9.11.2001, more from Guyana

Amy Myers, second from left, in Guyana

By Amy Myers

Guyana, 2001-2003
Nicaragua, 2003-2004

     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.  

     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.

     I went on with my day. 

     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.  

    I went on with my day.

Guyana                                                   photo by Amy M

    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.  

     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.  

     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.”  

9.11.2001, from Trinidad and Tobago

by Travis Boyette,

Guyana, 2000-2002     

     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.

     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! 

     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. 

     "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!"

     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.

     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. 

     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. 

     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? 

     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. 

     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." 

     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.

9.11.2001, from Miami, bound for Haiti

     By Leita Kaldi, Senegal, 1993-1996

     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. 

      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. 

     “Why aren’t you checking people in?” I asked, interrupting her telephone call. 
     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.”  

     I stared at her in disbelief, then heard the message over the loudspeaker.  

     “All flights are canceled.  The airport is closing.  Everyone must leave the airport.”  

     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.  

“No tolls today.”  

     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.”  

     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.

-- From "In the Valley of Atibon," by Leita Kaldi

9.11.2001, from Guyana

Students, Johanna Cecilia Community High School                    photo by Kristen Hare

by Kristen Hare
Guyana, 2000-2002

     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.
     On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I followed the same route. Made lunch. Opened a book. Then, a voice rose up from outside.
     "Miss Kristeen," the girl called. "Miss Kristeen."
     I stepped onto my verandah, annoyed at being interrupted during my few quite, totally private and American moments each day.
     "Miss Kristeen, Miss Pauline says you must turn on your TV," my student said.
     That was it.
     And so I walked over to the large television that my school let me borrow when they didn't need it and clicked on.
     I sat down.
     You know what I saw. You saw it, too.
     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.
     That weekend at the open-air market, every old auntie selling fruit and vegetables stopped me and asked after my family.
     Tell them you're safe with us, they all told me.
     Tell them we're all watching your house.
     Tell them we'll protect you.
     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.

Remembering...

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.

One time, in Suriname...

"Freeze," I remember whispering to John Holveck in Suriname during our close of service trip.
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.

Suriname, 2002                                                   photo by Kristen Hare

Ode to my hammock

Lot 12, Adventure          photo by Kristen Hare

by Kristen Hare

Guyana, 2000-2002

     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.

     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.

     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.

     All together, there was too much of us filling that little house.

     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.

     And then it started.

     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. 

     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.

     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.

     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.

     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? 

     I never really knew.

     So I stuck to my hammock whenever I could and closed my eyes and covered my ears and rocked.