What's new in Guyana?

CONSOLIDATION Sunday, May 10th...Mother's Day in US and Guyana.  What am I doing?  I am being picked up by a PC driver and taken to a quiet and fairly remote location in Rose Hall.  There are two vehicles that started early in the morning from Peace Corps HQ in Georgetown.  They have stopped along the way to collect volunteers in key areas known to be volatile after elections.  National Elections will take place Monday, May 11.  We arrive at our destination about noon and soon served lunch.  For the next 6 days we are free of preparing our own meals.  We are free of our duties, in general.  I look at it as R&R.  I hope others do also.  There is a large building that is used as sleeping quarters with a men's dorm and women's dorm on the bottom floor.  More private sleeping quarters are upstairs that staff will use.  There will be about 18 volunteers in the dorms that could easily accommodate twice the number. Across the yard is a larger common building where we will

Bright Side vs. Dark Side Most times, I find my current situation as a Peace Corps Volunteer rewarding and answering a long standing question of, “What would it be like….?” I knew it would come at a price to take 27 months and serve in a country, a culture unknown to me.  What I did not factor in or even know or think about is the daily assault to every one of my senses.  I knew garbage would be burned.  I had read and tried to prepare for bucket baths and cold showers.  I knew I was going to a tropical climate and it would be hot and humid.  I knew there would be familiar and unfamiliar food.  I knew that the culture likely had music folks identified with.  I realized Creolese would be a challenging dialect of English.  I knew that the people of Guyana came from many peoples over more than one body of water.  Even knowing all of this, I was unprepared for  the transportation challenges in all forms; the routine starchy food offerings that are typically over sugared and salted; the a