s2">Here's</span></a> Peace Corps' actual plan in case of a government shutdown.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">-- And CNN shares <a href="http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2013/09/politics/government-shutdown-impact/"><span class="s2">this</span></a> full chart of who's impacted, with a quote saying that Peace Corps abroad is generally OK, but staff in this country are furloughed. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
</div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s3">-- Finally, one volunteer in Kyrgyzstan breaks down what it's like to be in service and watching all this from the sidelines <a href="http://maddiejane.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/what-a-peace-corps-volunteer-learns-from-a-potential-government-shutdown/"><span class="s2">here</span></a>: "</span><span class="s1">For the Peace Corps, that means hundreds of potential recruits who will have to wait longer for their process to continue, contributing to a higher drop-out rate of potential volunteers. New trainees will have to wait longer to begin their service. It means suspending new training for volunteers and staff that will make programs more effective or transitioning to evaluations-based development interventions. It means trying to explain over a chai break at my office why one of the most influential governments in the world can’t even keep its doors open."</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08306611902852202422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2210040031639962587.post-36181537827642469382013-09-25T05:11:00.000-07:002013-09-25T05:11:03.520-07:00This picture makes me happy<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzuW8VWjn8c9GQr6qw1iunUT_dvsww58-jXz-QyQ_wPBPeji1h2XyInXgz-T7rlY-rBbR6LWHVlCwkDlMopg9l8S98qsmZrLMwj2nb70z0Q2Mbjnp8TyMzmB1C-bypNC1FfLlQu1l6zoYw/s1600/dealornodeal.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzuW8VWjn8c9GQr6qw1iunUT_dvsww58-jXz-QyQ_wPBPeji1h2XyInXgz-T7rlY-rBbR6LWHVlCwkDlMopg9l8S98qsmZrLMwj2nb70z0Q2Mbjnp8TyMzmB1C-bypNC1FfLlQu1l6zoYw/s1600/dealornodeal.JPG" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Guyana, photo by Katie Watkins</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Guyana was fun in so many ways because it's an English-speaking country, but so much still gets lost in cultural translations. I think this photo from <a href="http://www.hard-corps.blogspot.com/2013/09/katies-story-part-3-returning-to-guyana.html" target="_blank">Katie</a> <a href="http://www.hard-corps.blogspot.com/2013/09/katies-story-part-2-almost-perfect-end.html" target="_blank">Watkins</a> proves that.<br />
When I lived in Guyana, "Thong Song" came out. Guyanese don't pronounce the "th" sound, so I'd often hear people walking around singing "tong, ta-tong, tong, tong." Gave that ridiculous song a whole new level of joy for me. Thanks for sharing, Katie!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08306611902852202422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2210040031639962587.post-63586749631704781732013-09-20T05:45:00.000-07:002013-09-20T05:45:06.948-07:00Katie's story, part 3: Returning to Guyana<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6kCyOA_9bRWJFSVAUUoutcURTNwN-5TQgFeTHc1aHp0kirzDpIrBj5H7xYqxVIxsa9P838Y2xOc98BlnQkNcTjmPYU7Q8VOyZwioOrdYNfY_KWLk02nPCRGRqMr3bqt_Io7Q1zcmqpmen/s1600/katierun.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6kCyOA_9bRWJFSVAUUoutcURTNwN-5TQgFeTHc1aHp0kirzDpIrBj5H7xYqxVIxsa9P838Y2xOc98BlnQkNcTjmPYU7Q8VOyZwioOrdYNfY_KWLk02nPCRGRqMr3bqt_Io7Q1zcmqpmen/s640/katierun.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Katie Watkins in Guyana</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
By Katie Watkins, Guyana, 2006-2008<br />
<br />
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> It wasn’t the memory, but the ache of what I had already forgotten that tugged me back there. They were details that had at first seemed insignificant. The bread recipe I could throw together without a recipe or measuring cups. The name of the waterfalls where we had spent Christmas, the first time a place had literally taken my breath away. The days and times of “Big Belly Clinic,” the Maternal and Child Health Center where I had spent so many mornings weighing miserable swollen-toed mothers, and later, their gorgeous, naked, peeing babies. Every now and then though, I’d get a tiny glimpse, a quick flash I just couldn’t place. They weren’t exactly memories; they were incomplete scenes, blurred smears of color. Just enough to bring me back for a second, but not long enough to really remember. The triggers were random and simple. The smell of minced garlic sizzling in hot oil. The sound of giggling children. The tiny splat of blood left from a mosquito swatted an instant too late. Brief, unexpected surges from the past, fleeting as quickly as they came. I grew to appreciate them as gifts, little reminders of a place where I knew had been, but that now felt so distant. And then I wanted more. I wanted to feel all that I had not been able to take in before. Dissociation, I learned, is not a selective skill. In the process of numbing myself to all the pain I saw in Guyana, I had also muted the pleasure. I felt pick-pocketed of innocent, untainted, simple joy. And I wanted it back. I wanted to see for myself that while the horror I had witnessed was part of my experience in Guyana, it was not all of Guyana, and I did not have to let it define my experience. I wanted to make some new memories, and fill in the blanks of those that seemed so fuzzy. And I knew I could only do this by going back.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> <b><span style="font-size: large;">There</span></b> was one major rule I set for myself when planning my trip: I would go as a visitor. This was my watered-down word for what I really was: a tourist. I shuddered when I pictured the bright orange, moisture-wicking, SPF-polyester-clad “churchies” I remembered seeing outside of the bank one day. We had been thoroughly entertained by their fanny packs and battery-powered misting fans, convinced that we would never look so out of place. But this time needed to be different, for my safety and my sanity. This time I would not “fight up” or “take on stress.” I would let our Georgetown host family pick me up at the airport, even though my flight would arrive late at night, long after Jeannette would normally send Buddy downstairs to dead bolt the door. I would not bicker with the speed boat man who would raise my fare because “da fuel cost more,” even though I knew I was falling for the “white girl price hike.” I would do all the things I had obstinately refused to do before, when I had believed so strongly that these were luxuries of a vacationer, not habits of someone who belonged. I would let the pushy bus touts carry my backpack in exchange for a couple bucks. I would give in when Jeannette insisted that she hand wash my clothes when I stayed with her family, knowing I was needlessly adding to her endless pile of laundry. I would accept the offers to be escorted to the internet café so that I would not have to brave the walk alone. I would guiltlessly accept every carbohydrate offered me, though I cringed at the imbalance of chow-mein noodles served with white potatoes, atop a bed of white rice. I would stay only with families, and would follow their rules, however confining and silly it seemed for a grown woman to be home by the 6 p.m. sunset. This time, I was not going with the intention to volunteer, to serve, to educate, to motivate, mobilize, empower, organize, or any of those ridiculous buzz words that had littered my resume post-Peace Corps. This time I was going, as they say in Guyana, “for a walk.” I was going to witness. I wanted to see, hear, taste and feel everything. For five and a half weeks, I would take in as much Guyana as I could bear, until I couldn’t eat another bite of channah, until the sound of braying donkeys no longer made me laugh, until I forgot what it was like to feel cold. I wanted to be sick of Guyana. And then I could go home, my mind crammed with images so vivid they would be indelible. This time I would not forget.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGxsydM164RNmUv0TgzY-xkDChgzgNDCm-93mTXBAYWr4JzteVGMYAyga7fNK521IS0ZhCNzSQUHlsKiM69RFl_UrL_Jp6gUc1sT7X4zyzjU-FswTNLEOQImd_d6NAfyup4dvM60I7Pg_c/s1600/katie4.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGxsydM164RNmUv0TgzY-xkDChgzgNDCm-93mTXBAYWr4JzteVGMYAyga7fNK521IS0ZhCNzSQUHlsKiM69RFl_UrL_Jp6gUc1sT7X4zyzjU-FswTNLEOQImd_d6NAfyup4dvM60I7Pg_c/s640/katie4.JPG" width="426" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by Katie Watkins</td></tr>
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<div class="p1">
<i> Paul,</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i> The whole fam came late at night to pick me up from the airport-7 in a car for 5, and it felt like we could fit a couple more. Jeanette made pizza, a midnight snack, if you will. You might remember Jeanette's pizza--ketchup, carrot, hot dog (chicken sausage), bbq sauce...no canned tuna, this time. She said she wished you were here because she knows her pizza is your favorite. I didn’t have the heart to tell her it actually made you gag. We’ll have to brainstorm a way to dissuade Jeannette from packing more pizza and fish in my luggage for you. “Kay-tee, we guh ting it up nice nice so it nah’ spile, you’ll see!” Once recovered from the specialty pizza, I've eaten amazing things I forgot I missed so much: dahl and roti, fry fish, bora, calaloo and shrimp...and you know about the rice. This morning, Jeanette woke me up at 4:30 to go to the market "before the place get bright n' sell out, you know." You could probably imagine the look she gave me when I suggested maybe we delay the trip an hour so we could "get a little exercisin' before the sun get hot, en?" The same look I get when I try to pay for things or wash my own wares. It was fun to see the market again. Starbroek is so much less scary now with someone to "make sure dem boys ain' trouble she." I'm excited for pumpkin n' roti. And I keep smiling when I think of Jeanette telling the young Indian boy with a flirty smile, "Give me a nice piece, now. Me wan' one like you."</i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>It took me all of an hour to adjust to Guyanese life. Eat, rest in hammock, bathe to cool off and jus’ for fun, read, eat, hammock, play Memory and Connect 4 with chirren, eat, bathe, gaff, bed. It feels good to have Jeanette for an extra boost of protection. Today a man wandered up to the house selling mango (50 cents for a bag of 7) and got nosy and asked my name. Jeanette says, "Man, you ain' need to know nothin'. You come for sell mango, and not for nuttin’ else. Guh long, bai!" She bought the mangoes then, saying, "Here, Subrina, take these for Kaytee now." Then the man walked off, mumbling, "me make a great husband you know…could make nuf' chirren fuh you." Jeanette sucked her teeth, shooed him away and said, "You ain gettin nothin bai, but a good lash!" I told Jeanette I wished she could be with me all the time to ward off harassers. She said in her soft, soothing voice, "Yes, Katty. I would come with you. Good."</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>Before I left for the internet cafe, Jeanette reminded me, "Kay-tee when you come back, I guh fix da bora fuh you now. I get the roti kneadin’ already." I told her she doesn't give me a chance to get hungry before feeding me again. And of course I contradict my statements, bragging on her to Buddy, "mus' carry Jeanette for compete in cookin' contest. She could win nuf' money, man." Buddy blushes, of course. "Only last week, he tell me my rice taste dry, Kaytee. I tell he, ‘well then trow some watah pon' it!’"</i></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidBgKfuCTusQ9_7Loci5DbqEGE0m_QVVq1l4_hmx_c6tUtGyRKRqlLllXznPBlkF3RC74KciUKQyF1wOTtqOmrGwf_ZZKy5_ENQYbksDC-vBiyGi5eGvAlAPUWvuvjQ9ufmyiw4LJxahDz/s1600/bartica3.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidBgKfuCTusQ9_7Loci5DbqEGE0m_QVVq1l4_hmx_c6tUtGyRKRqlLllXznPBlkF3RC74KciUKQyF1wOTtqOmrGwf_ZZKy5_ENQYbksDC-vBiyGi5eGvAlAPUWvuvjQ9ufmyiw4LJxahDz/s640/bartica3.JPG" width="426" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by Katie Watkins</td></tr>
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<span class="s1"></span></div>
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<span class="s1"></span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1"></span></div>
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<span class="s1"> <b><span style="font-size: large;">I’d</span></b> be lying if I said the entire trip has been packed with all the whimsical pleasures I’ve been daydreaming about for the past three years. Maybe it’s the dissonance of Guyana that makes me feel such conflict. Guyana is a place of two worlds: unparalleled joy and incomprehensible horror. The beauty is almost unbearable sometimes. And then I get my ass kicked with the reality of the other part. The paradox is most acute now that I am back in Bartica. Everyone I see says, “Bartica get built up since you been here, white gyal, en?” On the surface, they are right. With gold prices at a record high, Bartica is booming. The roads are finally paved, the need to accommodate the influx of new (and dangerously inexperienced) drivers likely the impetus. Owning a car is not quite so extraordinary, but still worth flaunting, at least a little bit. Our old neighbor, Dotsie, drives her shiny Camry to her job in the malaria department, though she lives around the corner in the hospital compound. Smart phones have made their way to the hands of the teenage hipsters. A sign towers outside of Dino’s Supermarket, reading, “Times Square,” the new nickname brought back with Dino from his recent trip to the U.S. It seems that almost everyone has a hand in gold mining in some capacity, and there is no better time to have a stake in the business. But behind the fancy cars and the flashy jeans and the new oversized cement mansions, the strife imbedded in this place is still palpable. Yes, there is beauty and love and a genuine peace that I can feel, but cannot describe. And there is violence and crime and corruption and pain. And this time, without making excuses, or justifying, minimizing, romanticizing, or pretending, I am taking a long hard look. I am seeing Guyana for all that it is. Truth is exhilarating. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"></span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1"></span></div>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">The</span></b> rain comes hard and sudden. I rush to close the windows and the door to the veranda, the wind fighting my efforts, pushing against my palms. A little more time here and I would have sensed it coming, an affinity people here must learn from birth. It is a certain feeling, a way the palm branches sway, a steady change in temperature, the heat rising to such a level that something has to give. The sky steams and then simmers, a pressure cooker finally releasing its frustration all at once. These are not thunderstorms really, although a rumble of thunder might be heard in the background. I always think it strange to hear thunder without lightning, almost bracing myself for a flash to paint the sky. Instead it is just water, clear and fierce and abundant.<br />
<div class="p6">
<span class="s1"> I love these showers, safe and sheltered, the thrill of making it home just in time to watch it fall from my spot by the window. To me, the rain never becomes routine, always a relief, a gift. This might happen several times in one day, especially in the May-June rainy season. This year it seems that July has been added to the season; I'm not sure there has been one day without rain. But then again, even in "dry" months "yuh get rain." After all, this is the rain forest we are in, despite the efforts of many to replace the lush green canopy with roughly paved roads and cell phone satellites and stilted wooden houses. After all, rain is what this forest does best.<br /> At last it subsides, having dumped more in 30 minutes than would trickle in an entire day elsewhere. The breeze gentle again, the sky whispers a quiet sigh. The roosters get back to their crowing and squawking, burying themselves in the wet saw dust. Truck engines re-ignite and continue their business, their drivers thankful that anything of importance was inside the vehicle. The high pitch of Hindi music re-enters the atmosphere and school uniforms can be re-pinned on the line between the house and the mango tree.<br /> It is this rain that I cherish. A rain that sends a chill through my bones and washes clean any resentment and rage that has built itself in my thoughts. A rain that reminds me no matter how hot and wrenching this place may feel, jus' now yuh get rain.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08306611902852202422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2210040031639962587.post-60103749823123828082013-09-18T04:28:00.000-07:002013-09-18T04:28:51.421-07:00Katie's story, part 2: An almost-perfect end<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuXnztVIZD_c_bu56Dc0_eRz86DfV8EhNVNCg9mO7tiH0FzNxQ_1HNzwbTkCH81B6XsP-cLh6XiRlOlWSs0OaCuKPkzLQmcjXY2mNw0GrsxUbplov7OK1r6UouoWmIi-ifgnJJDPQeFCma/s1600/bartica.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuXnztVIZD_c_bu56Dc0_eRz86DfV8EhNVNCg9mO7tiH0FzNxQ_1HNzwbTkCH81B6XsP-cLh6XiRlOlWSs0OaCuKPkzLQmcjXY2mNw0GrsxUbplov7OK1r6UouoWmIi-ifgnJJDPQeFCma/s640/bartica.JPG" width="426" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bartica, Guyana photo by Katie Watkins</td></tr>
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<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">By Katie Watkins, Guyana, 2006-2008</span><br />
<span class="s1"><br /></span>
<span class="s1"> I watched the live footage from the local television station. What I saw on the screen would have never been shown on U.S. television, the images too graphic, too raw, too disturbing. If by chance it had, I could imagine the newscaster warning the viewers, "the images you are about to see are of a graphic nature and may be inappropriate for children."</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> Here, there was no warning. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"> No time for censure. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> The camera zoomed in on each body one by one, resting for several seconds on each face, slowly panning over each section. I stood in front of the television; a tea kettle steamed on the stove, the other burner occupied with two eggs over-easy. Two egg whites, one yolk removed.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> The bodies were piled in the back of a vehicle, the hospital's all-purpose Landcruiser. It had been used as an ambulance in the rare case of emergency, although most had accepted that any serious injury or condition suffered in Bartica would most likely result in death. The nearest trauma facilities a bumpy hour-long boat ride away, it was easiest to rationalize death sustained from a heart attack or complications during labor as "God's will" or "her time to go." </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> Under normal circumstances, the bodies would not have been treated this way, stowed away like cargo. An event like this had never happened in Bartica; there was no time for ritual. I scanned the corpses, noticing their bizarrely bloated limbs, sparsely covered legs swollen in the heat. Some arms were frozen in mid-air, one final gesture of protest. I ignored the extremities; my eyes focused on the faces, making note of those which seemed somehow familiar. I stared into their eyes opened wide. Not a look of surprise or disgust or even pain. In the eyes I saw terror.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> I jogged my memory trying to recall how I might have known any of them. How often had I had performed this same exercise before? I'd see someone in the grocery store, unable to remember how I knew them. From school? Work? Maybe someone who walked his dog in the park while I ran? Then later, sometimes days later, it would suddenly click, and I would identify my mystery person, congratulating myself for solving the puzzle. I took mental pictures of the faces, looking for any clues which might lead me to identification. I panicked, as if failing to recognize someone I knew right there on the spot was somehow irreverent, one last blow of betrayal. Like most other people in the town, I was doing the same thing, standing in front of my television, numb, in shock. I, like my neighbors, was scavenging the heap, bracing myself to see a friend lying among it. A nagging pang of guilt seeped through, sickening my stomach as I allowed myself to exhale in relief. I knew no one personally. They belonged to someone else. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> I could easily have gone and seen for myself. It was in my backyard, after all. We had lain awake, knowing precisely the sounds we were hearing, pretending that we didn’t. For over an hour it was the same. A car would speed past the front of our house into the hospital entrance, screeching to a halt. The doors forcefully swung open, and the body was pulled from the tiny backseat. Footsteps skittered across concrete, an irregular rhythm of legs straining to hurry, struggling to keep up with the weight being carried. Minutes later, the tires squealed and the car sped away, escaping into the balmy night air. And then another car. And another. And more. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> Until I could predict the sound I would hear before it happened, the staccato taps of the shoes echoing in my ears long after the last door slammed. I thought to myself how odd it was to hear these sounds with no voices attached to them. Even more eerie was the unmistakable panic that screamed in the acceleration of the engine, the fright throbbing in the frantic footsteps. No words were needed. The noises spoke for themselves.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> We heard later that many died not from fatal injuries, but simply from bleeding out. It would not have taken doctors to save those lives, only hands. Any hands. Our hands. In those critical moments, the dying outnumbered the living. Lying in silence, our backs gently pressed, our eyes refused to make contact, avoiding the expressions we might see if we turned our heads. A cool breeze whispered through the room, lifting the curtain from the window. I watched it flap back and forth, eventually resting on the windowsill. I felt his back quiver slightly, his chest exhaling into the stillness of the night. I knew he heard it too. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkxiM_1eiGDG9Zotqi9w-M9hsGrDHBPXRRkIS0jPT_jpeuJG1OHju0K1yg1qzg-4QSg5OYX-ZJEoJXx4mosb6wVM9izJvLYu-C6OhtOLXKsGPl6xnxA41mAb0MA4GL9ZGRB0i6IUQ-Xo_E/s1600/katie3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkxiM_1eiGDG9Zotqi9w-M9hsGrDHBPXRRkIS0jPT_jpeuJG1OHju0K1yg1qzg-4QSg5OYX-ZJEoJXx4mosb6wVM9izJvLYu-C6OhtOLXKsGPl6xnxA41mAb0MA4GL9ZGRB0i6IUQ-Xo_E/s400/katie3.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Katie Watkins, bottom row, third from the right</td></tr>
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<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> Sunday</span></b>, the day before, had been a special day, one that we had looked forward to for almost two years. </div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> Our village was celebrating the grand opening of a community greenhouse, the finale to a project that I had introduced to the community. For over a year, this project had been my life, from garnering community support and writing a grant, to constructing the structure and planting our first crop of vegetables. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> In preparation for the event, we had held planning meetings lasting several hours, with fiery debates over details that seemed unimportant to me, but meant everything in the world to the group. Cupcakes or sliced cake? Should the food be served on paper plates or packed in plastic bags that could be easily prepared and shared? Should there be a limited number of invitations distributed, or would my “more the merrier” approach result in the ultimate nightmare and shame of a Guyanese hostess: having to turn guests away without food? </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> Green t-shirts would be cheaper to purchase, I had argued. “Oh, but Katt-y, we must look nice! We will pay for de’ shirts wit’ collars!” they had insisted. Looking back, I realized that this bickering was a product of the extreme pride my friends felt in being a part of the project. They wanted it to be perfect, for themselves, for their community, and for me. I saw it on their beaming faces, blushing with modesty as I complimented their individual efforts when introducing them to my “town people” who had traveled from the capital for the event, including the Peace Corps country director and the acting U.S. Ambassador to Guyana. The greenhouse teemed with ripe produce ready to harvest and sell to the crowd who marveled at how beautiful the greens were. I made a speech to over a hundred people, thanking my friends for working so hard and for making my two years in Guyana ones that I would remember forever. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> “Don’t worry, we will never forget you,” I said with tears in my eyes. And I meant it. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> With dusk approaching, the guests began to disperse. The “town people” wanted to be sure to catch a boat back to Georgetown before dark. Everyone knew it was not smart to be on the water at night. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">We declined offers to catch a taxi back home, looking forward to the mile-long downhill stroll back to Front Street. The sun was beginning to set, and the subtle drop in temperature cooled the air just enough for comfort. Dusk had always been my favorite time of day. The sun lazily setting over the river, I liked how the sky seemed to slowly unwind in front of me. We had spent many evenings enjoying this tranquil show, sitting quietly by the river sipping cold beers and watching swarms of children splash and play in the murky brown water. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> The eldest child of each cluster passed around a bar of soap, the refreshing swim doubling as the day’s bath. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> But tonight would be different. Two of our best friends had traveled in from their villages for the weekend. We splurged at our favorite Brazilian restaurant, hungrily filling ourselves with salty beef and sausage sliced from a gigantic skewer slow-cooked on a massive charcoal grill. Tapping our feet to the festive beat of reggae music blaring throughout the riverfront bar, we finally allowed ourselves to relax. Generously treating one another to rounds of beers, we talked and joked and laughed away any stress or worry that might have remained from the day, and symbolically, from two years. Peeling the cool soggy label from my bottle, my thoughts wandered from the group and I paused briefly to take it all in. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> I thought of the two years, packed full of tragedy and heartache and, equally, with joyous memories like this one. My eyes met Paul’s and we smiled slightly, as we often did in crowds. Our affection had always been discreet. This was our secret acknowledgement, so subtle that only we were meant to notice it, so special that only we could understand it. “This is it,” I thought. “This is how I want to remember it.” </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6gVzoWmw4hN5Sp-uyaUlmiU7HvNaWAfSdWwp5HQY5hVZlYUYZ_x_5Jai_NjJCjBtXUovoKfZyl3RMHq7_7g2vC5rz2j4zPSxpkLQqR51EIplZ4bsgonRbBAw-ul1mfFnRcnQ-sWXiH1Ld/s1600/bartica1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6gVzoWmw4hN5Sp-uyaUlmiU7HvNaWAfSdWwp5HQY5hVZlYUYZ_x_5Jai_NjJCjBtXUovoKfZyl3RMHq7_7g2vC5rz2j4zPSxpkLQqR51EIplZ4bsgonRbBAw-ul1mfFnRcnQ-sWXiH1Ld/s400/bartica1.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo by Katie Watkins</td></tr>
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<div class="p2">
<b style="font-size: x-large;"> That </b>next morning, when the urgent sounds of engines and footsteps finally stopped, we took our time packing, reassuring the worried voices on our constantly ringing phones that we were safe and would leave as soon as we could catch a boat. </div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> I dawdled, stalling our departure, fixated on the insignificant. I took a long cold bucket bath. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> I sorted through my books, choosing ones I knew I would not read but had been meaning to. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> I watered my plants. I packed only enough clothes for a weekend, snapped at Paul when he suggested we cram our “must-keeps” into our enormous hiking packs we had not touched since we moved in. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> He knew that we might not be coming back. I disregarded his voice of reason, convinced that four pair of underwear and a travel-size shampoo would be plenty. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> Though the sky was clear and sunny that morning, a haze seemed to fog the street, blanketing those who stumbled along it with a cloud of disorientation. People milled about aimlessly in a sluggish stupor, their eyes hollow and sullen. They walked with no particular purpose, dazed and speechless. Puddles of blood still remained pooled in the street, slowly drying in the mid-morning sun. Broad red streaks smeared across a collection of bullet holes on the side of a building, evidence of casualty. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> I noticed that not everyone was out. I knew many people were still in their homes, either too terrified or too distraught to open the door. I decided that there must be two categories of survivors. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> One group was drawn to the presence of others. Even if in no direction, they had to move, and needed to see others moving too. Moving reassured them they were still alive. They wanted to confront the aftermath head-on, needed to see the devastation with their own eyes to accept that the bad dream was real. The others chose isolation, would rather grieve quietly in solitude. They wanted nothing more than to shut out the despair by locking the door and hunkering down to wait it out in the corner. Although well aware of the tragedy, seeing pain so fresh would have sent them over the edge. This group tuned out the horror around them so that they could listen to their own hearts beating, could hear themselves breathing. Breathing reminded them they were still alive. They knew they would have to come out eventually, but at that moment they could not bear the thought of their weeping being overheard. I told myself that if given the choice, I would have joined the latter group.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><b><span style="font-size: large;"> They</span></b> came in quietly, late at night by boat, an intentional plan to catch the town off guard during a long-anticipated cricket match between Guyana and Antigua. The excitement had been building for weeks. Groups of families and friends made plans to gather together to crowd around televisions in tiny living rooms to cheer on the Guyanese squad. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> Their first victims were a small boat with five men who had stopped to sling their hammocks for the night. Their faces pressed against the splintered wood planks of the dock, they were shot execution style one by one. A team of boots stomped carelessly across three scarlet puddles. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> At 9:40, they shot the officers on duty at the police station. </span>Splitting into teams, some took over the town’s police vehicle and cruised down the street shooting from the windows. Others traveled by foot, shooting indiscriminately, their occasional shots to the sky aimed at intimidation. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhggc3lsxtOGJrOnOjV9M1RBCRZjsfaJdStDK7eFpWHHguhRbld5DiQV55A078u_CopQU54W4YVjes03dJg7oPyf8NRPB-taan-b8aD9ptu3dr_00bMGCYxZkF4xsZIFfU1Ld6OIgKlZk4o/s1600/katieboats.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhggc3lsxtOGJrOnOjV9M1RBCRZjsfaJdStDK7eFpWHHguhRbld5DiQV55A078u_CopQU54W4YVjes03dJg7oPyf8NRPB-taan-b8aD9ptu3dr_00bMGCYxZkF4xsZIFfU1Ld6OIgKlZk4o/s400/katieboats.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> A ragged bible would later be found among peanut butter and flashlights in the group’s jungle camp, the pages yellowed with water damage.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> A 15-year old girl selling candy with her mother dropped to her knees, pleading for her life. She felt the foreign sting of a bullet grazing her left foot, the achy sensation unable to distract her from what surrounded her. She saw death littering the street her young knees rested upon, an image she wished she could have been spared from too. Hearing the crescendo of gunshots, an elderly man scurried to huddle in the horizontal freezer of the gold mining business he was guarding. His hiding place discovered, the old man’s body crashed to the bottom with a thud, as the men ran past with safes of gold and guns. Before leaving, they pointed their guns to the security cameras hanging on the wall.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><b><span style="font-size: large;"> Just</span></b> a few blocks away, the festive mood that had begun at dusk continued into the night as we watched the cricket match with a group of friends. Our jovial voices joined the boisterous symphony of cheers heard throughout the town, as Guyana dominated the game. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> A series of snaps popped outside in the distance, sounds we assumed to be firecrackers set off by kids celebrating the approaching victory. Cell phones began to ring, and the room buzzed with scrambled scraps of news that the police station had been shot up and that gunmen were moving through the street killing people. Even as I heard the truth unfold, I ignored the distinct irregularity of the pops, refusing to believe what later seemed so obvious, that this sound could not come from a firecracker. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> I had heard gunshots before, but never ones directed at bodies.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> I thought this type of gunshot should somehow sound different, that the enormity of its consequence would somehow resonate boldly in the atmosphere for all to recognize. But it did not.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> Tuning out the horror taking place around us, our party continued. We tried to resume our conversations where they had left off, filling the awkward silence with nervous jokes and distraction. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> What else could we do? </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> I would like to say I reacted differently, the way one should respond to something so horrific. My friend suggested we take cover under the table just in case the gunmen chose our street next. I laughed sarcastically at her, a tactless response she may have shrugged off, but one that I still wish I could take back. I thought later of Hotel Rwanda, a movie I had seen about the Rwandan Genocide just before leaving for Guyana. The main character drives his car over an unusually bumpy road, only to find out that he is actually driving over hundreds of dead bodies. He gets out of the car and instantly vomits when he sees the horror before him.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> I wanted to feel fear, to feel my senses heighten, to feel the fight or flight response I had read about in books. I should have been appalled, disgusted, traumatized. I wanted to feel. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> Something. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> Feeling would have validated that the gunshots had not been mere random blasts in the darkness, that they had destroyed real human lives. Instead, I felt nothing. Numb. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> On that night, twelve people were massacred. This number was added to the eleven that this same gang had slaughtered in another village just three weeks before, kicking down the doors of homes and murdering entire families. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> On that night in Bartica, approximately 184 shots rang out, some disappearing into the night sky, and others splitting skin and skulls.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> And those were just the shells that were found. I know there must have been more. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
On that awful night, I laughed. I drank rum. I celebrated. I pretended. My body remained, still breathing, living, thriving. But inside, I felt a part of me dying, slowly decaying in disgrace for what I should have felt but could not.<br />
<br />
<i>Coming tomorrow, the conclusion to Katie's series: ... I wanted to feel all that I had not been able to take in before. Dissociation, I learned, is not a selective skill. In the process of numbing myself to all the pain I saw in Guyana, I had also muted the pleasure. I felt pick-pocketed of innocent, untainted, simple joy. And I wanted it back. I wanted to see for myself that while the horror I had witnessed was part of my experience in Guyana, it was not all of Guyana, and I did not have to let it define my experience. I wanted to make some new memories, and fill in the blanks of those that seemed so fuzzy. And I knew I could only do this by going back...</i></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08306611902852202422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2210040031639962587.post-81631798951889578072013-09-16T05:45:00.001-07:002013-09-24T18:09:50.179-07:00Katie's story, part one: The numbing<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTEGi5uEwRV2eDlYCYyKwZSHJL07c7J0WBlcoAw7t_3_Yw-TDd3Fwl9Zoz8yk_cxFHlIHgfHEzqtsrQkQ7MF9QLQWFf6Cc4XCDWMfdANaEOJrz5or219O-_RC0zm5WLBPrJeUL1malqeCM/s1600/katieandpaul2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTEGi5uEwRV2eDlYCYyKwZSHJL07c7J0WBlcoAw7t_3_Yw-TDd3Fwl9Zoz8yk_cxFHlIHgfHEzqtsrQkQ7MF9QLQWFf6Cc4XCDWMfdANaEOJrz5or219O-_RC0zm5WLBPrJeUL1malqeCM/s640/katieandpaul2.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Paul and Katie Watkins</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">By Katie Watkins, Guyana, 2006-2008 </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> A Guyanese newspaper stopped the door of the hotel room as it swung open. Looking down the hallway of our temporary refuge, I saw a copy at the foot of each door, complimentary gifts for our patronage. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> “12 Killed in Bartica Massacre.” “Security officials clueless after Bartica Mayhem.” “Murderous Rampage Stuns Bartica.” The oversized boldfaced headlines looked small when paired with the photographs vying for front page space. The bodies of our neighbors had been transferred from the police vehicle to a wooden speed boat for transport to the capital. The picture showed a team of men in plainclothes and latex gloves passing the bodies into the boat.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> Drops of blood speckled the bow of the vessel, inches from the flip flop sandal of one of the workers. One arm spilled over the edge, its stiffened elbow resting on the ledge of the boat. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> Clusters of women embraced one another, wives and relatives of the slain. A pair of plump arms wrapped stoutly around a torso, her hands squeezing tightly. No captions were needed below the faces. A woman’s wailing screamed from the page, her breast muffling the cries of the woman she held against her.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> <b><span style="font-size: large;">Paul</span></b> and I had rarely talked about our observations, or our emotional reactions to what happened around us. During our first weeks in country, we had shared a sense of self-consciousness, feeling somewhat inferior when we compared our past experiences and backgrounds with those of other eighteen volunteers. Both products of blue collar families, our parents’ jobs as a nurse, mechanic, and aluminum factory worker made us feel out of place in the presence of our peers, many of whose parents held prestigious positions as college professors, doctors and lawyers. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> For one of the “getting to know you activities,” the facilitators had pulled lines from our resumes and compiled them on a piece of paper. We were then asked to talk to each other to find out from whose resume each fact had been taken. Later in our hotel room, Paul and I laughed as we recalled the enormous achievements of our cohorts. “Spent a summer at the World Bank.” “Managed a urology practice.” “Traveled through Southeast Asia and worked at an orphanage for children with AIDS.”</span><br />
<span class="s1"> Paul and I joked that our being accepted must have been some sort of mistake. “You ‘worked at a day camp and wiped asses in a nursing home’? What a loser!” We finally settled on the theory that we must have filled some sort of “Midwest White Trash Quota.” </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOQ1aycpp7rlARSZW8mjCqKQU9jb76oYQqwLy02dOeaCCg8ZeZwjJ3NoS_Hbr9kflAU8sOSuHpbeTTOUM_T4T_3ejia_pi5mH3GJs_2Uhp2plwOOTm0gB0sG73z6tIb4pxw4zRffhljq9P/s1600/katieandpaul.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOQ1aycpp7rlARSZW8mjCqKQU9jb76oYQqwLy02dOeaCCg8ZeZwjJ3NoS_Hbr9kflAU8sOSuHpbeTTOUM_T4T_3ejia_pi5mH3GJs_2Uhp2plwOOTm0gB0sG73z6tIb4pxw4zRffhljq9P/s640/katieandpaul.JPG" width="480" /></a></div>
<div class="p1">
This insecurity faded fast, as we realized past experiences provided few useful strategies in this new game we were playing. One afternoon, Paul sat reading on the veranda, his favorite spot of our host family’s home, where we spent our first two months. Across the street, a man walked unsteadily along a zinc roof and fell over the edge, his head cracking against the pavement of the ground below. </div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> Hearing the crash, a group of people scurried to gather around him. The group screamed at a taxi driver who refused to transport the injured man. He did not want the blood and dirt to soil his meticulously well-kept cloth backseat. Finally, the driver complied with what had quickly turned from desperate pleas to threat-filled commands to take the man to the hospital. Paul sat and watched from his perch above, stunned, as the bloody, unconscious body was heaved into the backseat of the car. He heard the driver cursing as he slammed the car door, pressed hard on the gas pedal and sped off, spraying the bystanders with dust and pebbles. Paul sat motionless on the veranda, the entrails spilling from the man’s cracked skull onto the ground an image inscribed in his memory.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> Once while waiting for a boat, I watched a group of four men stumble through the sand, lugging a tattered wooden coffin. They stopped halfway up the shore to meet another group of men who were carrying an empty coffin of the same size. As if trading cargo, the men opened the lid of the coffin, pulled out the dead man, and flung the corpse into the replacement coffin. The men exchanged pleasantries, laughed and slapped each other on the back, parting ways as if old friends. I looked around, sure that I could not be the only person who had seen this event as grossly disturbing. A woman held a toddler on her lap, drinking a Coca Cola through a straw. A man ate plantain chips and talked on a cell phone. Business as usual. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> Laughing to myself, I shrugged, chalking it up, as I did often, to another, “did that really just happen?” moment.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> It was indeed, an entirely new world. In this bizarre and unfamiliar place, what was once weird was now typical, what anywhere else would have been macabre was commonplace. It was all normal. Normal was a half-naked drunk man dancing jovially in the street at two in the afternoon, a stampede of spitting donkeys blazing through the town on their way to an unknown destination, a family of five somehow piled on a tiny motor bike puttering up the dusty hill. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> Normal was babies killed by jaundice, men who went to the bush in search of gold returning instead with AIDS, piercing epidural-free bellows of 90-pound fifteen-year-olds heard a half mile away. Normal was walking down the street to buy bread and hearing, “Oh baby, me wan’ fuck you bad bad.” Insanity was normal. Death was normal. Pain was normal. And this new normal had become my home. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Dropping</span></b> the opened newspaper onto the dresser, I felt morbid when I thought of the tiny details I had noticed. The arm flung over the side of the boat. The sandal scooting over droplets of blood. The short pudgy fingers of the howling woman. This keen sense of scrutiny, a personality trait of which I had once been proud, had dulled over the course of the two years. </div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> I came to Guyana an observant explorer, eager to absorb all that was around me. I came wanting to soak up every sensation, every smell, taste, sound, and emotion. But I soon learned to prioritize my responses, taking in only what was necessary, numbing myself to the rest. I developed the ability to filter my experiences, a way to avoid making sense of the senseless. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> Being hard became our means of getting by, an anesthesia that allowed us to exist without bearing the pain around us. What Paul saw from the veranda marked the beginning of a steady process of desensitization, an expertise we shared but must have decided was better left unacknowledged. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> He told me later that what he saw that day had been a turning point in his experience, that what he witnessed had somehow changed him in a way he could not quite explain. “I just knew that life was going to be different here. Chaos and pain and destruction became a reality and I knew I would probably be seeing more of it, that it would become normal. I was living in an entirely new world, unlike anything I had seen before. I knew I would never be the same again and it felt strange.”</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> Paul’s premonition, though difficult to articulate at the time, turned out to be quite accurate. Experiences we could never have imagined became a part of our everyday lives. The open newspaper on the dresser echoed that, telling the stories of the people who’d survived, piecing together small details two days later.</span></div>
But we didn’t need their accounts to know what happened. We were there.<br />
<br />
<i>Coming next, part 2: ... Tapping our feet to the festive beat of reggae music blaring throughout the riverfront bar, we finally allowed ourselves to relax. Generously treating one another to rounds of beers, we talked and joked and laughed away any stress or worry that might have remained from the day, and symbolically, from the two years. Peeling the cool soggy label from my bottle, my thoughts wandered from the group and I paused briefly to take it all in. </i><br />
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><i> I thought of the two years, packed full of tragedy and heartache and, equally, with joyous memories like this one. My eyes met Paul’s and we smiled slightly, as we often did in crowds. Our affection had always been discreet. This was our secret acknowledgement, so subtle that only we were meant to notice it, so special that only we could understand it. “This is it,” I thought. “This is how I want to remember it.” </i></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08306611902852202422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2210040031639962587.post-20413536775350660512013-09-13T06:50:00.000-07:002013-09-13T07:09:24.119-07:00You must write it down<div class="p1">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJjzE_XZhqh7WhtNjgKr2yMjpVDqDXZ-xXlQIIAui8n-VcagtecGqr-063_XOm4Vd1OsuSefqrMH_l_mnVeW2yjtVdDbnSchefxBasrlbE2D27CSycxi6HjMxDDko3u9vvwsrUglXFuK2C/s1600/bartica4.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJjzE_XZhqh7WhtNjgKr2yMjpVDqDXZ-xXlQIIAui8n-VcagtecGqr-063_XOm4Vd1OsuSefqrMH_l_mnVeW2yjtVdDbnSchefxBasrlbE2D27CSycxi6HjMxDDko3u9vvwsrUglXFuK2C/s640/bartica4.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bartica, Guyana Photo by Katie Watkins</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span class="s1"><br /></span>
<span class="s1">by Katie Watkins,</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Guyana, 2006-2008</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> A few months after graduating, I left Southern Indiana, my only home, to do what many of my friends thought was insane but secretly wished they could do. At 23, I got hitched, sold my car and ran off to South America.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> Before leaving, I called up my friend’s parents, who had met in Ethiopia while serving in one of the country’s first batches of Peace Corps volunteers. They had been inspired by Kennedy’s momentous speech in 1960 and have been together for over 45 years. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> “I have only one bit of advice for you, my sweet Katie dear,” Dave had told me over the phone. “Write. You must write it down. You will see things that you will want to remember later, even if not while they are happening. Things that you will slowly lose if you don’t record them. Please write.” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> Dave’s words stuck with me, maybe for a month. I wrote of strange smells of slimy fish sold in the back of an old station wagon, kids climbing mango trees in their underwear, the donkey casually strolling through the waiting room of the village hospital. And then I stopped. The weight of my new world became too much for me to grip. When I looked around me, I saw things I no longer wanted to make sense of, pain I decided was better left undocumented.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> Almost two years later, quite comfortable in my steady nine-to-five, two bedroom, two and a half bathroom life in St. Louis, I have changed my mind. Despite my attempts to forget it, what happened was real. The people affected were real people. Their stories are worthy of more than the four poorly-written, inaccurately-recorded newspaper articles that serve as the only account of their occurrence. In my mind, I hold a story that is looking for the words to tell it.</span></div>
Now I am finally beginning to listen.<br />
<br />
<i><b>Coming next week: Part 1 of Katie's story: ...A Guyanese newspaper stopped the door of the hotel room as it swung open. Looking down the hallway of our temporary refuge, I saw a copy at the foot of each door, complimentary gifts for our patronage.</b></i><br />
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><b> “12 Killed in Bartica Massacre.” “Security officials clueless after Bartica Mayhem.” “Murderous Rampage Stuns Bartica.” The oversized boldfaced headlines looked small when paired with the photographs vying for front page space. The bodies of our neighbors had been transferred from the police vehicle to a wooden speed boat for transport to the capital. The picture showed a team of men in plainclothes and latex gloves passing the bodies into the boat...</b></i></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08306611902852202422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2210040031639962587.post-13837595470981594812013-09-12T05:52:00.002-07:002013-09-12T05:52:35.960-07:00Coming tomorrow... The introduction to a three-part series that I hope you'll love as much as I do. Katie and Paul Watkins came to Guyana after I left, but we both ended up in St. Louis, and Katie and I met once for coffee. Sitting in the sun at a cafe near St. Louis University, Katie told me about the day that haunted her from her time in Guyana and the pull she felt to return and reexamine what happened there.<br />
Don't, I told her. It might not be safe. Let it go.<br />
I'm so glad she didn't listen.<br />
More tomorrow...Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08306611902852202422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2210040031639962587.post-23237094508226586852013-09-11T14:22:00.000-07:002013-09-11T14:22:48.274-07:009.11.2001, more from Guyana<div class="p1">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_nNsrY2EQoXdRmxTJsFFpC_9HxW_jKrVMHjMYMI1353s6oPn0jtvYUPtXTCU18-T3fNaXAVtg3AH_uAzMi6HfGDTQ7IXu8mU6GgaeWkErlAgexy4sDU1eRbqYEmoJWR-etspMElBh7GSv/s1600/amyguyana2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_nNsrY2EQoXdRmxTJsFFpC_9HxW_jKrVMHjMYMI1353s6oPn0jtvYUPtXTCU18-T3fNaXAVtg3AH_uAzMi6HfGDTQ7IXu8mU6GgaeWkErlAgexy4sDU1eRbqYEmoJWR-etspMElBh7GSv/s400/amyguyana2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Amy Myers, second from left, in Guyana</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
By Amy Myers</div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Guyana, 2001-2003</span><br />
<span class="s1">Nicaragua, 2003-2004</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> I woke that morning and got ready for work. I was still getting used to the cold morning bucket bath that both took my breath away and all too briefly took the sweat off my skin. I went to work early those first days at West Demerara Secondary School, as I was still getting my bearings. I always went first to open the library so kids could come in and read before school began each day. After the school bell rang and morning assembly was over, I began a busy schedule teaching Spanish and Guidance. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
At some point during the morning I remember my dear colleague, Miss Khan, coming and asking me if I had heard about the plane crash in New York, and if I knew if my family was ok. While still new to Guyana, I had figured out that “New York” was synonymous with the entire U.S. for many Guyanese … so I guessed that some kind of plane crash in the States must have made the news. I assured her that none of my family was traveling and that I was sure it was fine.<span class="s1"></span></div>
<div class="p2">
I went on with my day. <span class="s1"></span></div>
<div class="p2">
Later, I was paged to the Headmistress’ office. A representative from Peace Corps was calling to check in. I remember being confused as to why a plane crash was getting so much response. I assured the staff that I was heading straight home after work and that I would make every effort to check in with family when I got home. There was an overwhelming newness to each day that first September in Guyana that I didn’t stop to think too much about how out of the ordinary that phone call was. <span class="s1"></span></div>
<div class="p2">
I went on with my day.<span class="s1"></span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvJFZTa45LSRYGLu-I4ULcSbmpAO0s2jVy4Pg127yEYp7fxzi4knR-opbH6cDUlGp_l-5XKoPpmxpaF0YNcs6yr_e9R4GcT0DNv2_6pz2C_bGHMCkY2Us1oQlKbn_9sHCoAB2qyc5v-E79/s1600/amyguyana.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvJFZTa45LSRYGLu-I4ULcSbmpAO0s2jVy4Pg127yEYp7fxzi4knR-opbH6cDUlGp_l-5XKoPpmxpaF0YNcs6yr_e9R4GcT0DNv2_6pz2C_bGHMCkY2Us1oQlKbn_9sHCoAB2qyc5v-E79/s400/amyguyana.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Guyana photo by Amy M</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I got home that afternoon and was swiftly whisked upstairs by my landlord, Odetta. She steered me to her small television and it was then that I finally got it. What was going on. Why all the fuss. I was horrified. I was stupefied. I sat for I don’t know how many hours glued to that tiny screen … catching up on the tragedy that the whole country had been experiencing for hours already. </div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span></div>
<div class="p2">
I hadn’t understood earlier why Peace Corps asked me try to contact my family, but when I was able to tear myself away from the TV I had only one thought: I need to call my mom in Colorado. Her relief at hearing my voice was palpable over our sketchy phone connection. My comfort at hearing her voice was immeasurable. We wept together over the phone and after all too short a time said our good-byes and I love yous. <span class="s1"></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> </span>I went to my journal and wrote “Today I mourn. Though I am far, my heart aches. Today I mourn for and with my country.” </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08306611902852202422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2210040031639962587.post-26999883403453633022013-09-11T09:25:00.001-07:002013-09-11T09:25:06.121-07:009.11.2001, from Trinidad and Tobago<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">by Travis Boyette,</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Guyana, 2000-2002 </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> My only visitor during my whole Peace Corps stint. And she wouldn't even come to Guyana based on all the horrific stories I had parleyed to her. Why would she? Mini-buses of death, machete wielding cane farmers. After convincing her that I just wanted to share some of this experience with her, she finally agreed to come visit me ... but only if we met up in Trinidad and Tobago.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> I had arrived a day early to the Caribbean island complex of Trinidad and Tobago to secure us a hotel away from the hustle near the capital of Trinidad. It was quite nice I have to say. And since she was paying for it, I splurged just a little ... 25 bucks a night! With A/C! </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> That evening, I taxi'd to the airport where I met her - the woman who has loved me like no other person in this world and who would give her life for me. I hadn't seen her in over a year, and now here she was, running towards me, arms open, tears streaming down her face. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> "You are so skinny! And why is your hair so long? What is going on with this beard thing? Your clothes look like a beggar. Oh my dear son, give your mom a hug!"</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> It was, after all, my birthday, September 8th. My brother was scheduled to meet us 3 days later where we would continue our adventures in Tobago, an absolutely gorgeous sliver of a turquoise blue water island just a short plane jump from Trinidad. Mom and I spent the next few days gallivanting around the island. I introduced her to shark and bake, a Trinidadian specialty sandwich, and drinking coconut water right out of the coconut. She reintroduced me to Benjamin Franklin and few new shirts and pants and a proper hair cut.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> I took her on one of my favorite jungle hikes on the outskirts of Trinidad, to a jungle beach with a waterfall. We ate wild mangos, watched parrots and had the whole trail to ourselves ... minus a machete wielding cane farmer who followed us the last hour of our hike. I was convinced he was going to kill me and my mother, but my mother, rest her dear soul, wound up talking to him the whole time. When we parted ways, he climbed a tree, cut a coconut for her and went on his merry way. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> On our walk back up the trail to the bus stop, we passed several roadside stalls selling water and biscuits. A hunched up old man saddled up to us and started in about how much he loved America and how sad he was that our monument had been set on fire. There are lots of crazy people in the Caribbean. We entertained him for a minute. I attempted to delve further into his story. From what we gathered, someone had set fire to the Washington Monument and it crashed to the ground, killing a thousand people. Weird, yes ... until we bought a water from one of the road side stalls. The woman also was saying how much she loved America and that she had an aunt that lived in New York. I found it highly unlikely that her aunt would have been crushed under a crumbling, burning Washington Monument. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> Eventually, we arrived at our hotel. Instinctively, I turned on the television. To this day, I cannot bear to even watch video of the tragedy that was unfolding on every single television station. Loop images of planes barreling and bursting into flames at the World Trade Center. I was confused, horrified. What the hell was going on? </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> The remainder of the day was spent watching TV and planning on getting my brother later that evening at the airport. When we arrived at the airport, as everyone already knew, all flights into and out of the United States had been halted. Luckily, we were able to phone my brother, who was stuck in Miami. He would remain there for the remainder of our trip in Trinidad and Tobago, until a bus was able to move him from Miami back to Atlanta. The funny thing was, he would've made it. Except that he missed his flight because he forgot his passport. During his attempt to secure a replacement at the US Embassy in Miami, the Towers and Pentagon had been attacked. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> We could do nothing. My mother and I continued our trip to Tobago. We ate delicious creole food, scuba dived, hiked, and all that fun stuff a Peace Corps volunteer can do when their parent with cash visits them. Ultimately, I had to return to Guyana. But my mother's plans would not go so smoothly. Of course, no one has any interest in attacking Guyana, so my flight was scheduled as planned. Unfortunately, my mother wound up being stuck at a hotel near the Trinidad airport for 2 more days ...which she described as "nice, but the pool is green and has some kind of animals swimming in it." </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> The rest is kind of history. Our outlets of TIME international magazine (the internet was not as readily available in 2001) and some debriefing by our country director were the only sources of information we would receive concerning the events of 9/11. It would be another year before I would be on American soil and realize the true impact of what occurred during what was supposed to be a well-deserved family reunion on the beaches of the Caribbean.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08306611902852202422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2210040031639962587.post-8872279894572953942013-09-11T08:13:00.002-07:002013-09-11T08:13:49.247-07:009.11.2001, from Miami, bound for Haiti<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> By <a href="http://hard-corps.blogspot.com/2013/08/marabout-or-medi-vac.html" target="_blank">Leita Kaldi</a>, Senegal, 1993-1996</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> That fateful morning I was at the Miami airport waiting to go to Haiti. American Airlines had a near monopoly on flights to Port-au-Prince, and the check-in desk was thronged with people, mostly Haitians with enormous suitcases. I had long ago noticed that the gate for flights to Port-au-Prince was closest to the airport security office because, someone told me, passengers there were most suspect. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> I was perhaps the fiftieth person in line waiting to check in, but after ten minutes or so I noticed the line was not moving at all, long row of agents behind counters were not beckoning passengers forward, they were all on telephones. Finally, I broke ranks and approached an agent. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> “Why aren’t you checking people in?” I asked, interrupting her telephone call. </span><br />
<span class="s1"> She put a hand over the receiver and, with wide eyes, replied, “All flights are canceled. The World Trade Center has been bombed … and the Pentagon. Go home.” </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> I stared at her in disbelief, then heard the message over the loudspeaker. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> “All flights are canceled. The airport is closing. Everyone must leave the airport.” </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> All heads turned toward television screens suspended overhead and the same picture burst onto every screen – planes plummeting into the twin towers, the top of the buildings disappearing in smoke. Stunned, we all watched and listened to the incredible report. Haitians who did not understand English whispered to each other, and I translated what I was hearing, but not believing, to a group around me. People looked at each other questioning, still not understanding. Police surged through the airport, ordering people to pick up their bags and leave, and finally we were herded outside where I was lucky enough to find a taxi and zip away. The driver listened to his radio in a state of shock as he drove me back into town where I picked up my car. I started the long drive back across the state listening to National Public Radio, trying to fathom the shocking news. New York City had been attacked by unknown enemies, then the Pentagon, then an airplane had gone down near Philadelphia. The truth did not hit me until I reached the toll gate to Alligator Alley. An American flag flew from the booth where a dark-skinned older woman with sorrow in her eyes waved me through. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“No tolls today.” </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> I burst into tears. As I drove across the flat expanse of Florida from coast to coast, the Everglades blurred on either side and I didn’t look for any of the tropical birds I usually loved to sight. Our country had been attacked, people were dying, killed by an unspeakably ruthless enemy. NPR stayed on the story all day long, covering every detail. When I arrived home four hours later I went to the TV and saw the destruction that followed the morning’s horrors. I called a few friends and family, and ate everything in the refrigerator, seeking strength and comfort. Then I checked the duffel bags full of medications in my car that had been destined for the hospital, looking for anything perishable to refrigerate. I went to bed thinking that the American dream had turned into a rude awakening to the fact that we had real enemies on the planet, people who were sick of speculating, as Eliel had, why “we were there, and they were not.” </span></div>
I made my trip to Haiti a few weeks later, after air travel resumed with the first new security measures – careful inspection of bags and people, dogs and armed police in the airports. People throughout Haiti expressed real sympathy for Americans, suspending their normal suspicions and resentments, understanding from their own experience the suffering of violence.<br />
<br />
-- From "In the Valley of Atibon," by Leita KaldiAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08306611902852202422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2210040031639962587.post-11490760169984718912013-09-11T05:19:00.000-07:002013-09-11T05:19:04.731-07:009.11.2001, from Guyana<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdV4-lVAgbv-U9-qw9lFbIYnvNZb3iP22f5eCwSmv-IS1xqxedo4MxeKy_6yVW_gvdrM90Dfpp_wKes7cuRG79Rx1_bxjuVj6OViTVudnLEgPXMTIvwoRepb_e3aS7zEdkhAGhk2CFTms-/s1600/9:11.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdV4-lVAgbv-U9-qw9lFbIYnvNZb3iP22f5eCwSmv-IS1xqxedo4MxeKy_6yVW_gvdrM90Dfpp_wKes7cuRG79Rx1_bxjuVj6OViTVudnLEgPXMTIvwoRepb_e3aS7zEdkhAGhk2CFTms-/s640/9:11.JPG" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Students, Johanna Cecilia Community High School photo by Kristen Hare</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
by Kristen Hare<br />
Guyana, 2000-2002 <br />
<br />
Lunch time at Johanna Cecilia Community High School, and I plodded across the dirt, over the road, through the big white gate, up the stairs to my house. Every day during lunch, I could hear kids laughing and cars passing through the bars that laced over my open windows.<br />
On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I followed the same route. Made lunch. Opened a book. Then, a voice rose up from outside.<br />
"Miss Kristeen," the girl called. "Miss Kristeen."<br />
I stepped onto my verandah, annoyed at being interrupted during my few quite, totally private and American moments each day.<br />
"Miss Kristeen, Miss Pauline says you must turn on your TV," my student said.<br />
That was it.<br />
And so I walked over to the large television that my school let me borrow when they didn't need it and clicked on.<br />
I sat down.<br />
You know what I saw. You saw it, too.<br />
I didn't move from my couch for days. Not until all the channels that pirated CNN's constant coverage returned to long toilet paper commercials and local death announcements. Not until the Peace Corps called us all in for an emergency safety meeting. Not until I had to return to school and address everyone, telling my Muslim, Hindu and Christian students that I didn't think Muslims were bad, that I didn't know anyone who had died, and that I couldn't explain what we'd all seen.<br />
That weekend at the open-air market, every old auntie selling fruit and vegetables stopped me and asked after my family.<br />
Tell them you're safe with us, they all told me.<br />
Tell them we're all watching your house.<br />
Tell them we'll protect you.<br />
My memories of 9/11 aren't American ones. They're from the outside. Disconnected. Devestated. But, still, surrounded with a village of people who hardly knew me and looked after me anyway.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08306611902852202422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2210040031639962587.post-3615912112146578442013-09-10T06:18:00.003-07:002013-09-10T06:18:37.008-07:00Remembering...Where were you 12 years ago on September 11? I was in the Peace Corps. Hoping to share some moments from that day tomorrow. Send them if you have them.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08306611902852202422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2210040031639962587.post-5042756983650246922013-09-09T06:17:00.000-07:002013-09-09T06:17:12.857-07:00One time, in Suriname..."Freeze," I remember whispering to John Holveck in Suriname during our close of service trip.<br />
After a few days of real coffee, a big swimming pool and really good Javanese food, I'd kind of stopped looking around Suriname. Then I saw this. It wasn't just John's expression of, OK, ummm, what? or the tourist in the background washing off or the sign for showers that made me so happy. It was all three.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh3T0wVg3Cx-_jEMce7D74AowcUlhik8xJOftQHedN-7Vn_toQoDYwjdRnABc9gyr1cpsH6UVCoiumkzBWBu8wdL66FCC3NhjXjvN4ia-sgxm6361oQ8Uve5qDgXTbMNu12bq7YEe9IHXv/s1600/john.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh3T0wVg3Cx-_jEMce7D74AowcUlhik8xJOftQHedN-7Vn_toQoDYwjdRnABc9gyr1cpsH6UVCoiumkzBWBu8wdL66FCC3NhjXjvN4ia-sgxm6361oQ8Uve5qDgXTbMNu12bq7YEe9IHXv/s640/john.JPG" width="404" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Suriname, 2002 photo by Kristen Hare</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08306611902852202422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2210040031639962587.post-47418654386135266042013-09-04T10:22:00.000-07:002013-09-06T09:34:05.555-07:00Ode to my hammock<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX5t4RljF2fhlmnwZKS4lVCl29HIZ9VaZ3XcJECxEj-KkELufFo5ThpcLhuL28SMAZD95vDGJo6T-v7lz0YpvNYOvpg86Q-Vfqq5U-8TZghG-JPwR4J887xhSsfMY1M14V_In71ptbOiAx/s1600/hammock.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="408" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX5t4RljF2fhlmnwZKS4lVCl29HIZ9VaZ3XcJECxEj-KkELufFo5ThpcLhuL28SMAZD95vDGJo6T-v7lz0YpvNYOvpg86Q-Vfqq5U-8TZghG-JPwR4J887xhSsfMY1M14V_In71ptbOiAx/s640/hammock.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lot 12, Adventure photo by Kristen Hare</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
by Kristen Hare</div>
<div class="p1">
Guyana, 2000-2002</div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> It’s a swinging pea pod, a giant cradle for the giant little girl who lives all alone. It’s a place to rock into daydreams and surrender into naps. In the easy breeze on my verandah, I rarely had to stretch my foot out for a good push. The wind off the Essequibo swayed me side to side, my sun-drying clothes picked up the rhythm, and the palms that stretched overhead rustled along. Some days, it felt like even the clouds were rocking me.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> In those first six months, my cream colored hammock offered escape -- from my own blundering and sweaty life in Guyana, the one I missed back in Missouri, and the ones unfolding underneath my feet.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> In my village of Adventure, the top floor of the little house off a white gravel road was mine. Downstairs lived a 20-year-old mother of one, step-mother of another and her husband. They had one room. One bedroom. She would give me anything I looked at, so I learned to look down when we spoke. During the months I lived at Lot 12, our lives mixed together like the dust that clumped up under my doors, unable to be swept away but hard to ignore.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> All together, there was too much of us filling that little house.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> At first, it was quiet. Nice. I could hear their lives, the hum of the TV or the flushing toilet. We woke up and fell asleep together. She’d gossip with our neighbor while cooking, the harsh scraping of grating a coconut rising to my flat. She could hear my phone calls, my soft steps, my soft and constant singing.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> And then it started.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> Slaps, so hard they’d pull my eyes open in the morning light. It was never a fight. And never when he was home. But her hand flew freely at the little boy who came to her husband five years before she did. Then, I heard stifled cries. I still don’t know which sound was worse. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> Hit, slap, shut up, shut up. And this 5-year-old is whimpering, denied even the release of a good cry. He doesn’t get the biscuits fast enough. He doesn’t get out of bed before she wakes him. The baby threw up. Every morning. It became my alarm.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> At night, when her husband came home, it stopped. I’d carry something down, mangoes or a little food to share. Slowly, then, I’d climb the stairs back to my hammock.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> Below me, this family sat all evening in the rough brown hammock that was their only furniture. I heard laughter. Singing. He and his son worked on their ABCs. She rocked the baby. They sounded happy.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> The next morning, after he’d left in the dark for work, slap, slap, a sound that wasn’t even a slap, but something hollow, stinging, a small body absorbing force. Who could I tell? Where could I call? I asked myself again and again, what could I do here that wouldn't lead to more harm? What could I do to make it stop? </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> I never really knew.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
So I stuck to my hammock whenever I could and closed my eyes and covered my ears and rocked.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08306611902852202422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2210040031639962587.post-60775194620708977522013-08-28T10:43:00.002-07:002013-08-28T10:43:34.460-07:00Read any good adventures lately? <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEMmUNLMJVbwAOtL-Odj9ZT81_cNIyJ9NtQYbz1gmEHxvLgqD4oRdHCXcgQ7IyzY_r3iv7S34QX2Uz99rnLedUqgkpn915FwT8EK88IpoZq1NvF9aqVSQYOqvFYOur-TxsSf5z3Gdjq7Y-/s1600/hut.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEMmUNLMJVbwAOtL-Odj9ZT81_cNIyJ9NtQYbz1gmEHxvLgqD4oRdHCXcgQ7IyzY_r3iv7S34QX2Uz99rnLedUqgkpn915FwT8EK88IpoZq1NvF9aqVSQYOqvFYOur-TxsSf5z3Gdjq7Y-/s400/hut.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Guyana, 2012 photo by Kristen Hare</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
For many of us who experienced the Peace Corps, life for two years was a daily adventure. Sometimes they were amazing ones, like meeting the <a href="http://www.hard-corps.blogspot.com/2013/07/a-piece-of-cake.html" target="_blank">person</a> you'll end up marrying. Sometimes they involved <a href="http://www.hard-corps.blogspot.com/2013/05/fredericks-of-guyana.html" target="_blank">rats</a>, <a href="http://www.hard-corps.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-queen-of-all-wild-things.html" target="_blank">snakes</a> and <a href="http://www.hard-corps.blogspot.com/2013/06/awesome-opossum.html" target="_blank">opossums</a>. Sometimes, they were just moments that opened up a <a href="http://www.hard-corps.blogspot.com/2013/06/great-expectations.html" target="_blank">new sense</a> of how people live and work and make it. And sometimes, there were <a href="http://www.hard-corps.blogspot.com/2013/07/seashells-and-amoebas.html" target="_blank">errant nipples</a>. I loved my adventures, even the ones I didn't love at the <a href="http://www.hard-corps.blogspot.com/2013/05/not-brave.html" target="_blank">time</a>. And now that those adventures involve deadlines, potty-training and getting used to all the paperwork that comes with kindergarten, (no body warned me!) I also love reading about other people's adventures.<br />
If you do, too, then you'll enjoy the following:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://the%20moritz%20thomsen%20peace%20corps%20experience%20award/" target="_blank">Peace Corps Worldwide</a> is the long-time home of Peace Corps <a href="http://www.hard-corps.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-lion-in-garden-of-guenet-hotel_22.html" target="_blank">writers</a> such as <a href="http://www.hard-corps.blogspot.com/2013/05/paper-bags-and-presidents-conversation.html" target="_blank">John Coyne</a>, and also a place to hear about and read reviews of new Peace Corps books. The site is packed with stories, but I'm especially enjoying the occasional <a href="http://peacecorpsworldwide.org/?s=shriver" target="_blank">Shriver Stories</a>, which share memories volunteers have about <a href="http://www.sargentshriver.org/" target="_blank">Sargent Shriver</a>, the Peace Corps' founding director.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.joinchase.org/" target="_blank">Join Chase</a> is a beautifully-designed blog by a former Guyana volunteer who is now biking, eating and teaching his way through Korea. Stories of his rides are vivid, his photography transporting, and on his <a href="https://www.facebook.com/joinchase" target="_blank">Facebook</a> page, his teaching moments feel clever and authentic.<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://minoritypeacecorpsassociation.wordpress.com/peace-corps-stories/fiji-gwendolyn-ross/" target="_blank">Minority Peace Corps Association </a>does a nice job sharing stories from volunteers of color, and these stories often reflect right back on our own culture and the reach it has in shaping the experiences of volunteers.<br />
<br />
OK, your turn. Where do you read about great adventures?<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08306611902852202422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2210040031639962587.post-50775951510806384462013-08-21T06:30:00.001-07:002013-08-21T06:30:02.852-07:00Marabout or medi-vac<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">By <a href="http://www.hard-corps.blogspot.com/2013/07/have-skates-will-travel-conversation.html"><span class="s2">Leita Kaldi</span></a></span><span class="s3">, <a href="http://www.peacecorps.gov/learn/wherepc/africa/senegal/"><span class="s4">Senegal</span></a></span><span class="s1"> 1993-96</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s5"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s5"> I lay there with my legs akimbo as the Peace Corps doctor in Dakar poked around looking for something he couldn’t find. </span><br />
<span class="s5"> “Olive!” he called the Irish nurse in. “I can’t find her cervix.” </span><br />
<span class="s5"> So she peered inside and agreed in her charming brogue, “Odd! Neither can I, doctor.” </span><br />
<span class="s5"> “Cathy!” he called in the Ghanaian nurse. </span><br />
<span class="s5"> She, too, had a look, shook her head, and agreed. “Can’t see a thing. There’s something blocking her cervix.” </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s5"> I began to feel somewhat bored by this conference between my legs and called down to the assembly. </span><br />
<span class="s5"> “Hey, today’s my birthday. While I have your attention, do you think you could all sing ’Happy Birthday’ to me?” </span><br />
<span class="s5"> Three faces looked up into mine with big smiles, and they broke into song. There was no cake with candles, though, only a reference to the Lebanese clinic across town where they had an MRI and sonogram. So off I went in a taxi, an unaccustomed luxury, except that at every corner the Taliban kids crowded around the car with their tomato cans stuck through the window, asking for alms for their marabout. I shrank into my seat as we crawled from one block to the next until we arrived at the modern building that housed an excellent medical facility. Peace Corps had a contract with the clinic, and I was treated with utmost respect, one reason being that I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in my fifties. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfe58q2KFMbVCXKl-bdBMqvJbiAR-tsddNl_uz_wOeROSc4ad8gfZi-GMZhe4SYtrmgW4dbpRwB2Ibl6fjmtKV_Q0RVoJy11i0KZ8_QBLTX1dfBKHqo_9mWHkJiKo9wZq79yxWzLJJ_AT_/s1600/leita.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="366" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfe58q2KFMbVCXKl-bdBMqvJbiAR-tsddNl_uz_wOeROSc4ad8gfZi-GMZhe4SYtrmgW4dbpRwB2Ibl6fjmtKV_Q0RVoJy11i0KZ8_QBLTX1dfBKHqo_9mWHkJiKo9wZq79yxWzLJJ_AT_/s400/leita.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Leita Kaldi in Senegal, submitted photo</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="p3">
I spent that night in the Peace Corps’ “health hut,” then next morning got back on the road to my village. I had no time to waste. I had projects in mid-stream, like women’s markets for tourists, a latrine for the local middle school, classes in small enterprise development. The morning after arriving back in my village of Fimela, in the Delta Sine Saloum, I walked down the sandy paths to see my friend and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marabout" target="_blank">marabout</a>, Cheikh Diop, an old man who had taught me about animism and Islam, two sides of the same card, and whose family I cherished. I told him I had a health problem, a blockage in my pelvis. His black eyes focused on mine.<br />
“I can take care of that.” </div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s5"> “Maybe you can,” I replied, and thought about it, walking back to my little house. Many people in the village went to him for herbal remedies and magical incantations, but … the die had been cast. A boy came running towards me. </span><br />
<span class="s5"> “Adjia Sagar! You have a phone call.” He led me to the one central telephone hut in the village. I picked up the phone. It was the Peace Corps doctor.*</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s5"> “We just got your tests back. You have a cervical cyst. It might be cancer. You’re being med-evac’d. Pack up your stuff. All your stuff. You probably won’t be coming back. A car will pick you up tomorrow afternoon and bring you to Dakar. You’re flying to Washington.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s5"> “But … but …” I stammered. “I can’t leave now. I have work to do. Pack up all my stuff by tomorrow? Are you kidding.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s5"> “A car will be there. Be ready.” Then, softening his voice, he added, “I’ll be waiting for you in Dakar. You can stay at our house until your flight leaves.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s5"> I walked away from the phone hut across the sand. Cancer? I stretched my fingers out in front of me and turned around in a circle, as if I were warding off evil. No! Not this time. I am fine.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s5"> But I packed my things into my one big suitcase that evening, went around next morning to say be bennen yoon … until we meet again … not good-bye, to all my neighbors.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s5"> Two days later I was in Washington D.C. I made my way to Peace Corps Headquarters, then was sent for all kinds of exams and to schedule surgery at George Washington University Hospital. I stayed in a hotel across the Potomac where volunteers with health problems were housed. I learned it had been a notorious CIA spy den in years past, maybe even as I checked in, which gave the building a special allure. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s5"> I took advantage of my sojourn to explore Washington between medical appointments -- the Smithsonian, the monuments, amazing bus rides. Standing on a sidewalk in front of Peace Corps one day I saw a sign, “Cellular One.” I’d been away so long I thought it was an Italian restaurant. I tried a McDonald’s hamburger, which I found revolting after my quasi-vegetarian diet in Senegal.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s5"> Within a few days I was admitted to George Washington University Hospital. Skipping the gory details, I had a hysterectomy -- no cancer! -- and the best medical care ever. And it didn’t cost me a dime. Thank you, Peace Corps! </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s5"> But I did have a problem when I told the Peace Corps rep I wanted to return to Senegal. </span><br />
<span class="s5"> “You’re done,” he responded. </span><br />
<span class="s5"> I pleaded and cajoled, insisted and demanded, assuring him I’d be just fine after a month’s recuperation, until he finally relented and told me I could go back to finish my third year. So I did rest for a month or so, and returned to Senegal, where I talked to our Peace Corps Director who, I was surprised and happy to know, knew nothing of my medical procedure. They were serious about privacy issues but, of course, I told him everything. I returned to my village to resume work on my projects and quickly became exhausted, but I did manage to get a few things done. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s5"> Within a few days of my return, I met my beloved marabout, and he asked me where I’d been. When I told him about my excavation, he looked quite indignant. </span><br />
<span class="s5"> “I could have fixed that,” he reprimanded me. </span><br />
<span class="s5"> I had to smile. Who knows. Maybe he could have. </span></div>
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<span class="s5"></span><br /></div>
<br />
<div class="p3">
<span class="s5">* Let me take this opportunity to throw accolades at our Peace Corps Medical Office, Olive, Cathy, and Dr. Richard Clattenburg, who really cared, though he abhorred snakes, burrowing parasites, and begged us, shuddering, not to get guinea worm.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08306611902852202422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2210040031639962587.post-26303091986837078442013-08-20T05:46:00.001-07:002013-08-20T05:46:22.820-07:00Coming tomorrow......writer <a href="http://www.hard-corps.blogspot.com/2013/07/have-skates-will-travel-conversation.html" target="_blank">Leita Kaldi's</a> story of the time she was medically evacuated from Senegal. Leita wrote this piece just for us! Here's a little of what's coming:<br />
<br />
I lay there with my legs akimbo as the Peace Corps doctor in Dakar poked around looking for something he couldn’t find.<br />
“Olive!” he called the Irish nurse in. “I can’t find her cervix.”<br />
<br />
Yep. More tomorrow!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08306611902852202422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2210040031639962587.post-30825304940981952842013-08-14T09:53:00.000-07:002013-09-06T09:35:28.783-07:00Back to school...<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> by Kristen Hare</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0YVrKhmQY0gOC54f5nv2rvWBBixaPOYnS-YhiHtI4tu8f6g4ELoOAK0j-dl0K-_P09rTZR-Z-xLdF8S7FB3nbjXmIA1fv4xGOKpcI8WinVSahcWkteeGZT_L74QFnE14l7ySMmfSnRsPu/s1600/jc.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0YVrKhmQY0gOC54f5nv2rvWBBixaPOYnS-YhiHtI4tu8f6g4ELoOAK0j-dl0K-_P09rTZR-Z-xLdF8S7FB3nbjXmIA1fv4xGOKpcI8WinVSahcWkteeGZT_L74QFnE14l7ySMmfSnRsPu/s640/jc.JPG" width="392" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Students at Johanna Cecilia High School, photo by Kristen Hare</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> When the fat packet holding my invitation for the Peace Corps came, I learned I’d be going to Guyana, which I had to look up, and that I’d be a community education promoter.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> OK, that sounds vague, I thought. I can do that. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> Really, I was there to become a teacher. And in Guyana, when I learned that, I was terrified. Most of the volunteers in my group were. We had college degrees. Some were well-traveled. But we weren’t teachers. We had training, actually good training, and a bit of practice working with classes near the capitol. We had a volunteer from an earlier group who was a real-deal teacher. She helped a lot. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> Still, when I arrived for my first day at Johanna Cecilia Community High School, I felt clueless and unprepared. Embarrassingly unprepared. My Peace Corps-provided lesson materials were geared toward children in Africa. We were in South America. The cultures and issues were totally different. A few of the young girls in one class quietly and kindly made sure I knew that I wasn't wearing a slip, and everyone could see the outline of my underwear, and this was a really big deal. I spelled words incorrectly on the board, using my American English instead of the British spelling Guyanese use. Specifically and in general, I was just a spectacle.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> Each evening in my tiny two-room top house, where I had a benevolent breeze and a narrow view of the Essequibo River, I worked on the next day’s lesson. I planned and schemed. And, just in case my cluelessness won anyway, I brought along crayons, paper and Harry Potter as my emergency fallback plan each day.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> Shortly after becoming the white miss at JC School, I sat down and wrote this small note to myself during a brief and quiet break one day. I found it recently and, since everyone's heading back to school, it seemed like a good time to share:</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> It takes courage to stand up in front of 200 small faces each day and:</span></div>
<ol class="ol1">
<li class="li1"><span class="s1">Get their attention.</span></li>
<li class="li1"><span class="s1">Say something worthy of that attention once I get it.</span></li>
<li class="li1"><span class="s1">Not look too long on the beautiful or smart among them. I was neither beautiful nor smart at 12.</span></li>
<li class="li1"><span class="s1">Remember what it was to be that neither-beautiful-nor-smart girl, instead ugly, round, awkward, but still interesting.</span></li>
<li class="li1"><span class="s1">Remember what it was like, then, in my smallness, to need my teacher’s attention, and to find a way to give it now, from my bigness, to everyone.</span></li>
<li class="li1"><span class="s1">To remember names like Hourilall and Dravina. Wait, Druvina?</span></li>
<li class="li1"><span class="s1">To walk the wide, open halls and not get lost in the palms waving from the green rice fields outside.</span></li>
<li class="li1"><span class="s1">To walk those same halls and not get lost in the brown-eyed stares and quiet whispers that follow my every step. </span></li>
</ol>
<div class="p2">
This is going to be amazing, I thought, sitting at my small desk, feeling the breeze creep through the barred windows, sipping hot water. <span class="s1"></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> I’d sweated through my pants already.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> I can do this, I told myself.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> Thirty minutes later, I put my hands to my face, pressing back my fear.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> I’m not a Guyanese teacher. I’m an American reporter. I’m someone who does not like to sweat. I’m someone who might swap my grandma’s ring for a real iced coffee. But I’m still here, at this small desk, sweating through my pants.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
Three months down. Two years to go. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08306611902852202422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2210040031639962587.post-63831173500233817602013-08-07T08:32:00.000-07:002013-08-07T08:32:29.024-07:00Remember that time...<div class="p1">
... when you were in the <a href="http://www.peacecorps.gov/">Peace Corps</a> and let your neighbor with the beautiful, bouncy curls talk you into getting a perm, which led you to a “stylist” who washed your hair with an old Mello-Creme tub and a ton of perm solution, squirting it generously over your burning scalp while reassuring you “white people hair is different,” and therefore you needed more stinging solution, and then you went to a big neighborhood Hindu celebration for <a href="http://www.guyana.org/Handbook/festival.html">Phagwah</a>, and got hit with lots of pink powder, which turned your now-porous curls pink, and everyone in your Peace Corps group thought you’d gone crazy, but everyone in your village thought your super-curly pink hair was awesome? Yeah. Me neither.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08306611902852202422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2210040031639962587.post-79111112098363447632013-07-31T06:01:00.000-07:002013-07-31T06:01:47.275-07:00Have skates, will travel: A conversation with writer Leita Kaldi<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> On a summer afternoon, Leita Kaldi opened the door of her Sarasota home and welcomed me in. A few week’s earlier, I e-mailed Kaldi, asking if she’d be willing to speak with me about her books, the Peace Corps and her life since. Since Kaldi lives not too far from me, she invited me to her home, and I gladly stepped inside. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> Kaldi’s book about her time in Senegal, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Roller-Skating-Desert-Leita-Kaldi/dp/160749180X/ref=sr_sp-atf_image_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375204569&sr=1-1" target="_blank">“Roller Skating in the Desert,”</a> came out in 2010. Last year, her book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Valley-Atibon-Leita-Kaldi/dp/1935925288/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375208507&sr=1-1" target="_blank">“In the Valley of Atibon,”</a> about the five years she spent in Haiti after the Peace Corps, was published. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7bHYhIEviJicDYs-y6cjw_C2qLthclRmIxFsO3rHpwAFCGr_xdGQ-zcQVA8sD0c4L4T7Wrdsn7wGYyE25GRhGjgD8VeLQt_P3-XzqIm1N8fIEurS8wiB6wzp8bnP74XvOJ0WUo__wIPV_/s1600/leitabook.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7bHYhIEviJicDYs-y6cjw_C2qLthclRmIxFsO3rHpwAFCGr_xdGQ-zcQVA8sD0c4L4T7Wrdsn7wGYyE25GRhGjgD8VeLQt_P3-XzqIm1N8fIEurS8wiB6wzp8bnP74XvOJ0WUo__wIPV_/s400/leitabook.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> Before joining the <a href="http://www.pcsenegal.org/" target="_blank">Peace Corps</a>, Kaldi spent years working with the Roma, the United Nations and UNESCO. I was interested to see how her time in Senegal and her experience with the Peace Corps compared to what came before in her life and what’s come after.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> During our visit, we spoke about her more recent work with the UN National Committee for UN Women, the <a href="http://www.thelifelonglearningacademy.com/" target="_blank">courses</a> she teaches about the Roma at the University of South Florida, Sarasota, and what she thought of those Gypsy <a href="http://www.tlc.com/tv-shows/gypsy-sisters/videos/gypsy-sisters-first-look.htm" target="_blank">reality shows</a> (not much.)</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> Our conversation was edited, minimally, for length.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>KH: </b>On my ride here, I passed lots of highways, I passed the bay, lots of lovely little trailer parks and condos and shopping malls. If I was coming to visit you in Senegal, what would my commute have looked like?</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>LK:</b> (Laughing) From the capitol, Dakar, it would have been about 10 hours, changing bush taxis about five times. I was in a very remote part of Senegal, because when I went in, I said, I want to be somewhere where I’m totally far away from Americans. I didn’t come here to hang out with Americans, and I want to be in a place where people haven’t seen white people, and as remote as possible. So they sent me down to Delta Sine Saloum. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>KH: </b>Even before you joined the Peace Corps, I read that you had a lot of adventures, working with the UN, UNESCO, the Roma. Tell me about your life up to age 55, when you joined the Peace Corps. Just start there and tell me how you ended up wanting to do the Peace Corps.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>LK:</b> Well, you have my resume with the UN, etc. I was always working in institutions that dealt with global issues and developing countries, and I ended up in Miami, loving Miami, working in the hotel industry because there was nothing like that around. So I was very bored. And I have two sons, they were grown, and I thought, I’ve got to get out of here. I want to go to a developing country. I want to go to Africa. And so I just called Peace Corps, and I was amazed that they took people my age. So I applied, and voila. I really wanted to go to Africa. I was very concerned about African countries, the situation, and knew quite a lot about the country from things that I’d read.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>KH:</b> What kind of things did you read leading up to leaving for Senegal, and how did they compare to what you found when your feet were on the ground?</span><br />
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</div>
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>LK:</b> I read tons of books about Africa. <a href="http://www.paultheroux.com/" target="_blank">Paul Theroux</a> was a great influence, and the African writers, like <a href="http://brown.edu/Departments/Africana_Studies/people/achebe_chinua.html" target="_blank">Chinua Achebe</a>. What surprised me is that in Senegal, western Africa, there were no animals. West Africa is about people. East Africa is about animals. And I was very surprised that it seemed more Arabic than African, because of course the country’s entirely Muslim, and everyone’s wearing Muslim clothes, and their lives revolve around Islam. But I was very happy when I went to my village that there it seemed like the Africa I had dreamed about, and there was animism instead of Islam, or they coexisted symbiotically. So there, I found the Africa of my dreams, more or less.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>KH:</b> I know that you had done a lot of development work up to that point. Was there anything about the Peace Corps that surprised you? The Peace Corps either as an idea, or an institution, or kind of a messy bureaucracy?</span><br />
<span class="s1"><br /></span>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9W3NCVIvypWlSvhY1n0FGq2my_lazObI2RUE0VwTPWZsjuizNPU3DvS75ZKP1GPTtO5IsNFCFTlSYleogUK7TtRc5C5ih1ggmUoNPz7BwB9xdg-AL08Usryk8DKV6chLjimiQa3bVR_w-/s1600/leita.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="366" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9W3NCVIvypWlSvhY1n0FGq2my_lazObI2RUE0VwTPWZsjuizNPU3DvS75ZKP1GPTtO5IsNFCFTlSYleogUK7TtRc5C5ih1ggmUoNPz7BwB9xdg-AL08Usryk8DKV6chLjimiQa3bVR_w-/s400/leita.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Leita Kaldi in Senegal. Submitted photo</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>LK:</b> I thought the training was such a drag. And the air of mystery around Peace Corps. They’re not transparent enough. They don’t tell you what they’re going to do, or how they think about you or feel about you. I was always trying to figure out where I stood with them. They were scheming and tricking, you know? I think it was part of the stress of being there at first that made me really nervous about things like that. But I knew, for example, that I went to a site where there had been a Peace Corps volunteer who was quite nuts and had alienated the entire village by building a wall around his house and other various and very crazy things. And I realized after I’d been there a couple of months that Peace Corps had sent me there to kind of make amends with the village, to be a diplomat, to ingratiate the village, because this boy had had alienated everyone terribly. So I went back to the Peace Corps and I said, you know, you could have told me that. That is why you sent me there, isn’t it? Yes. I said, So why can’t you be upfront about stuff like that? It would have armed me better.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>KH:</b> I read a one of your <a href="http://peacecorpsworldwide.org/short-stories/category/leita-kaldi/" target="_blank">short stories</a> on <a href="http://peacecorpsworldwide.org/" target="_blank">Peace Corps Worldwide</a>. One of the things I thought was really interesting about it was that I felt fully immersed in the room. I felt like a fly on the wall. It was lovely storytelling. How do you write? Do you collect things? Are you taking pictures in your mind? Do you write in journals? What is the process that you take to get the stories?</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>LK:</b> I’ve written in journals forever. Forever. Both this book on Senegal and the one on Haiti is all based on my journals, and I’m so glad I did that. And now, I’m writing a book on Gypsies from journals that are, let me think, 50 years old, because I was involved with them when I was very young. And then it takes a long time. It took me 10 years to write each of those books. Just slogging away at the journals.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>KH:</b> You went on to work on Haiti. How did the adventures that you after the Peace Corps, internationally, how did those compare with the Peace Corps?</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>LK:</b> Well, first of all, I would never have gotten the job if I hadn’t been in the Peace Corps. This was a huge job, administrator of the <a href="http://www.hashaiti.org/" target="_blank">Hopital Albert Schweitzer</a>, which had its first incarnation in Gabon. When I interviewed for the job, it required a Master’s degree in public health, which I did not have. But you know what, I just brought my photo album from Senegal and told them what I had done there, and they just looked at this album, and what they were really looking for was somebody who could survive Haiti. It’s a very tough place. And that’s why they hired me. I thought that it would be easy because I spoke French fluently from Senegal, and I figured the people would be quite similar, because they’re West African for the most part. But they’re very different, and throughout this book "In the Valley of Atibon," I’m remembering my beautiful, peaceful, serene Senegal existence and saying, this is not like that. To put it in a nutshell, when I first went to Haiti and the director of the board of directors said, how do you handle stress, warning me that there was going to be a lot of stress. And I said, I don’t get stressed out. I learned, after three years in Senegal, how to be peaceful, things don’t upset me. I’m very centered and focused and I don’t get stressed. About six months later, he said, how are you handling the stress? And I said, I’m drinking gin and smoking cigarettes. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b>KH:</b> Have you been back to Senegal since you left?</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b>LK:</b> Yeah, a couple of times. I went back twice. I went back in 2001 and 2005.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b>KH:</b> What was it like to go back?</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b>LK:</b> Wonderful. I was so happy to see the progress. Senegal is really progressing. Really developing. It was great to go back to my site, and everybody remembered me. Of course, they were amazed that I was still alive. And they’d be very happy to know that I got married, because that was their biggest concern about me.</span></div>
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