A Short History of My Service

With each Peace Corps volunteer’s close of service comes a document called the Description of Service. It is a good summary of significant projects. Here is mine:

After a competitive application process stressing practical skills, cross-cultural adaptability, and international experience, Michael Brannagan was invited to serve as a Business Development volunteer for Peace Corps in Suriname, South America from May 2008 to July 2010.

Peace Corps Suriname’s Pre-Service Training included a two-month cultural immersion period, in which Michael lived with a host family, attended formal Aucan language instruction, and organized a youth group as a sample project. Seminars led by business and organization leaders prepared Michael with the knowledge necessary to apply his skills within the Surinamese climate and culture. Pre-Service Training also included practical multi-day workshops in latrine construction and in agriculture methods in a tropical rainforest environment.

On August 2, 2008, Michael was sworn into Peace Corps service, and assigned to Diitabiki, the capital and cultural center of the Aucan people.

In September 2008, Michael was invited by the Surinamese Red Cross to participate in Food Security Assessment training, for which participants from four countries attended. After certification, Michael led an assessment team to determine the vulnerability of the people in his region after a devastating flood. His recommendation to supply planting material was approved, and Michael and two other volunteers partnered with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) to supply villages throughout the area with planting material while providing agriculture training. As a result of this project, farmers throughout the region were able to maintain their livelihoods and feed their families.

Because of the strategic position of his village, Michael was asked by the Peace Corps Safety and Security officer to serve as the warden of his region. Michael’s responsibilities as warden included: establishing a communication plan among villages not connected by roads or telephone coverage, running drills to test speed of communication, and developing exit strategies for evacuating the country based in an emergency.

In response to an expressed desire for knowledge beyond the borders of Suriname, Michael worked with community partners to develop a geography radio program. In the research phase, he and the director of the Pakaati radio station compiled profiles of every country in the world recorded in the Aucan language. These recordings, usually an hour or more in length per country, took nearly ten months to compile and covered such diverse topics as systems of government, economy, cultural groups and customs, physical geography, and history. The director of Radio Pakaati hopes to use the recordings to write the first book on world history in the Aucan language. This project has built the capacity of the radio station to share the world with their listeners and increased the people’s knowledge of the word outside the rain forest.

Through his relationship with the Pakaati radio station, Michael began a weekly radio program on small business economics, which he hosted live in the Aucan language. Michael organized multiple resources to write and translate four months of original episodes, using culturally relevant examples to communicate successful business practice to entrepreneurs. As a result of the radio program, community members as far as thirty miles upriver showed interest in obtaining episode recordings or in receiving consultation, and the Peace Corps country staff plans to use his episodes as a template for future projects.

Because of the popularity of Michael’s economics program, a local entrepreneur asked for business consultation. They explored the potential of using the business as a distribution center for local bakeries, though this was cost prohibitive. Covering basic startup concepts of bookkeeping, customer service, sales skills, costs and pricing, and marginal analysis, Michael gained significant experience in small business consulting.

Michael also provided information to Radio Pakaati on AIDS prevention and awareness, focusing on good family relationships. As a result of the AIDS program, people in the region are better informed about AIDS and its transmission and less fearful of interacting with those who have the disease.

In an effort to reduce costs and improve village selection, Peace Corps Suriname asked Michael to take the lead as a site development liaison. In selection and bringing the future volunteer sites up to safety standards, Michael and two other volunteers coordinated the actions of community partners and Peace Corps staff in nearly every stage of the process. He spent days at a time in the future sites, made a network of contacts, selected houses for future volunteers, evaluated purchasing needs, coordinated distribution of building materials, and resolved cost concerns addressed by community members. Because of Michael’s efforts in working beyond his project scope, Peace Corps has fully established its presence in villages that would not have otherwise received a volunteer.

In conjunction with Radio Pakaati’s geography radio program, and a UNICEF youth journalism project, Michael conducted a world map mural activity for the Diitabiki primary school. He applied for funding, and UNICEF sponsored the project in full. As a result of patient training and supervision, the local students took ownership in painting the majority of the mural’s surface. The mural promises to serve as a beautiful legacy of Peace Corps’s partnership in Diitabiki for many years.

In response to a request from the Surinamese Ministry of Education to Peace Corps, Michael taught a peer pressure and decision-making class for graduating students who will be attending middle school in the city. Ndjuka children as young as 12 years of age have faced great challenges when moving to an urban environment without their parents, and Michael hopes the students will be better prepared for this transition as a result of this project.

In addition to his larger projects, Michael also engaged in secondary activities, including hosting and translating for several Surinamese and international organizations visiting his village, reporting and translating for the local radio station, training radio workers in sound recording equipment, giving English classes, providing computer training for four adults, and organizing a youth sports club.

Michael received certifications from the Pan-American Health Organization in latrine construction and sanitation methods, the Inter-American Development Bank in citizenship participation and responsibility training, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in food security assessment training, and the United Nations Children’s Fund in water and sanitation training.

A Few Last Projects

When children graduate from the Diitabki school, as with all interior schools, children as young as twelve move to the Paramaribo to attend middle school. Without the presence of their parents, these kids experience a radical cultural and environmental change moving from the rainforest to a city in their early teenage years. Many children in this situation become involved in drugs, get pregnant, or do not use their parents’ money wisely, bringing great distress to them and their villages.

So I went to the School to talk to the graduating class about my experience moving from rural Africa to Minneapolis when I was fifteen. We talked about lemmings, and why it is good to think about consequences. I specified that I was not going to tell them what to do, but that I wanted then to think about what is best for them in the long run and not loose sight of what they want for their future. We talked about the advantages and disadvantages of smoking, saving money, taking drugs, and eating assai (getting a purple mustache vs. lots of vitamins).

I also recently finished my world map. It took about a hundred hours to complete. In addition to the countries and capitals, the map depicts every major river, the tallest few mountains for each continent, every city of two and a half million, other important cities, the Suez and Panama Canals, and some geographic and political regions. I painted the compass point and border with typical Ndjuka designs.

Ba Jotie had another last project for me. He has a DVD documentary on space, but it is in English, so he cannot understand it. We did not finish the set of DVD’s, but we did get a few hours translated. The ability to translate astrophysics is a great test of fluency. Big English words simply do not translate, so we had to take a lot of time to explain the big words. After our last session translating the space DVD’s, my official projects officially ended.

A New Generation

All the Peace Corps volunteers in Suriname are newbies, including those who have been here for two years.

This sentence, which I wrote over a year ago, still rings true. Volunteers from SUR 14, my class, opened up this river for Peace Corps, developed additional villages for more volunteers, and now we are being replaced with a new generation, SUR 16.

Matt, Brittany, and Meagan flew into Diitabiki on the 19th of June for a week in their future region. On the day they flew in, Matt and Meagan were supposed to go to Godolo, where Shelley would teach them the art of volunteer living, while Brittany was to stay in Diitabiki and learn from me. A chief from Godolo, who had come for a formal council, agreed to take the two to his village after the meeting. The parlay was an interesting experience for the newbies, and since traditional meetings of elders usually take place only in Diitabiki, it was good that they flew in here. Unfortunately, the chief’s outboard motor for his boat would not start, and when the volunteers were thoroughly exhausted at 5 PM, I made the call that they should spend the night in Diitabiki. That evening wee cooked up some macaroni and cheese, a luxury for a volunteer, and I imparted my vast wisdom of how to clean rainwater tanks, the best times to fish, and other topics of life in the jungle.

It was encouraging to see how new everything was to the new volunteers so that I could see how much I have learned in two years. Nevertheless, I am only beginning to understand deeper aspects of the culture (such as asking for things that you have just bought is considered very polite), and many common experiences are still difficult for me (such as people expecting me to cook extra food for them to eat). I am still learning new words in the Ndjuka language, and at least a few months ago, my canoeing skills were far from Ndjuka proficiency. People wince for fear of my fingers when I cut coconuts open with a machete.

I recently read a book called, The Riverbones, by a Canadian who traveled for five months in Suriname in search a blue frog and the country’s soul. Andrew Westoll wrote well and accurately depicted some of the places in the city and the mood and life of Peace Corps volunteers three years ahead of me. He critiqued a volunteer named Dara for attempting to turn herself into an Ndjuka, something she could never be, and he worried about Dara’s transition back to the States when her close of service eventually came.

Indeed, Dara struggled with reverse culture shock, and she returned home to Suriname to train SUR 14, my class. My first impression of Dara was similar to Andrew’s, but it came from the experience of having grown up in Africa, yet sill learning about Ethiopian culture when I left. No matter how dedicated volunteers are at integrating into the surrounding culture, they will only begin to see the depth of the peoples’ experience. I found that Dara came to learn this, and she approached her cultural errors with grace and humility, hoping that we could learn from them.

Andrew Westoll, however, is a tourist with a closed, Western perspective. His words rang with a hint of jealousy toward the volunteers who through their challenges experienced a depth that he could not comprehend.

Rapid Fire

Reverse culture shock is a difficult experience, even for those who have grown up overseas. For this reason, I never wanted to return to the States before the close of my service. Nevertheless, when his sister chooses to marry just after graduating from college so that her friends can be there, a good brother goes back.

Thus, on May the second, two weeks short of two years from the time I left home, I returned for the first time to the United States.

I had prepared myself mentally for over a month for the particularities that I remembered from two years ago, the existence of cars, media, refrigerators, hot water, and huge houses, as well as the relative differences such as the dryness of the air in comparison to nearly 100 per cent humidity, the resulting lack of necessity to wash thee times a day, and the fast pace of activity compared to the relaxed timelessness.

Upon my arrival, I walked through the Miami airport, and I cannot express how tremendous that learning experience was. I observed conversations and mannerisms of my countrymen, inspected new gadgets for charging iphones and watching movies on planes, and bought a hamburger. I also noticed that American walk on the right rather than in a chaotic crowd like the rest of the world. After learning this, navigating the terminal became much easier. On my first day back, I went shopping, buying a suit for the wedding, a cell phone, a few new clothes, and my first new music in two years. American commercialism did not bother me in the least. I found elegance in everything, though it all seemed a little foreign, as it always has to me.

As I am used to spending most of my time outside, I needed to take a walk in the woods after two days of being home. The paths were so wide in the preserve, and the underbrush was nearly nonexistent. I sweated on the terrain, but with less than 100% humidity, sweat evaporates and cools people rather than simply drenching clothes. It was wonderful.

My parents and I then drove to Hillsdale College, my alma mater, for my sister’s graduation and wedding. Spending hours with old friends, talking with former professors about my adventures, and seeing my extended family after two years of absence was so very good. The wedding was beautiful.

We went back to Raleigh for two days before my next trip.

My father and I took a trip to Washington to visit Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, where I will be going to school in the fall. I found some housing options, worked out financial aid, and made arrangements for testing on Georgetown’s language requirement, all in less than 24 hours. Then it was back to Raleigh again.

When I arrived back in Raleigh, I found that my visa to get back to Suriname had expired. Peace Corps Suriname, Peace Corps Washington, the Foreign Ministry of Suriname, the American Embassy in Suriname, and the Surinamese Embassy in Washington all helped me get approval for a visa in about a day. My last day in the Sates was spent driving to Washington and back again to get my visa in my passport.

My flights back to Suriname became an adventure as well. Our plane was re-routed to Arkansas because of weather, and I got standby tickets to Atlanta and then to Miami to catch my international flight. I was successful in getting on both planes, but just before we boarded in Atlanta, the flight to Miami was canceled. The airline paid for a hotel room, and I continued my journey the next day, arriving in Suriname just after midnight on Monday, the 26th.

I did not have a common experience in returning to America; it was very easy despite the flurry of activity. I did need to take two breaks in the midst of the chaos of the wedding, but my family was very understanding and really quite pleased with the ease of my transition.

 

Monkey Business

Commotion shook the trees behind my house. Well, actually it was George shaking the trees, as I named him later. A young black spider monkey had escaped from the other side of the village and made its way towards the forest on the eastern part of the island. George would look down at us from the trees just behind the village to see if we would give him something to eat, as he had not yet readjusted to scrounging the bush on his own. Visits by George and conversations in monkeyish became a regular part of my day.

An old lady, eager to give the children a nature lesson, told a group of boys, “Look at that spider monkey. Isn’t it wonderful? We could catch it and sell it to foreigners!” I laughed, but to me this epitomized an unfortunate concept—using up unsustainable resources and selling them to buy western things that will break quickly in the harsh jungle environment and end up in a makeshift landfill on the forest’s edge.

Slowly George became braver. The monkey ventured out of the trees behind my house and, watching to make sure the humans were far enough away, he would run to the mango tree in front of my house to check for fruit. To my dismay, George found it especially enjoyable to swing around on my power cable. Another day, George caught an irresistible whiff of food from an open window in the house next to mine. Twice he stole the neighbors’ food, eating it in one of their hammocks, and this put him out of favor with the village.

After George became a nuisance, I saw the same old lady who had told the children how wonderful the monkey was, looking up an Asai palm and shouting, “You are a dog! You and your mother and your father,” a typical Ndjuka curse. Besides the humorous notion of a person standing on the ground cursing an animal invulnerably high by calling it another animal, this displayed another unfortunate tendency. While we should adjust to our environment, such as closing windows or sealing up food when wild animals are around, we tend to want nature to conform to us. We can change where we live of course, or catch the monkeys to sell them to foreigners, but sometimes it is best to modify our own behavior to take advantage of the good things around us.

George later met a dog who had come to visit Diitabiki with his owners. Early in the morning one Sunday, I heard a great hullabaloo as the dog yelped up at George on the roof, and George hooted back. George has been more cautions about wandering into the village in the past few days.