Thursday, January 4, 2007

Sunday, August 20, 2006

July for me started off on a very itchy note. I joineda bunch of other Peace Corps Volunteers for a weekend trip to Shell Beach, a camp site on the far northwestern coast of Guyana, near the border with Venezuela. It's also where sea turtles go every March through August to lay their eggs, so we were hoping to witness this sight before the season was over. Our boat was a 20-footer with a big 150-speed engine, driven by a man named Peanut. With 16 of us, we had the entire boat booked, so Peanut was camping with us for the weekend and would take us back when it was over. To avoid the rough seas, Peanut took us in to Shell Beach through a twisting series of back waterways--rivers, creeks, and streams cutting through the rainforest or across open savannahs. Since my village is on the Pomeroon River, I'm pretty used to navigating such waterways, passages where the dense jungle vegetation crowds either side of you and the branches and vines fold overhead to create a green tunnel. However, usually I'm paddling slowly in a boat or canoe, or rather, BEING paddled around in a boat or canoe since I suck at paddling by myself. Here, on the other hand, we were hurtling by at 40mph in a speedboat. At times, in order to navigate the narrow waterways, our boat would twist and turn so much that it would tilt at 30-degree angles, sending up huge sprays on one side and leaning us within arm's reach of the riverbank vegetation on the other side. Some people found it a bit harrowing, but I was definitely eating it up. Eventually, we still had to traverse some ocean to get to the beach, and within five minutes of being pounded on the rough waves we all were thankful that Peanut had taken the "back route." When we finally reached the camp ground we all had to jump out into the chest-high surf to drag the boat ashore, pulling it up on rolling logs until it was out of reach of the tides. True to its name, the beach itself is composed entirely of shells and crushed shell bits of the small, thin, fragile, clamshell variety. The campground is run by a local Amerindian man named Audley James, whom we called Uncle Audley. He has a team of 10 turtle wardens, and together they spend the better part of the breeding season at the camp and 3 other sites, canvassing the beach at night for mother turtles who come ashore to lay their eggs. They tag and measure the turtles, then mark the sites of the egg nests. In talking with Mr. James, I learned that he had been working at Shell Beach since 1988, when he and an American scientist first established the camp to monitor and protect the endangered hawskbill, leatherback, green, and olive Ridley turtles that nest there. He was a really nice and knowledgeable guy, and even put up the prize for our midday game of Texas Hold 'Em (we didn't have chips, so we just gather a bunch of shells and crab claws from the beach to wager with)--it was a cool turtle pendant that he had carved from coconut shell. Over the years, his work had led him to attend various international turtle conferences around the world, making him one of the most well-traveled Amerindians I have met so far. The coolest thing was that when one of us asked him what he thought of a recent trip to the States, he smiled politely and said it "was nice to visit" but that he didn't think he "would want to live there." Freaking awesome! After being approached (and in some cases�outright solicited) by so many Guyanese who seem to have nothing in their eyes but "VISA! VISA!" when they meet you, I gotta say, it was awesome to hear Audley say that. It also made me try to suck it up a little more and stop whining about the camp site. In my defense, though, it was definitely a pretty rough weekend, and here's where the itchiness comes into play. We�d been forewarned by other Volunteers that had made the trip before about Shell Beach's notorious mosquitoes. However, when we first pulled up to the beach in the early afternoon, saw the scenic expanse of crushed shells, the backdrop of palm trees, and felt the cool breeze blowing in off the ocean, we thought "Hey, this isn't so bad." In the thatch-roofed longhouses that served as our shelters, some of us were even cocky enough to hang hammocks without mosquito nets. Fools we were, fools! Like General Custer and his men, we thought to highly of ourselves, and when dusk came, we paid the price for our own arrogance. The first victims were struck as the setting sun dipped below the horizon. People started slapping at necks, arms, feet--anywhere the skin was exposed. Reluctantly,, we all dutifully applied our repellent, thinking that would be enough to keep the accursed insects at bay. Oh, if only that had been true. As the night wore on and the bites persisted, we gradually became aware that these were not normal mosquitoes we were up against--they were some kind of sick, sinister, super breed that we had never encountered before: Culcidae anopheles maximus. As the casualties mounted, people grew desperate and started to employ extreme measures, whipping out heavy-duty repellents. I'm not just talking lame "Deep Woods OFF" crap here. Hah! No man, we were into it BAD--using all kinds of god-awful stuff--I'm talking 50, 60, 100% DEET, the HARD shit you can only get off the black market, and even then only if you know the right people. I mean, for the love of God, some of this juice melts the freaking plastic caps right off the bottles that it comes in! And yet still, the mosquitoes kept on coming. It was tragic, people were just getting mowed down left and right. Those naive fools that hadn't put up nets were soon clawing at the door to our only tent, begging to be let in, but the folks inside were too busy swatting at their own tormentors to heed the increasingly desperate cries of their friends outside. Even now, I still have flashbacks where I can hear their screams. As for myself, I had heeded the warnings and had come equipped with not one, not two, but SIX, count 'em, SIX different levels of defense (I really hate mosquitoes). In addition to my hammock net, I also had a ridiculously dork personal head-net that goes over your hat and which everyone had laughed at and said made me look like a crazy bee-keeper. Of course, when the mosquitoes came like some demented insect Luftwaffe from hell, I was like: "Who's laughing now, bitches?" Actually, it was no one, because the head net didn�t really work for shit�it kept mashing up against my face and I couldn't really breath well with it on. Likewise, my other six layers of defense also failed miserably:

1) My hammock net might as well have been made of Swiss cheese, the way the bugs kept finding ways to get inside

2) and 3) As stated before the repellent and Deep Woods OFF mosquito wipes I had brought were pretty useless against the onslaught.

4) I had put on long pants and long-sleeved clothing like everyone else, but I swear to God, these things must have had 6-inch long proboscis (proboscises?) because people were getting bit through all number of layers--I mean, we were even getting bit on our backs and asses, which at first no one could figure out until we realized that they were coming up underneath us and biting us THROUGH our friggin' hammocks! And some of these hammocks are made out of pretty thick material!

5) At one point, I even grew desperate enough to try lighting one of the mosquito coils I had brought, but the sea breeze, which somehow wasn't strong enough to keep the mosquitoes away, was still good enough to blow away all the coil smoke and render it pretty useless. I tried lighting one and holding it next to me to really soak up the smoke, but only ended up burning my fingertips and nearly setting myself on fire instead.

6) Finally I was left with just my big-ass Ace-in-the-hole, a mondo can of aerosol Multi-Spectrum Insecticide spray--the kind where you're supposed to open up all the windows in your house and wear a gas mask before using with a 10-foot pole. Instead, at around 3am in the morning of our first night, itchy, sleepless, and covered with mosquito bite welts, I just uncorked the motherfucker and let loose at 4 inches from within my hammock. Unfortunately, with my mosquito net hanging around me, I was essentially spraying within the confines of a very small enclosed space, and so I nearly asphyxiated myself in my trigger-happiness. At the time I hardly cared anymore--I was like that Marine in Aliens, the psycho butch chick one, clutching my insecticide gas grenade to my chest and trying to take as many of the buggers down with me as I could.

Ok, ok, maybe I am exaggerating all this just a teensy bit. But believe me, it was pretty bad. And the part about some people begging to be let in the tent is true: my friend Mike, who was one of those foolish enough not to hang his net, told me the next day that around two in the morning, after whimpering for several hours in his hammock, he had crawled to the tent and asked in his most pathetic voice: "Guys? Is there room for one more" The worst part was that the freaking things didn't necessarily let up during the daytime. I mean, things were so bad in certain areas, like around the pit latrine, that I started bringing spray with me whenever I needed to take a dump, and using it to hose my ass down with repellent before squatting. And yet still I would get bit, and just like in prison, with your pants around your ankles you end up getting nailed in places you'd rather not talk about.
Oh, we also saw a turtle come ashore to lay eggs on the first night. We were walking along the ocean at night with a warden when another guy signaled us from down the beach by flashing his light several times. After sprinting down to meet him, we saw an enormous turtle digging in the sand. Audley told us it was a leatherback. It measured a good 56 inches long, and was so big that when it dug its nest it shook the ground we were standing on. Very cool to see.

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