Living alone and other changes

SLOANE

I kept putting off writing this next blog because I had not taken the promised pictures but decided that it is better to communicate now and photograph later. I have had an amazing 2 months. First settling and getting to know my site. Followed by an unexpected trip back to the states.

First things first. My everyday life has become what I guess you can call routine. Although nothing here is really routine. From the weather whichchanges hourly to the new fruits and vegetables that I have never heard of, to the visits of little frogs and mice to my apartment, life could hardly be called routine.

The weather -- can go from total sunny skies to drenching downpours to totally sunny skies in a space of 15 minutes or less. The moral is never travel without your umbrella. You either need it to protect you from the sun or the rain. Although the sun and rain situation changes frequently the

sun rises and sets at pretty much the same time year round. Up at 5:15 AM and sets by 6 PM. Likewise the temperature is pretty constant at a very hot 90 ish in the day to about low 80's maybe high 70's at night. A fan is not a luxury but a necessity.

The food I have learned to use sterilized boxed milk for my cereal, no real milk to drink which is surprising because cows are grazing everywhere and constantly walking across the main streets (which was one of the photos I wanted to capture, and I will). Also a herd of goats walks by my street everyday as I walk to my minibus. Keep in mind I am in an urban location. The fruits and vegetables are very fresh as their growing season is 12 months a year. Lettuce, tomatoes (the kind you only get in the summer in the states), cucumbers and scallions are in great abundance. In

addition they have a 3 foot long string bean call bora that I have never seen before and is quite tasty. Two sweet potato impersonators are a veggie call edo and another called cassava. They are both in the yam family and they are major food staples for the Guyanese. Along the street as I walk from my bus home are numerous food stands that sell vegetables and fruits such as Pine

(pineapple), bananas, passion fruit, mangos,star apples, sapodilla ( a fruit which has a taste of a mix of pear and brown sugar) coconut and breadfruit. The fruit is extremely fresh and makes for great smoothies. Meat is not something you eat a great deal of here unless it is at a restaurant. The amount of refrigerator space is limited and so your protein comes from beans and peanut butter and eggs, which are by the way very freshly laid. Also to all my gifters thank you for the American Junk food etc., to which I am very much addicted.

Visiting creatures. I guess you would say I am fairly fortunate in that my visitors are limited to very little lizards, frogs and the occasional visiting mouse. I laugh at myself recalling when Michael and I had an occurrence of mice in our Chumani house and I wanted to move to a hotel until they were gone. How things change. I find myself sitting on my sofa (for which I am most grateful, many PCV's have no sofa) and watching a little mouse come under my door scurry along the wall back to my kitchen to check out if I have left any crumbs on the floor and then leave just as quickly as it arrived. My only reaction is to think, glad my feet are propped up on the sofa. The frogs although a little cuter (not much) are more annoying because they just wonder in and can never seem to find their way out without my broom and some prompting. The lizards are good cardio, because they are always where you least expect them to be and jump out sometimes on you always causing at least my heart rate to exceed 150 BPM. I found out at my last group Peace Corps meeting however that I am very lucky. I really have no bugs, possibly due to the fact that I keep very little food in my house. I also have no rats, yes I said rats, nor snakes or bats, all of which have visited other PCV"s houses.

My work I am just finishing my first class at the University and have really enjoyed my students. They are bright and very motivated. Many of them holding down a full time job, going to class and raising a family at the same time. Makes me sit in awe. They take their final next Friday and then I will begin writing my next course on Emergency Nursing. That will begin in the fall. I am also beginning to work on a web site which will seek tax deductible contributions for my project. I am trying to set up a program which will allow for the shipping of donated medical books no more than 2 years old to the nursing school here, because currently their books are significantly older. I have found some schools willing to donate the books but need less to say do not want to incur the shopping costs. I have determined that if I can raise between 10 /20 thousand in a

protected fund I can set up a book donation program sustainable for 10 /15 years allowing the nursing school a chance to have more current books and get on their feet financially. When I get the web site up you can be sure I will let all of you know. I hope I am not being naive in thinking that I should certainly be able to raise that amount of money.

My House As I have commented before I have been very fortunate in my housing. the peace corps worker living here before me had practically everything and left it for me. She was a little more adept at opening cans with the swiss army knife, which I immediately replaced with a can opener from my visit to NY. I actually just started sleeping in the bed last week

Previously I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor which was tightly encased with a mosquito net because of the visitors. I must say the bed is a level up. I have a dorm sizerefrigerator, and a three burner stove top supplied with gas from tank similar to the

ones we use for our outdoor grills

. I can not believe that I the microwave queen have no microwave and am managing to survive, barely but I am. There is also no oven but baking was never my speciality. Most important is my internet which I actually do know I could not live without. All in all I am fairly well set. I have wonderful landlords who watch over me and make sure I am safe, for which I am thankful.

My trip. My trip started three weeks ago. I was coming home from work and received a call from my son Jack. It seemed his wife Daisy, who had just had a c-section less than 2 months earlier was in the ER with severe abdominal pains, possibly a ruptured appendix. After several calls and realizing surgery was about to happen, I was able to get emergency leave from the Peace Corps to go home and help. Realizing that she would not be able to stand upright,much less lift an 11 pound baby, it was going to be impossible for her to function without someone there all of the time. I would like to publicly thank Daisy for sacrificing her body so I could come home and meet my unbelievable, adorable,fantastic, perfect and beautiful grand daughter Sloane. Not only did I get to spend two unbelievable weeks with Sloane but I also got to be with Daisy, Jack and my daughter Julie, who flew in from LA. Julie's trip was already planned for the end of my two week stay so it was just luck that she was also going to be there. I had seen no one since I left in February and it was wonderful. I got to see all of Daisy's family including her mother, with whom I could continually talk about amazing our grand daughter is. It

is my understanding that Daisy is willing to sacrifice more organs to facilitate my coming

home and for this I thank her. Actually I had already scheduled a trip in September with a non refundable ticket, so the Peace Corps is also letting me do that. So I will be getting to see my little Sloane

in the very near future. I have hardly any pictures of her

on my camera because I was holding her all of the time. Finally I would just like to send a giant thank you to Daisy, Jack, Julie , Holly and Sloane who have stood by me and trusted that I would find my way back out of the black hole. Thanks to them I am once again seeing the light. Much love to all of you reading this. Do me a favor stop what you are doing now and tell the important people in your life how much you love them.