Our home sits on a hill on the Western edge of the village. A hill affectionatly named "The Concrete Hill". Our home is in a 5 apartment building, 'teachers quaters' and we are inbetween the police office, the secondary school and dorms, and the hospital. They are all government buildings, built in the same style as all the other government buildings in Guyana... Concrete structure with zinc (tin) roof, painted yellow with brown trim. All of the village homes and buildings are traditional - wooden structure, sun roasted brick walls, and palm thatched roofs. Surrounding our concnrete hill on almost every direction is the Barjoan family. There is a Barjoan nurse at the hospital. 2 families behind us, the 'grandparent' Barjoans on the other side. All members of the family have been helpful, from pitching in to finish the fence to teaching me how to make 'cook up', to housing us while we looked for our keys. Here is Auntie Radika Barjoan and her adorable baby boy. (The first baby who let me hold him without any screaming involved!)

First, we make the pari cari, then we drink it. For this particular competition, the only measurement is who can drink the pitcher the fastest without any spilling down around the lips. Here's the ladies and gentlemen.

Every year, the 'deep south Rupununi' holds "August Games", a sort of local Olympics where all hte villages come together to compete in games for 5 days. The first days are traditional sports - football (soccer), volleyball, and cricket. The final days are traditional games - local practices. The ladies make and strain pari cari, the local alcoholic drink made from cassava. The men and women have drinking competitions, they race to the top of coconut trees, weave baskets, spin cotton and rope, traditional dances and music, and my favorite... fire starting without matches or fuel.

These are pictures from Aishalton's try-outs, a group of ladies straining the pari cari, which starts as a thick paste, similar to mud. The ladies add water and strain it so that it becomes a thick, milky substance. Traditionally, it is drunk from a bowl and you always fill the bowl and return a drink to whomever served you. After the ladies made it, the tryouts for drinking pari cari started, pictures to come.

Mary, Mary

My sweetest little visitor to my library... Mary. A little girl who reads more that you or I, she is constantly checking out books. She comes in, quiet and still. She turns in the two books she has and moves quickly to find the next two. You could ask her any question about the books she's just read, and she'll know the answer. Her dad works with Chris at the hospital and brought us pinapple plants - we may have pineapple in one year! This is her on market day.

Pictures from KEEP Aishalton 2009. We worked with children 8-16 years old for 4 weeks.

These are photos of the children working with tie dye.

Since it is summer, the children have an 8 week break from school. We just finished a four week educational summer camp, KEEP (Kids Educational Enhancement Program). The students took classes in computers, Wapishana (local language), Portugese, Art, and Embroidery/Crochet. I helped teach the computer classes. They also learned to tie dye! These students are very talented! This is a picture of the Learning Resource Center where I work and where we held KEEP. More pictures to come!

We ordered bricks to make an oven, little did we know they would be delivered by oxen and cart! This is Chris helping to tie the oxen back to go home. This is Uncle Thomas, the best brickmaker in Aishalton.