A Visit from Dad

Leaving members of one’s family to their own devices in a foreign country is considered generally impolite…but that depends on where that family has traveled. My father, on the way to a couple of missions leadership conferences in Senegal and Ghana, chose to fly to Africa via a river island in the Amazon Rainforest.

My Peace Corps colleagues thought I was crazy when I told them I had planned simply to give my father instructions, and reward him, should he successfully make it upriver, by meeting him at the Diitabiki airstrip. My dad has traveled so often that I probably did not even need to give him any instructions for him to appear in my village, but flying to the city was well worth spending an extra day with him. In the city, we went to the Paramaribo Zoo, so that if he missed an anaconda, capybara, or giant anteater in the jungle, he would be able to say he had seen one in Suriname.

On Wednesday, we flew a hundred miles into the jungle in a Cessna Caravan. In flight, I pointed out the magnificent spread of hilly Guiana forest that inspired Green Mansions, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, though nymphs and dinosaurs remained unseen on our journey. Upon landing we paddled the Endurance from the airstrip to Diitabiki Island and dropped off our backpacks at Jungle Hall. We then took an invitation from my neighbor, Stephen, to go bow-fishing. That first evening, we caught thirty-six Waa-waa, bottom-feeding fish, and cooked them over a wood fire on a stone by the riverside. After a card game by candlelight, reminiscent of the nights without electricity during my childhood in Ethiopia, my father and I tied up our hammocks. Though he did not swear off beds as I have, my dad slept soundly his first night in a hammock.

On Thursday we encountered Ndjuka culture. I gave my father a crash course on protocol before our audience with the paramount chief, who was ecstatic to meet my dad. In fact, I had never seen him so animated. Gaanman Garzon thought it magnificent that my father could experience part of my life in Diitabiki, gave a discourse on the meaning of family, and chuckled over the fact that my parents had produced a mere two children. Later, while walking through the village, we sat in a traditional community meeting discussing the upcoming Ndjuka holiday. The meeting included formal debate over settled matters for the purpose of heightening public interest in the event and contained a long circular discussion before reaching the true purpose of the conference: the appointing of a logistics committee for the celebration.

We went fishing again in the evening, and my dad got a strike by, what I believe was a large peacock bass, which followed his lure before it saw us and swam away. It started raining heavily while we fought to regain the fish’s attention. That night, my dad watched me dispatch a huge tarantula that had tried to use my house as shelter from the rain.

The next morning, we rose with the sun and paddled the Endurance around the island, as I usually do several times a week. We finally completed our tour of the village in the morning, for adventure had delayed us in every previous attempt.

On Saturday, we had a relaxing morning. In keeping with tradition we cooked pancakes and made Ethiopian coffee. The plane came a little early. As we were walking to the canoe to make our way to the airstrip, we heard the Cessna land. We paddled across quickly and jogged to the plane, but thankfully, it took a few minutes to unload the arriving plane before I bid my father farewell.

Jungle Hall

When I arrived last August, my house had not been lived in for some time. We needed to build a platform for my water tank, dig a pit and build an outhouse over it, make a washhouse, replace the walls and the back of my house, cement the floor, make a window, place screening to keep bats out, nail boards over large gaps in the front, wire the house for the few nights a month that we have electricity, install locks and door handles, and finally, replace a single rafter that had been eaten to paper by termites. All this had been scheduled to be complete three months previously, in May, but while all this materialized, Peace Corps made arrangements for me to stay in the office of the local non-profit organization, which functions as a guesthouse. I asked a village chief whether I would be in the guesthouse for as long as two weeks, and he told me no, probably one week.

Now, after thirteen and a half months, finally, I have moved into my house. During the final week of training, last July, I was told that I could not go to my assigned site of Goninimofo because the Peace Corps house had not yet been built. Ironically, David, from this year’s class of volunteers moved into his house in Goninimofo before I could move in to mine here in Diitabiki.

We were very productive that first month, August 2008, until my counterpart and I both caught Dengue fever. After I came back, it was nearing planting season and everyone understandably was busy. The work I could accomplish on my own, I did right away. The help that I needed became an avenue for forming relationships. Jopie, the grandson of the paramount chief, helped me replace the back of my house and build a window. Heni donated eight planks and, along with Barka, helped me cement the floor. I cut a swath of forest for my friend’s planting ground and gave computer lessons to the village electrician, and when the time came, they helped me in return. Eventually, the only remaining work that I needed help with was the termite-destroyed rafter.

After a few months of distractions and slow going, I told my counterparts that as soon as my house was complete, I would move in, but that I needed to begin the projects for which I had come to Drietabiki. Having completed what I could do on my own, I told my counterparts that whenever they were ready to help me, I would put whatever projects I was doing on hold, working with them until the house was finished.

Living in the guesthouse, I did my best to manage and clean the place for the organization and their occasional guests. I negotiated for the organization when multiple prices had been communicated and advertised the guesthouse when Peace Corps or other organizations needed to come to Diitabiki. This, unfortunately, led to a status quo, and after more months, it occurred to me that I might never live in my house. I began to develop close friendships with the people in that part of the village, Adiise Konday.

Just before my most recent trip to the city, I found that the infamous rafter had been cut by one of my friends. The day after I came back to Diitabiki, a Thursday, we put it in. The same day, I cleaned the grime out of my water tank that had sat, full of water, for a year. The next day, Heni’s kids, Sephra and Shekila helped me scrub down the interior of my house with soap and water. For three days, starting last Monday, I attacked the house with primer, white paint, and finished it off with green trim. It was a difficult battle, and my sandals, watch, and hair were casualties of war from friendly fire. On Thursday I laid a hardwood floor…well, linoleum that looks like a hardwood floor and I must say, it looked pretty fine. On Friday I packed. I enjoyed one last weekend in my home for over a year and moved on Monday. As I know everyone in Adiise Konday, and my best friends live there, I was sorry to leave that part of the village. One of my friends offered to let me stay in their house while they were gone for a couple weeks, but of course, after a couple of weeks, I would have had to move anyway.

Jungle Hall, as I call it, is a single, twelve by eighteen foot room, but with two-foot-high walls, it is essentially an A-frame with 120 square feet of living space, when you are standing up. It actually looks quite big and open, but then again I do not have many things with which to fill the space. My neighbors are surprised that I have no bed, but it would take up half the house, and a hammock suits me just as well. Untying ropes are easier than making a bed in the morning. Having lived without running water or refrigeration, and having washed my clothes in a basin for over a year, only a few living adjustments have to be made at Jungle Hall.

After moving in, I killed a few resident tarantulas and mounted my machete on the back wall, painting above it, virtus tentemente gaudet, strength rejoices in the challenge. It is unoriginal, the motto of my alma mater, but it is a good motto, and appropriate to Peace Corps service in the jungle.

Crossing Over

Peace Corps volunteers, or at least my colleagues and I, see the grass as greener on whatever side of the fence we happen to be on at the moment. In the city, basking in running water, electricity, and food we do not have to cook, we always feel a little apprehension the day before we head back to the jungle, even after a year of having lived there. As soon as we arrive in our villages, however, we never want to leave. The faces of friends lighting up as they see us makes it all worth it. The glassy, dark river flowing through the rain forest, the constant songs of exotic birds, and the smell of jasmine in the cool of the morning more than make up for air conditioning and fast food.

Having assimilated into a new environment, the complexity of life and the comforts we have in the States are so different than what I am used to in Suriname that it is disorienting even to think about returning next year. Crossing over into another way of life, whether two hundred or two thousand miles away, is always difficult, and I have been doing it since I was six months old.

We get accustomed to what we know, but it is surprising how quickly people can adapt to new situations. Enjoying where we live and approaching challenges with resourcefulness is the key. An optimist sees the glass as half full, a pessimist sees the glass as half empty, and a Peace Corps volunteer sees the glass and thinks, “hey I could take a bath in that!”

In Memoriam

On an expedition in the Endurance to circumnavigate Diitabiki Island, I noticed a giant bird of paradise flower near the water. The leaves of this plant looked like a banana’s, but in the center rose a stem about fifteen feet high with perhaps seven pods about a foot in length each. The color of the pods was a light green, and the flowers inside were a dark yellow. This morning I rose early to take a picture. I placed my camera and its case in a new Ziploc bag and started out. I took several pictures of the bird of paradise and a few of Kumalu Nyan-nyan for the article below. I also saw some huge brown seedpods on a tree and took a few pictures of them.

You may be wondering why this article does not have a picture of the giant bird of paradise. As I placed my camera on my lap to paddle to a better position to capture the tree with the brown seedpods, the string caught on something, and my camera flew out of the boat, sinking to the murky depths. At once I thought of diving for it, but this would have required that I leave my canoe. My paddle could not reach the bottom, and already the current had carried me so that I was no longer sure where my camera had fallen.

The camera was a little old, but it had served me well through college in Michigan, during ski trips in Montana, Idaho, and Colorado, studies abroad in Italy and Turkey, and travels through Bulgaria, Hawaii, China, Minnesota, California, Ethiopia, North Carolina, Trinidad, and Suriname. Several times crises occurred in the life of my camera. While skiing in Montana, my dad, a few days after he had given me the camera, dropped it in wet snow. It survived. In Suriname a little over a year ago, I lost it in its black case in the forest, during a long hike, but I was fortunate enough to find it again. This morning, however, I bid farewell to a faithful companion that I had accidentally sent to a watery grave.

Crabbing

The dry season has begun. As the river descends, food becomes easier to catch. Gideon, my neighbor’s eleven-year-old son and I sought crabs yesterday. We took the Endurance over to a large rock in the middle of the river, where we looked under the water plants in the shallows for hiding crustaceans. Gideon found the first one and taught me how to catch them by the pincers and break them off to render the creatures harmless. I found one too on the first rock, but it was too small to eat, so I told Gideon we would catch it another day. After about an hour Gideon and I had captured enough crabs to make a tasty snack.

On the Tapanahony, crabs like to crawl on rocks that have water plants for them to hide under. Kumalu nyan-nyan (Kumalu is a type of fish, and nyan-nyan is food) grows all over the place when rocks begin to rise above the water. Kumalu nyan-nyan has stiff leaves, sometimes with spines, which remain submerged. Purple flowers on stalks rise above the water. Gideon and I lifted up the leaves of these plants and found a few crabs. Holes in the rocks are also prime crab hideouts, though they are more difficult to extricate.