Author: RobO

Hi blog fans. I’m noticing a build up of things to blog about since Christmas is just around the corner. It’s time to get going.

Today I’m going to write a bit about the people of Georgetown because I realized we haven’t really shown you much of the place we’re living in.

Guyana is a Caribbean country located in South America. The majority of the population lives along the coastline and is comprised of and equal amount of Afro-Guyanese and Indo-Guyanese. There is a minority of Amer-Indian people that mostly live in the interior of the country. This makes for a very eclectic cultural mix (and great food!). Being a Caribbean country, they sure know how to relax. The following is my account of recreational activities the people of Georgetown take part in. I am by no means an expert, but this is what is absolutely apparent.

Cricket
This is by far the most beloved sport of the nation. As much as Canada lives and breathes hockey, Guyana’s heart lies in cricket. Kids play it in the streets and adults watch the West Indies play on tv. It’s truly everywhere. In a few months Guyana will be one of the few countries lucky enough to host the world cup cricket games. We have been told that the entire country might shut down while the tournament is taking place. Dawn and I already have our tickets to a game.

Watch the video Hi Low

Dominoes
Dominoes is very popular in Georgetown as well as cricket. People here take their domino sets to the neighbourhood rum* shops and play all night. There is a technique involved in playing. A lot of people tend to slam their domino onto the table as hard as they can. In trying to find out why I was told many things from , “it just feels good,” to, “it’s used to intimidate your oppontent.” Last week there was a dominoes tournament held upstairs at my workplace.

You can watch an entire hand unfold here. Hi Low

*the rum here is award winning and, might I add, fantastic.

Hope this was slightly interesting. We’re working on our Christmas blog next.
Cheers!

As Dawn indicated in the last blog, I now have internet access at work! Today I finally got every machine in the building access to the net. So far I have been busy trying to undo all the damage my fellow co-workers have already done. One officer tried to “turn off” the internet before she went home yesterday, so her computer needed a quick fix first thing this morning. Others have become overcome with joy when a pop-up window tells them “Congratulations! You’re our 1,000,000th visitor!!! Click here to claim your prize!” The more experienced of them have already installed every toolbar yahoo has to offer and ask me why their music video cuts out from time to time. “Oh, your work related video?” I ask. I am fighting the urge to introduce a very strict firewall, or worse yet… a cyber-nanny.

I’m hoping my problems will go down significantly once the president of the union returns to work on Monday. When the cat’s away… I am also holding out hope that the novelty will eventually wear off. In the mean time, I’m trying to educate each person as I fix their computer. In some cases I reproduce the problem and have them try fixing it. Other times I wait for them to wander off so I can secretly delete all the crap they’ve managed to install on their machines. I can only do so much.

That’s the work update for now. Things are going to slow down from a crawl to a vegetative pace over the Christmas season. In Guyana Christmas begins on the 15th of December. The schools have already shut down for the holidays. We’re sticking around home for the 24th-26th, but are planning a little getaway over New Year’s.

We hosted our annual joint Christmas party last Saturday. The sister party was held on the same day in Vancouver by Carla Jane and I’m told it was another successful event. We managed to provide enough food for our guests, and I think everyone had a good time. I had originally intended to project a movie or 2 on our huge white wall (Christmas Vacation and the cartoon version of the Grinch) but that idea fell through for various reasons. Regardless, it was nice to do something here that reminded us of home.

Time for a creature update. Dawn may have sugar coated her previous report about how “we successfully trapped our house mouse.” The truth is, the mouse, who we affectionaly call Mr. Jingles, got his head crushed in by a mouse trap. It was pretty cool. This morning, I met our other house mouse, Mrs. Jingles. I was on the crapper when she decided to run past my foot and dive through the crack in the wall behind the toilet. She’s much smaller and craftier than Mr. Jingles so we may have to resort to poisoning the poor sweet innocent creature.

I added a video to Dawn’s last blog of our little cooking lesson. For all of you celiacs, Cassava is the answer to bread woes. For the other 2 of you that are still reading this, I am currently working on a blog that focuses on the people of Guyana. So that means more video and pictures.

Hello everyone,
We have an assortment of photos that really don’t suit any particular theme so I thought I’d just purge them into one blog so that I can get rid of them. Roll over the images to get a short description.

Hope you’re all doing well.

Feast your eyes on these!!!

Hello everyone,
Here’s another video, this time taken at Marudi creek. It’s probably not the most fascinating piece out there, but I am kind of addicted to taking videos now despite looking, sounding and feeling like a total dork.

My apologies to those that have a rather slow internet connection. I know the videos are quite large. I’ll see if there’s something I can work out so you can see a low quality version. Low quality dork…

Enjoy!

The Black Water Video

For those of you interested in a job update, it’s slowly picking up. I have only read half a book this week. They told me broadband internet will hopefully be installed this week, so if it’s up and running in 2 weeks I’ll be thrilled. I have also submitted my list of materials that I require to get the network up and running. Once again, I’m hoping to see the equipment in 2 weeks, despite being promised it today.

Hope everyone is doing well. We certainly enjoy all of the comments so keep them coming! It’s nice to know people are reading this.

Time to sign off, (this was supposed to be a quick entry). I’ll leave you with a random picture of a horse.

Hello all, I’ve received some requests for information about our jobs. I was kind of waiting for a while to write about it. I wanted to get settled in and get some things done first so I’d have something to write about. In Canada, this would be a fool proof plan. In Guyana, things take time. This doesn’t mean I have nothing to report, but what I do have to report is “nothing”. As in, nothing has been happening.

In the last 3 days at work, I have read 2 novels. This beats the total number of novels I read in my entire high school career (1 – ‘The Catcher In The Rye’). It’s not due to a lack of trying to work. I’ve been waiting for supplies, people to show up, co-workers to wake up, and, internet (which is coming just now). That’s right, I’m here to build a website, and I don’t have internet access. Anyway, I don’t mean to gripe, this is what I was told to expect in all of my VSO training.

So on to more photos…

This is where I spend my weekdays.

Here’s the computer-lab-to-be. Once I have everything I need (hopfully this week), I’ll be able to build a network and start training staff, teachers and union officers basic computer skills. For now, though, this is where I read, play my hand held Sudoku game (props to the Pinders and Kozubs), bring new meaning to the word Solitaire, and sweep for mines (still haven’t beaten ‘Expert’ yet). I do get visitors from time to time. This is only because I have the only air conditioner in the entire building.

This is what I wore on Halloween. I went as “a business man in sandals.”

So I know this hasn’t been the most exciting blog. But we’ll try to do better next time.

Until then, take care!

Due to popular demand (though i believe it’s just Mike commenting under different aliases) here is the monkey video i had promised.

The following video was taken at an beach-front bar/zoo. Monkeys just run wild in this place, it’s fascinating at first, but annoying later. If you ever find yourself at this bar, don’t leave your bottle of coke on a ledge for 30 seconds while you go grab a napkin. Once you start your journey back to your drink, you may see a monkey next to it. Do not make eye contact! He will wait for you to look at him before he tips over the bottle and runs. I may have learned this lesson the hard way.

So without further adieu,
The Monkey Video

We moved into our new house last Wednesday (Oct25). After a week of living in it, I think we’re getting settled in quite nicely. At first we were a tad overwhelmed by a few things.

1. it was/is quite dirty
2. it’s on a very busy street where the Guyanese “share” their music all night
3. no more guesthouse where meals were prepared and internet was hi-speed
4. ants

After a week of cleaning here and there, we’ve managed to remove most of the grime. The noise is only bad from 3pm till about 8pm, the mornings are quite calm. We’ve mastered the market and Dawn has successfully cooked most of our meals. I’m operating at a 50% success rate thanks to a chicken dinner that didn’t go so well. Oh and ants? Well they’re still around, but everything is in ziplock bags and sealed up so they’ve been pushed back to minimal numbers.

I’m still having adjustment issues, but I figure they’ll fade away as time goes on. (Note: The last sentence has gone through a series of edits)

So now it’s time for the Legend of Lucky.

Dawn and I both bought bikes on Saturday morning. It cost $12,000 Guyanese which roughly translates to $60 Canadian. Dawn’s cost her around $10,000. We had ourselves a nice little Saturday planned. We had to purchase our bikes, go to the shops and buy some things for our house, and then hit the farmers market for some food. We might have gone to Bed Bath and Beyond but didn’t know if we’d have time. So we purchased the bikes, and headed to Guyana Stores. I don’t know if you all know this but Dawn and I have a tendency to name our personal belongings. All of my guitars are named, we named our car and even named our laptop. I felt that my new purchase also deserved a name. My last bike was called Nu Nu because that’s what was written on it. As we rode to the department store I looked down at my new ride for inspiration. The words, “Multi-Terrain Temptation,” were staring back at me. I wasn’t keen on sitting on something I referred to as “Temptation” so I figured it’s call it MTT until I came up with something better.

We arrived at our first destination so we locked up those bikes as best we could and headed into the department store. 40 minutes later we returned to our noble steeds with bags in hand to find my bike lock was all but destroyed. It was damaged so much, in fact, that my key would no longer unlock it. This meant that it was now chained to a metal gate and unless my kung-fu anger gave me super human strength, it would stay chained to that gate.

Now you might be asking yourself, “Self, what about Dawn’s brand new bike,” and “say hey, how the heck did you get out of that dilly of a pickle?” Well I’m glad you asked. Dawn’s keen sense told her that she should perhaps purchase a bike that didn’t have gears on it. There are no hills in Georgetown. It would make the bike less expensive and, well let’s face it, less desirable to would-be thieves and hooligans. Her bike wasn’t even touched. My silver 18 speed and fingerprints all over it. As for the pickle, Dawn stayed behind to defend the bikes with her yoga skills, as I went on the hunt for some bolt cutters. It took me one stop to find a guy that could tell me where I could find what I was after, and after 15 more minutes, I was heading back to Dawn accompanied by a warehouse worker and his bolt cutters. As we rode away into the sunset, I heard Dawn say, “I think you should name him ‘Lucky’.”

So that’s the end of the story. I would have told you about Legend of Clicky (Dawn’s bike), but it’s quite short and self explanatory. Stay tuned for a video walk through of our house and a monkey video for Dawson and Michael W. Harvey.

Hello everyone,
We’ve moved into our house so we don’t have access to the internet as much as we used to. I’m on my lunch break so this will be brief. I started work last Wednesday and it’s going well. I’ll fix the picture problem and then I’ll snap some pictures next week when I remember to bring in the camera.

And in other news… I’ll hand it over to DawnO…

i just got confirmation that i have a VSO placement, and i start on monday!!! the goals and objectives of the placement have not been determined yet but, regardless, i have a placement!
yipee!!

We took the following videos last week when we were in the jungle. Thought you’d be interested to learn a little bit about 2 common trees found in South America.
So click on the following links, sit back and try to spot the exact moment when I get infected with malaria!
Video 1 – Wadara Tree
Video 2 – The Walking Tree

Enjoy!

Yesterday we got back from a 2 night/3 day trip to the Shanklands, which is located on the Essequibo River. We took a bus from Georgetown east to Parika (45 mins). From there we boarded a speed boat and headed up the Essequibo to Shanklands (50 mins).

Shanklands is a “resort” and was quite charming. The idea was to take the volunteers on a little trip before we were sent off to our jobs. We were separated into groups of men and women and were placed in guest houses.

There was a lot to do, including swimming, kayaking, playing chess (with a giant chess board), hiking and hanging out in the sun. We have a couple of educational videos for everyone to watch… Unfortunately I can’t upload them with my current internet situation. I guess that’s what I get for scamming off the internet from the pub across the street. Stay tuned.

It was a great little trip, enjoy the rest of the photos.