So I was lying in my hammock one night reading when I looked up at the ceiling and saw a big dark spot on one of the beams. Thinking it was a bat that had somehow gotten inside my house, I put on my glasses for a closer look. My heart jumped up in my throat when I saw eight hairy legs instead of wings.

Crap. A fucking tarantula. I had seen them before around the mission and in the health post, but had deluded myself into thinking my house would somehow be immune.

Now, let's get something straight. I hate spiders. Back home in the States, I wasn't too fond of even the smallest ones, and considered anything larger than a thumbnail way too big. These days, however, I can deal with normal sized spiders and think nothing of flicking the thumbnail-sized ones off my body or squishing them with my hand. It's the big mofos that still get me. How big do they get? Let's just say that, when you can actually HEAR the damn thing when it scurries around, it's too big for my taste. Like, I'm saying I can pick out the damn spider's individual footsteps as it scurries across my kitchen counter.

Anyways, there was no way I was going to go to bed with this monster crawling around above me, so I geared myself up to kill the thing. Standing on my bed, I gave a few half-hearted swipes with my broom, which the spider just waved off. "Please," it seemed to say, "You gotta do much better than that." So next I got my trusty can of Baygone insecticide, and from a safe distance I emptied about half that motherfucker in the direction of the damn thing. I was too scared to get up close to it, since it was still hanging on the ceiling and I didn't want it to fall on me. Even after about 100 ounces of insecticide was emptied in its direction, the tarantula merely started to get kind of woozy and loose its grip on the ceiling. First one leg slipped off the beam, then another, and finally the entire thing fell off and landed on my bookshelf with a soft thunk. My initial elation at having poisoned the thing was ruined when I saw it scurry off the top shelf and slip down onto the floor somewhere between me and the doorway. It was still alive, and probably pretty pissed off too. It was at this point that the kerosene lamp providing my only light went out. I was plunged into complete darkness, with the matches in the other room and a big ass tarantula high on insecticide fumes somewhere between me and the door. My heart pounding, I muttered a constant stream of profanities as I jumped off the bed, did a few weird jumps and leaps across the room towards the general direction of the door, with images of hairy spiders waiting beneath my feet. I don't know how I managed to get out of the room without clocking myself into the wall, but I found my way to the matches, yanked off the lampshade with my hand (burning it in the process), and lit the light again with a shaky hand. Turning around towards the bedroom, at first there was no sign of the tarantula. Finally I got down on my hands and knees and looked around with my eyes at floor level, and spotted a hairy leg sticking out from the space between my bookshelf and the wall. I few tentative pokes with the broomstick confirmed that the spider was pretty sickly from the insecticide, so I grabbed my bigass shovel in one hand, and a broomstick in the other. A flick of the broomstick and the hairy beast shot out from under the wall into the middle of the floor, where it met ten pounds of metal shovel. It flipped over, its legs curling, and I swung again with the shovel for good measure. This time it squirted out big drops of sticky ichor, and I was pretty sure that now it was fairly dead. Remembering what someone had told me once about disposing of dead tarantulas (their hairs are poisonous and can still harm you if they are scattered from the body), I scooped the thing up and dumped it outside my door. Then I emptied some kerosene on it, lit a match, and watched the motherfucker burn.

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

I went to bed last night around a quarter to 10pm, feeling fairly content with my meal of fried rice, and listening to a burned copy of Green Day's "American Idiot" on my Discman. As I recall, I slept pretty well for a few hours, waking up a couple of times to take my headphones off and adjust my sheets. Then, around 2:30AM, I awoke to someone calling my name. It was my counterpart, Rosita, the Community Health Worker at the village health post. Groggily, I mentally scanned through the reasons she would be waking me at this hour, and soon arrived at the most probable cause.

"Delivery?" I asked.

"Yes, Phillip," she replied, and asked me to bring my kerosene lamp for light.

Still half asleep, I clambered out from under my mosquito net and walked across the moonlit play field to the health post. There I found a vat of water warming on the single kerosene stove, extra tubs and linen sheets set out, and the mother lying on the narrow examining bunk, crying out in pain. She was accompanied by her own mother, and, upon receiving her initial labor pains, they had together paddled nearly 2 miles in a dugout canoe to Rosita's house, where they got a ride to the health post in Rosita's motorboat.

I roughly estimated that her contractions were coming about 3-4 minutes apart, and, upon examination, she appeared to be fully dilated (I could even touch the top of the baby's head with my middle finger). She was already in the second stage of labor, and, barring any complications, the baby would probably be delivered very shortly. At the time, however, I recall only being sure that I had no idea what the fuck I was doing. IN any case, our first priority was getting the lantern lit, as the one flashlight Rosita had brought was low on batteries and cast hardly any light. After a frantic scramble for matches, during which Rosita and I bumped our heads painfully in the dark, we finally got the lamp lit, and I took the mother�s blood pressure by its small yellow glow. Overhead, I heard a couple of bats fluttering around the corrugated tin ceiling, and outside the frogs, crickets, and various insects of the jungle continued their loud chorus. Meanwhile, inside, the mother's pains were coming faster and stronger, as evidenced by her growing tendency to flail about, grab onto, and then squeeze tightly anything within reach. At one point, she latched onto my own arm, and through my concern and alarm I remember a small part of me feeling strangely removed, as if in disbelief and denial that I was not still in my bed, sleeping peacefully. Out here, the Amerindians certainly don't have any analgesics or anesthesia for pain relief, so all childbirths are done "naturally." Indeed, to my concern, there aren't even supplies to provide an IV drip in case the mother gets dehydrated.

Shortly after 3AM, the mother's water broke, and then, in unbelievably rapid succession, after a few pushes, I saw the head appear, then emerge. What happened next was a very wet sluicing sound, and before I knew it, the entire baby had "squirted" out onto the bed, trailing its umbilical cord and cradled in Rosita�s gloved hands. After a tense instant, the air was filled with its loud, high-pitched crying. Relived, we noted that the baby certainly had fully functioning lungs, and appeared healthy. After the cord had been cut, I helped Rosita clean the baby, picking up gentle handfuls of warm water and smoothing them over his unbelievably small head. The mother passed the placenta a few minutes later (it looked like some gross alien brain out of a horror movie, with the spinal cord still attached). A couple of hours later, after we finished mopping and cleaning up, the sky began to lighten on a very foggy morning, and I found myself cradling a swaddled, newborn baby boy in my arms. He was delivered at 3:20AM. Weight = 3.3kg, length = 49cm, head circumference = 35cm, chest circumference = 34cm. I suggested he be named Max Power due to his super apple saucity, but I think it fell on deaf ears.

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

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Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Spent a week making a preliminary visit to my future post, where I will be spending the next two years. It's a tiny village of about 500 people called St. Monica's Mission. St. Monica's is located on an Amerindian reservation in the interior of Guyana's Region 2, roughly 20 miles up the Pomeroon River from the coastline. The actual mission itself rests on a cleared hilltop on a bend of the river's southern bank. On the hill there is an Anglican church,


a primary school,



a nursery school, a health post, a community center, and a village office. The most recent addition is a small house behind the hill,



which also happens to be where I will be living for the two years of my stay.

Other than these buildings, there are only about 4 or 5 other families on the mission. To reach the other 500 members of St. Monica's Mission, one must paddle up or down the river, sometimes for an hour or two. The Amerindian people of St. Monica's are very kind, warm-hearted, and also very shy. When I visited the school, the headmaster gathered all 100 or so of the schoolchildren to welcome me. One of the little girls put a bright red lanyard that she had made around my neck. Each of the grades then gathered around the raised platform on which I sat to recite a poem or song they had practiced. One was about a snowman and another one was about good hygiene, entitled "Be Clean." After the program, during which I made a few speeches and held an impromptu "Q and A" session, I knelt by the door and shook each small child's hand as they passed. They were to introduce themselves to me, but most were too shy and avoided eye contact. In the evenings I stayed at my counterpart's home down the river. She is a Community Health Worker at the St. Monica Health Post. My first night on the Pomeroon, my hosts asked if I would like to wash up before dinner.

"Sure, that would be great," I replied, thankful for the chance to wash off the dirt and grime from the 8 hour journey we had taken from the capital. To get to St. Monica's from Georgetown, you have to take a bus, speedboat, taxi, and then another speedboat.

"Which way to the bathroom?" I asked, looking forward to my shower, even if it was the standard Guyanese "bucket-bath." My host and her family paused after my question, looking confused, then they all burst out laughing.

"Bath is over there," my host smiled, pointing out the window at the wide Pomeroon River flowing by the hut. Now, after a week of river baths, I can honestly say they actually feel quite refreshing. Also, we are deep in the rainforest, with neighboring huts often several hundred meters apart, so the water is pretty much fresh and unpolluted. However, I discovered the flipside to this fact a few days later when a boy ran up to us at the mission with a small tub. Inside was a freshly caught "pirai" from the very river in which I had been bathing every night and morning. Intrigued, I looked in the tub and discovered that "pirai" is what the Amerindians call piranha fish. Thankfully this particular fish was dead, but the hingetrap mouth and hints of the sharp teeth inside were evident. Needless to say, my baths went somewhat quicker after that. During my last day of this preliminary visit we took the health post's boat up and down the river to do house calls. The final home visit of the day was up a small creek that branched off the Pomeroon.

The creek terminated in a small inlet, where we tied the boat and climbed off. Long wooden planks had been laid on the mud and formed a path that led off between the trees.

Balancing on the boards, we walked into the forest and eventually came out into a small clearing where several thatched huts stood. There I met a 77-year-old man, his wife, and a young girl whom he informed me was one of his 76 grandchildren. They also had a pet parrot and a warakaba, which is a little two legged running bird of sorts, sort of like a chicken sized emu.

The 77 year old man, who was named Uncle George, cut open a coconut for me. I drank the cool, mildly sweet water inside thirstily, and then spooned out the lining of the white jelly to eat. The next morning I left for Georgetown to finish my training. So ended my week on the Pomeroon. I will return in May to live there for 2 years.

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.

Monday, March 07, 2005

Ok. Starting my trip tomorrow. Might buy a digital camera tonight so I can take pictures. God only knows if I'd ever be able to post them up here, but I'll definitely try. Please send me letters! Address will be:

XXXXXXX

XXXXXXX

XXXXXXX

XXXXXXX

XXXXXXX

[address removed for security reasons]

Is it wise to post my mailing address on the Internet? Hah, if any spammers or junk-mailers manage to reach me all the way down there, then hell, they DESERVE to get to me. God knows I'd probably be desperate for human contact anyways.

Ok, here goes nothing...

I'm beginning to wonder if I will ever get out there...