Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Hey!! So I've finally gotten a chance to post to this thing. I wanted to try and put in some pictures too. I've now been in country for a little over two weeks, after a couple days staging in Miami and a plane trip down to Georgetown. I feel like I have traveled to the edge of the world, and fallen off into another one that is more beautiful and exciting than I ever imagined. I don't have long, but for now enjoy a few pictures from the past couple of weeks!

Celebrating Pagwah with my host family. Pagwah marks the beginning of the Hindu New Year and is often celebrated by splashing friends, family, and anyone else who wants to play with water in the morning, and colorful abree and abra (powders and perfumed liquids) in the evening.

Here's GUY15, the name given to our group of trainees. There's 15 of us, and we're all health volunteers. We'll be training in the capital city of Georgetown together for the next couple of months until May 7, when we are officially sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers. Only then do we actually begin the two-years of service. Most of us will probably be sent to remote Amerindian villages in the interior, some of which are only accessible by bush taxi or canoe.

Here's a shot from one of the villages we visited on the 26th of March. It was a gorgeous place with no running water or electricity. The primary staple is cassava, from which everything from bread to beer is made of.

Here is the street I live on. This was taken on a gorgeous day, but what isn't pictured are the trenches of open-air sewage water running behind all the houses and all the trash on the streets. Sigh, I wish there were a way to just clean it all up, but I suppose the real problem lies in instilling enough pride in people for their environment so that littering does not occur. Unfortunately, such values are probably pretty low on the list of priorities when you are earning less than $3 a day and everyone you know is trying to get out of the country and move somewhere, anywhere, else.