fear and boating thru the jungle

Well another week and now I am over a month and a week here and since my last update 10 liters of sweat later it’s time for another update…so I compiled one I got a few more requests to post some pictures with my stories…well I promise you will see more pictures soon.

Well at the Adult Education Association things are heating up as I found out why they were upset over changing my schedule so fast. Well before I arrived my schedule was set up for me which changed as soon as I stepped my foot on Guyana soil… Well I assessed the needs for the school hardware wise and the parts have been ordered to start rebuilding labs and departments…but last week I found out I am suppose to teach adult business people about pc hardware design, troubleshooting courses etc..

Then again I found out nobody was followed up therefore it was cancelled well ..pheeeew that was close…..so thank god I can move on and do the original building job…but normally as I go in on Monday to order parts there was a commotion outside at the lab as my demanding students banging on the door as they arrived to class….so once again….take a deep breath…..everything will be ok…. When principal came and sort things out by saying the classes start next monday…well well…fine I will just develop multiple personalities so me and myself and boldi don’t interfere with each other next week…”just now” no problem, but anyways for now it’s more appealing to just hunt for spiders at home …

oh yea did I tell you

Few days ago the score was two spiders...well one in bathroom and one by my bed...I unleashed the furry of the “Be Gone” spray can treatment for all of you animal activists

The main reason I did that is because what if they are poisonous? Never know here and I wish they would have a visitor guide of picture gallery of friendly spider book vs angry mean poisonous ones... anyways shoe check in effect.

And that’s when I discovered pinky the bug eye gecko that lives under my kitchen/living room sofa. He is rather young just yet and likes to lick his eyeballs…I tried a portrait picture but he looked away so next time when he is less grumpy…but now I have to walk carefully in the dark as my room mate hunts for those blood sucker flying enemies.

By the way that brand new quality bike that I bought and on the frame “tough” written all over it, well now I don’t know is that because of though luck…or.. it is just tough to keep it from falling apart… either way, first my tire could not keep up with me now my pedal molded under my weight until it broke off finally so just the metal stick was reminiscence of a tough bike……at first I didn’t think it was safe to use it as it might hurt me during some speedy pedaling action and what if my feet slips off etc… but as it turned out it was even more dangerous just walking with it as it just kept stabbing at my sweaty leg which eventually draw blood and really peaked the interests of the many starved homeless dogs in the area… so then I decided to take it to this repair shop whom will really get to know me as time pass on…anyways typical thing just happened as I walked out admiring my beautiful new pedals…I lift the bike up to turn it around and the seat got ripped off……grrrrrrr….. strange feeling but I felt like grabbing a big piece of carton paper then cut out a new piece of bike ….tougher perhaps……

Last Saturday we made it to santa mission my first amerindian jungle village visit. They had a sort of open house where we can see where they live and put on performances for the public. Of course the most interesting to me was the various dancing part, but the food was great too. They say here if you eat labba a “rabbit like creature” and drink the from the black water you will always come back to Guyana… so I did both….

I just wish they wouldn’t have used some of the modern technology like speakers because the village dj kind of ruined the pristine jungle village scenery by blasting loud old dance song titles like I am Mr Vein and Jump higher… then when some singing and speaking was it was severely distorted to the point it was just torture of people and equipment… Other than that it was great getting away from the dirty city and seeing the brown/black waters of the jungle which is clean just the vegetation brew it like a tea so it seems like you swim in black tea. I saw a Toucan bird hanging out on a tree…Toucans are one of the noisiest jungle birds, with a croak like a frog that can be heard for half a mile! The colorful beak of the Toucan is very light! It is made mostly of keratin (like your fingernails), supported with thin rods of bone.

I was happy about that… they are elusive creatures and national bird of Guyana and the Amazon. The Amerindian children are very cute and smart, the girls were dressed in traditional clothing, well grass skirts and flowers, I took some nice photos of them. One of the Indian elders came to entertain us at the end as they are friendly but now we know and it was a successful party because as he tried to pose for us to take a photo so he sat on the ground doing some weird posing and then he just kind of stayed that way passing out from the festive drinking of high wine…..check it out in the boldi’s pictures section..

So I am watching TV and yeeea I figured out why do I see local new york news and commercials for companies that don’t even exist here …..well because the channels here

just rip everything off of satellite almost real time...its amazing that a national tv channel can do that, but my concern is more to do with my channels change positions time to time.. channel 5 can resurface on channel 28 some days… talking about real channel surfing here….

Some local interest for you as I guess the public mini buses operate here much like any other 3rd world countries system.. well they are kind of like independent businesses.. The driver or Dj as he both drives and sets the tune for the ride.. so there is a driver and the conductor or the money collector person who also operates the slide door and as they cruise along the conductor asks the people standing on the side of road as there are no bus stops, if they wish to join in…but all this happens quite fast. if there is a positive gesture then bus screeching halts , while either causing an accident behind it or perhaps hitting the waiting people on side of the road or if lucky then just a regular uneventful stop. Now when you want to get off ……people just have to yell “corner” and it will stop at next corner…. unless its a longer street then pretty much anywhere…..conductor gets out with a whack load of cash hanging in hands look like harmonica and opens door, quickly collects fare if have not already done so..... well it works…

One of our vso's from kenya and she tends to complain about the heat here.... I thought Africa wasn’t much colder but makes me think what would my fellow Canadian comrades have to say then... but they haven’t complained yet so I think the reason is they are just getting Dee thaw.