Kiss The Rain

Another crazy week in Guyana, I spent 5 days in New Amsterdam and had a blast! I love it there, the volunteers are great and my job is going to be awesome! I have a 1bedroom apartment in the city on St. Magdalen's street, it's REALLY green and needs some work on the inside, but it's going to be great. I got back to West Dem Thursday evening and Granny got a call that her daughter Venice had passed away. It's been a tough couple of days, I'm spending the weekend at my friend Ashley's host families in the village of "Farm". I'm so thankful to be staying with them and not be awkward and in the way at Granny's. We have two more weeks of training and I'm so ready for it to be done!
New Amsterdam is in Region 6, east of the Berbice river about 2 hours drive from Georgetown. It's totally different than anywhere I've ever been in my life, I like that there's more people around and I felt totally safe everywhere I went. There's a current volunteer about 4 blocks away and 3 more about 20 min away and 2 from my training group will be about 15 min drive away in the next village. I am so excited to have other Americans so close to me! I'll be working at the New Amsterdam Family Health Center, 3 streets over from my house. I'm working in Mother and Child Care, weighing babies and charting their visits, eventually I'll be doing one on one counseling with new mothers in my office for diet and exercise and nutritional information and starting other projects around town. There's a pool! I'm not sure yet what kind of condition it's in but I'm excited to find out and start organizing programs there too!


Please send any future mail to my new address:
Lauren R. Sanford
Peace Corps Guyana
2127 St. Magdalen Street
New Amsterdam, East Bank Berbice
Guyana, South America

Cross my heart and kiss my elbow,
Love and peace

True or False: All's fair in love and war.

At training we talk about riding the “Peace Corps Rollercoaster” and it’s been a crazy ride this week. There’s a surprise around every corner, just when things are going great you drop and all you can do is hold on for dear life, then all of a sudden when you think it can’t possibly fall any deeper the rollercoaster swoops back up just in time.
Yesterday we found out our site placements and I was definitely prepared for the worst and knew I’d have to make the most of it; I was not prepared to be this absolutely 100% excited! I will be living and working in New Amsterdam in Region 6 Berbice!


We’re in Georgetown now at the counterpart conference; I never thought I’d be so incredibly thankful for a shower and OMG air conditioning! I’m going to New Amsterdam on Saturday and staying at my house until Thursday. I’m so excited there will be other volunteers in walking distance and my counterpart has asked me to teach her to swim, we’re off to a great start.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Cross my heart and kiss my elbow,
Love and peace

Bat Shit Crazy

March 12, 2011
It’s a crazy Saturday night at the Gordon house, Grace and I just finished eating dinner that I cooked, rice, fried fish, and greens. She’s making me practice like a 6 year old because Monday is “Guess who’s coming to dinner” and the Peace Corps staff is coming to make sure I’m not going to starve when I go to my site. Tomorrow I’m practicing the chow mein that I’ll cook on Monday. After dinner she promptly tuned into the “obits channel” which is playing Celine Dion with the death announcements.
Today was great! I slept in until 6:00am and met up with a group of girls to go to Georgetown to get fabric for our traditional sari’s for the swearing in ceremony. It was so much fun! We went shopping and went by the Peace Corps office and got the hell out of this village, it was great to get out and have a day off.
The bats are back, right on schedule! Yesterday there was bat shit on the bathroom sink and kitchen counter, two nights ago there was a baby tarantula on the outside of my mosquito net. I cried myself to sleep. Now the bats are back for the night, its only 6:20 and I’ve already seen 3!
Granny’s daughter has been in the hospital for 5 weeks now, she was told she had ovarian cancer and went through several rounds of chemo and didn’t have cancer. I’m not too sure what the details are about her current condition but last night Grace told me that she had to have a catheter and feeding tube put in and her organs are shutting down. It’s been tough to be here in the middle of such a major family crisis, Granny walks around praying out loud and singing gospel songs. She has spent all day every day for the last 2 ½ weeks in Georgetown at the hospital with her. Please keep Granny and Grace and the Gordon family in your thoughts and prayers.
I’m really excited about next week! Wednesday afternoon we’re going to Georgetown for our counterpart conference and Sunday we’re going to visit our site for 5 days!

Very good, I must say, I'm amazed!

I’m alive and well in Guyana! It’s been a crazy few weeks already!
We had our staging event in Philadelphia on February 13th and flew out of JFK on the night of the 14th, it was my first time in New York and I was more than a little sad to be driving past everything in a bus but excited to be going to Guyana! We had a short 5 ½ hour flight from New York City to Georgetown, Guyana. To put that in perspective, the direct flight I used to take from Dallas to Anchorage is 6 hours!
We were greeted by the welcome committee of Peace Corps Staff and current PCV’s with coconuts and bananas! Orientation took place in the Regency hotel in Georgetown, I got sick, not sure what it was, and had to stay a few extra days in Georgetown for observation and medical treatment and arrived at my host families in Vergenoegen, West Demerera on Sunday February 20th.
My host family is Granny (Cotill) and Aunt Grace, 2 older ladies; they’re sisters and remind me so much of June and Barbara! Lots of silk flowers and doilies on every surface of the house! The house itself is pretty much what I expected; we don’t have running water all the time, no shower so I have to take a “bucket bath” with a 5 gallon bucket in a shower stall. I’m getting pretty good at it and can bathe with ½ a bucket of water now! In the mornings there’s all kinds of frogs in the shower with me, I’ve named them, Loretta, Patsy, and Dolly.
We have chickens and a garden in the “back dam”; I’m still not clear as to whether or not the chicken I’ve been eating is one of the chickens I hear in the back yard… gross. The food is… different. TONS of salt and MSG that they call Agie, which I’ve explained to Granny, is horrible for me and gives me terrible headaches and will make me sick. But she still sneaks it into the food when she thinks I’m not looking. Anti-Malaria meds give me crazy nightmares but I’ll take nightmares over malaria any night! The house is not sealed, has no ceiling, and is very much open to the elements. We have about a dozen bats in the house at night, flying around the rafters and running into my mosquito net! Recently, in the last 36 hours I’ve seen 7 HUGE spiders, I took a picture of one that is the size of my hand and its eyes reflected the flash! Granny and Grace laughed at me and called it a “Nancy” whatever that means. There’s tons of other animals, chickens, cows, goats, horses, dogs, all wandering around the neighborhoods and along the main roads.
We had a wedding reception here at the house last Saturday. Granny’s Grandson Mark got married and we had about 150 people here! They rented red lawn chairs and put a big blue tarp over the front yard, and had speakers the size of a Honda and a DJ, it was awkward for people to walk up to me and ask who I am and explain to them that I live here lol.
Training is going well, a little slow sometimes and we do a lot of waiting on people, but the things we are actually learning is going great. Lots of review in the health sessions and we started volunteering at our village Health Centers, so 2 days a week I go to the Vergenoegen Health Center for 3-4 hours and get to weigh people and babies, take blood pressure, help with their charts and we give health talks on whatever clinic is going on that day like diabetes or hypertension or ante natal/family planning. We’re finishing our 3rd week of training, the end of week 5 we will go to a counterpart conference and meet our counterparts for our final work site and then travel with them back to the site to stay for a week! Our swearing in ceremony is scheduled for April 13th and we will be sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers!
Overall I’m doing well, I get a little homesick every once in a while. Not as much at night like I expected, mostly because I’m freaking out about bats and spiders, but mornings are hard when I wake up and realize everything is changing more and more every day. I really miss talking to my friends all day every day about every little detail of our lives. It has been hard to go from such constant communication to limited access. I miss American food and I miss driving Paul! The mini busses are pretty scary, I have a 35 minute bus ride from Granny’s to training every day, one day I counted 22 people in a John and Kate +8 style “mini bus”!!! There’s not a whole lot to do around here after training, Granny and I cook dinner and she watches the “obit channel” which is a channel on basic cable dedicated to showing the death announcements/obituaries of who died and lists every person they ever came in contact with! The first couple days I sat and watched it with her but its too depressing. I’ve been writing a lot of letters and I hope you have too?!?! Other trainees have been getting mail this week but I haven’t gotten anything, I hope I get something soon.
Grace just got home from work and brought me some sort of cassava cake, I can’t pronounce the name, much less spell it, but it’s good. Next time you start your car, turn on the TV, or eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I hope you think of me riding the mini bus, watching the obits, and eating curry rice.

Cross my heart and kiss my elbow,
Love and Peace