Howdee do an Tank you

"Howdee do an tank you nuv uh bruk no bones" - Guyanese Saying

We were asked to figure out this Guyanese saying during our Creolese lanugage session. I'll translate: Hello and thank you nenver broke any bones." Meaning: Manners never hurt anybody. Good to remember, at home and while travelling.

So, Guyana is amazing. This country has beautiful natural resources - fresh water from frequent rainfall, fertile soil, plenty of coconut and other fruit trees, and fresh, ocean breeze. To keep the blog to a readable length, I'm going to write about a recent holiday, and an experience in the schools.

Last week Chris and I were able to celebrate the Hindu holiday, Phagwah. It is the celebration of good over evil as we usher in Spring. It is celebrated with vegetarian food, water, and colored powder. We stay with an Afro-Guyanese homestay, so we went down to a friend's Indo-Guyanese family to celebrate. We arrived in white t-shirts to have the children dumping buckets of water over our heads. We hadn't even made it through the front gate. Thinking we would be safe inside, we entered the property, shortly following came powders of all colors, women and men smearinng it on our faces and shirts followed by a kiss on the cheek. The water represents the renewing and freshness of Spring, the colors the hope of Spring. We were fed Indian sweets and drinks, and later a vegetarian lunch of curries and rice and roti (like a tortilla). Family members, neighbors, and friends stopped by to smear us with powder and soak us with water. Everyone wishes blessings and good times. Later, we went on a walk to visit others, powdering and soaking others. Everyone was cooking and baking, sharing the fruits of their labor with us. We had no idea we would come back home so colorful. We took showers, scrubbing and scrubbing and still had green bellybuttons and red hairlines. Phagwah is a great time to be in Guyana.

We have beenn training everyday for our service, which will officially start later in April. The classroom sessions are a bit boring, but we have been able to get into the Guyanese schools several times and this week we got to teach a "Health and Family Life" session to a 5th grade class. Guyana has the 2nd highest infection rate of HIV in South America, so we are here to do HIV/AIDS education, so that is what we focused on. We did a drama about HIV attacking and taking out the immune system. After explaining the immune system and the roles of the white blood cells, we took the kids outside and I took several aside, placing red bandanas on their heads. We marched back into the group of kids like scary monsters with our 'mean, HIV faces' on. We searched out the studennts representing the immune system and surrounded them and took them out of the group, telling the students we had taken our their immune system. I had all the rest of the class fall to the ground - because without your immune system, the body can't fight off anything and will eventually die. They loved it, laughing and acting out the roles. We felt this was a family-friendly way to explain the significance of HIV/AIDS to 5th graders. The Guyanese students are amazingly well-behaved and very hard workers, so I'm very excited to get into the classrooms and start working. After doing some lessons these few weeks, I'm gaining confidence about being able to make a difference.


Oh! And I should give a happy birthday shout-out to Chris, who is now 24 and had a great Guyanese birthday on Thursday. I made him some homefries and fried eggs for breakfast. He is currently relaxing in the hammock he got for his birthday. :) He has been an amazing support as we adjust to a nenw country, climate, culture, etc... I love you, Chris! We will be separating next week as we each go and visit a current volunteer to see what life is like - he will be traveling down a river we are currently staying near to stay in an Amerindian village. I will be travelling to the other side of the country to stay in an area called "Black Bush". We're very excited to get out and see some more of the country. I have a mailing address you can use to mail things until April 8th or so. We will finish training and move to our permanent sites on April 23rd, so we'll send out that address when we have it.

Currently:
Kristin and Chris Adkins
c/o US Embassy
Attn: Peace Corps
100 Young and Duke Streets
Georgetown, Guyana
South America

We will have some ideas for care packages once we get to site later in April, but we'd love some mail and (if you really need to send something) snack food and pens. :)

Love you all!
Also, if you're interested, we do have a phone number and I'll be glad to give that to you, we can receive calls and texts.