As I was lying in bed the other night watching a movie, I could have SWORN that I felt something brush against my foot. It didn’t feel like a big something, but my brain instinctively said ‘rodent’. But when I turned my light on for the hunt, there was no sign of this phantom mouse. So I went to sleep, with no further attention given to the incident. The next morning, however, I got out of the shower, and noticed this hanging down beneath my bed frame:
Now, is it just me, or does that bear a frightening resemblance to a rodent’s appendage? Specifically, the tail region. But it looked lifeless! So I grabbed my camera, coming to the logical conclusion that somehow my girth had shifted just right during the night so as to slowly crush this mouse. However, when I lifted up the mattress, fully expecting a mangled mouse carcass, I saw only this:
The ‘mouse tail’ was a strip of wood glue that had come off the bed frame. Boy was my face red! Not to mention I was a little disappointed with the somewhat boring outcome of such a promising encounter. I got my wish a few days later though, when I actually saw a mouse in my apartment. I gave chase, and yes, this story does end with a casualty. Not of the mouse, mind you, but of my broom. I chased the devious animal until it ran under the couch, all the while screaming and weaving a tapestry of profanity that would make a sailor blush. Have I mentioned how much I loath rodents, by the way? So this mouse was taking refuge in a piece of furniture, and I proceeded to bash the furniture with my trusty broom, hoping that my fanatical thrashing will scare it out. However, I got a little too overzealous, and managed to snap the broom head right off. Mice: 2 Tony: 0 Defeated, I sighed and retired to my hammock, where I then saw the mouse scurry across the floor and leave. I quietly cursed his entire family.
Sometimes I honestly just feel like I’m living in Dr. Doolittle’s purgatory. Another incident occurred recently that reminded me just how far from home I am. As I’ve mentioned before, there is a humble but effective gym around the corner from my house that I go to about three days a week. I like to go first thing in the morning for three reasons 1) it’s a (somewhat) reasonable temperature 2) there is nobody else there 3) I like to have the workout finished early in the day. The gym is located behind a house, essentially in a door-less garage. The people have two dogs, which are both very sweet animals. One of the dogs, the aptly named “Killer” likes to sleep underneath the bench press. He also likes to use the gym as a latrine. So there is a section of the floor that is perpetually wet. And as I make my way over to another corner of the gym, I can’t ignore the somewhat unpleasant smell emanating from the old, broken down treadmills that reside there. You guessed where this story is going. Killer has turned the treadmill graveyard into an asteroid field. Yes, asteroid is indeed a polite euphemism. But that is a pretty regular occurrence. No, the unusual one involved animals of a different variety. I walked up to the gate one morning, and as I looked into the yard, there were about 5 or 6 rather large pigs having their way with the garbage and any other form of food they could locate. I stood at the gate for a few minutes, weighing my options. I decided to go ahead with my lifting session. I navigated that porky maze and started in on the bench press. Killer was nowhere to be found.
Now, before I go on, I have to make a quick digression to explain an odd linguistic trait of the Guyanese. People here never walk up to your door and knock to see if you’re home. No, they will stand at your gate and state as loudly as humanly possible “INSIDE?!?!” This applies both at private homes and businesses. Don’t see anybody around? Yell “Inside!” until somebody either responds or comes over to you. Conversely, if you’re wondering who is waiting at your gate, you can yell from inside your house, “Outside?!” This was the case on the Day of Pigs. The grazing ham hocks suddenly became very noisy as they knocked over a metal trash can in search of scraps. So I’m in the gym, still not entirely sure what my role is in the situation, and I hear “Outside…?” Since I don’t always have a total grasp of the rules of conversational etiquette here or colloquial phrases, I paused and then awkwardly responded with an uninspired “Um…yeah, Inside? Hello? There are…well there are pigs out here.”
“Pigs!??!?” She yells back.
“Yeah…there’s about 5 or 6 here…” I responded.
About thirty seconds later I sat there, still unsure of my role, as this woman in her late 60s wearing a floral printed muumuu ran around her yard with a stick, whipping these bacon-y invaders while they squealed with terror. What made this even more comical was that it was still dark out, so I could only see flashes of pig and flowers jetting through the darkness. When she was finished with the pork purge, she just walked back inside and shut the door. Apparently my services were not necessary during the whole ordeal.
November has gone by very quickly. The first weekend in November was the Hindu holiday Diwali. It is also known as the “Festival of Lights” It represents the return of Lord Rama from his fourteen year exile and vanquishing the demon king Ravana. The legend goes that when the king returned, the people celebrated by putting out oil lamps called diyas to light the way home. In Linden, there are no people of Indian descent, so I traveled up to another region in the Northeast part of Guyana to stay with some other volunteers. Where they live, the Indian population is very high, and one of the families had actually invited us over to their home for the celebration.
This is Vani. She and her family invited us over to light the diyas and enjoy some curried potatoes and chickpeas. We then helped place lights all around the house, and they took us next door to the Mandir. A Mandir is a hindu temple. We sat through the entire Diwali service. I had never attended any Hindu function before, and for the most part had absolutely no idea what was going on. But it was interesting to see. The people were extremely excited to have white people visit them. The priest kept telling us that he commended us on visiting his temple, and simply said that we were welcome to worship the god of our understanding any way we choose. I appreciated the gesture, but didn’t have the heart to tell him that I’m just another godless heathen just enjoying a new experience. When we got back to the Vani’s house, she provided fireworks, which of course cause myself and the four other volunteers I was with to regress to giggling children. Needless to say, we had a good time.
Here's a photo of the shrine at the Mandir. The bowl in the lower right was the sacrifice to the deities.
I got a great surprise coming back from Diwali. I stopped by the Peace Corps office to see if there happened to be anything in my mailbox there. As it turned out, there was! To my shock, awe, and glee, there were TWO bottles of my all time favorite beer sitting there: Black Butte Porter. I was so excited I did a photo shoot with one of the bottles as I enjoyed it.
Where did the beer come from, you may ask yourself. Another volunteer from GUY 21 had recently gone home for a month to visit. Just before he’d left, he had mentioned that he was so excited to drink a few microbrews. I inquired about a few of my favorites, all of which he’d never even heard of. So, I sat down and created a rather substantial list of beers that if he should encounter, it would behoove him to partake in each. The list ended up being about 25-30 different types. As it turned out, he was so impressed with my suggestions, that to thank me he brought me two bottles of black butte! It was like a taste of Oregon all the way down in Guyana.
The rest of November has been relatively uneventful. Another meeting of the elderly club went as well as previous ones did. I do have a few more tales of victory though! One woman came in, she told me that she’d been exercising on a regular basis a few days a week. That news was exciting enough by itself. What sweetened the deal was that her blood pressure had dropped about 30 points since the two months when she first started to come seeing me. But my favorite victory story is with a 68 year old man. He came in for his checkup, and I asked how everything was going. He told me that he’d taken my advice, he now exercises two hours everyday, and no longer adds salt to his food! I congratulated him on all of his efforts. But the results spoke for themselves. Three months ago, his blood pressure was 150/90. Last week when I measured it, he was all the way down at 120/70! He thanked me and said that he was feeling much better than he had in some time.
Overall, things here are starting to mesh, and I feel like I’m getting into the swing of things. Days and weeks are starting to fall off the calendar. Next week is Thanksgiving, and we here at the Linden house have a culinary battle plan. Without an oven, we were concerned that turkey would be out of the question. Being resourceful Peace Corps volunteers, however, we found an alternative. There is a mechanic who owns a shop down the street. Long story short, we got him to build us a grill from a metal barrel. The battle plan is to slow roast the turkey on our new bar-b-que! Most of the other ingredients (turkey, cranberry sauce, etc.) are being purchased in Georgetown. We’re all pretty excited, and it should be as close to home as possible.
I’ll keep enjoying the Caribbean sun, and hope you all stay warm!
I’m going to Barbados in just under two weeks, so the next post will have many, many pictures!
All the best,
Tony
