Second month of service: Random Thoughts

It is crazy to think that, not only is it already June, but another week has gone by and the weekend has officially begun. The days and the weeks here just seem to go by so fast. One minute it’s Saturday and myself and a fellow volunteer are talking about how fast the past week just went and then the next minute I swear it’s already the next Saturday and the same conversation is taking place. It’s hard to think about where the time goes, especially when my days have become so routine, so normal. I get up and go to work, come home, cook dinner, maybe read or watch a movie on my computer before bed and then wake up and do the same thing the next day. It’s amazing how easily and seamlessly one goes from just being in a different country to actually living there, and doing all the normal, everyday things that you do at your home, at work, in your village. I got to thinking the other day about how things I do every day or every week here in Guyana are so normal, so a part of life that I never even had to think about back home in the States.

Like getting drinking water. In the U.S., no one ever wonders where the water that flows out of the tap comes from or if it’s safe to drink or whether you will run out. You turn the tap on, water comes out, and you drink it. Simple. Here in Guyana, like many places in the world, its not quite so simple. First of all, you can’t drink the water that comes out of the tap. No matter where you are, tap water is undrinkable. Every morning when I wake up I go into the kitchen, fill up a pitcher with tap water and pour it into my water filtration system, which is basically two plastic buckets that sit on top of each other with a Brita type purifying filter inside. That is the only water that is safe to drink. Problem is, if you forget to fill up the buckets and you run out, it takes a good 2-3 hours for water to run through. Nothing like being hot and sweaty and thirsty and just sitting there watching water drip through the filter. And not only is the tap water unsafe to drink, it can run out. A lot. Most people here have big black tanks next to their house that collect rain water and gets some water pumped in from storage tanks. But when that water runs out, you’re looking at another couple hours at best before the tanks fill up again and you have running water. Don’t be surprised if, when I’m back home in December, you find me being amazed at the fact that you can turn on a faucet, get water all the time, and drink it right away.

How about doing laundry? If you’re looking for a way to kill 2 or 3 hours, laundry is the way to go. Of course, it can’t be raining or night time when this happens. Once a week, I bring my laundry out to the front of the house and fill up 2 buckets with water and add detergent . It’s then time to separate out my clothes and begin scrubbing and cleaning them by hand in the 1st bucket and then rinsing them out in the 2nd. When you’re done with that, you simply hang them out on the clothes line and pray that it doesn’t rain for the next 5 hours, which during rainy season almost never happens.

Now of course it was 95 degrees and 100% humidity out when you were doing your laundry at 7am, so you’ve probably worked up quite the attractive sweat. Nothing new there. Time for the 1st bucket bath of the day. I have an indoor bathroom, with a tiled shower that’s actually nicer than some bathrooms back home. However, there is no actual shower inside, just a pipe coming out of the wall about 6 inches off the ground. No problem here, just fill up a small bucket, soap yourself up and then dump the freezing cold rainwater on your head. 3 or 4 buckets of water later and you’ve probably gotten most of the soap off your body and a good amount of the shampoo out of your hair. One more bucket of cold water over your head just for good measure and that is how you take a bucket bath :)

Of course, there are many other good life skills I am acquiring down here that will really be helpful when I move back home. Of course, that’s only if I’m moving back home to the States in the 18th century :) Bucket baths, laundry by hand, pumping your water, those are just the best ones. I can now light a fire to cook on, know how much weight a horse can pull on a wooden buggy, and, of course, de-feather, skin, de-gut, and butcher a whole chicken. I’m thinking of adding that last one to my resume.

Those are just a few of the activities in my life that have now become routine. It’s kind of funny how quickly those things become normal. The 1st week I was in Guyana and I helped my host dad butcher an iguana for our dinner, I laughed to myself about how quickly and dramatically my life had already changed, knowing that there was so much more to come. As strange as it seems, the transition to this new life has been pretty easy, pretty smooth. I can already anticipate that it will be the transition back to my old life in D.C. that will be a rough road. And who knows, maybe I will bring the art of the bucket bath and open-fire cooking back to D.C. :)