The 12 Days of Christmas

On the twelfth day of Christmas I found this in Sand Creek…

Twelve ginnip for eating,
Eleven beautiful sunsets,
Ten palm trees,
Nine kaboura biting,
Eight marabunta,
Seven skits rehearsing,
Six busy teachers,
Five mosquitoes,
Four months no water,
Three brand new buildings,
Two volunteers,
And a mango in a mango tree!

(For the uninitiated: ginnip are a small, green fruit I’ve grown very fond of; kaboura are small biting insects I’m decidedly not fond of; marabunta are kinda like wasps, only all black and more painful)

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TG#41 – Gangnam Style! (Update Again)

Presenting… the staff entry for the Christmas concert!

(Skip to about 1:45 for the good stuff)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_LaTAJPVrw

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Christmas Party!

Today was the students’ Christmas party, which meant time for lots of food, lot of music and plenty of dancing! See below for a load of photos… Read more »

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Third Time Not So Lucky

The engineers responsible for sorting out a water system have left again, and we STILL don’t have running water. They’ve now turned up in the village three times promising to dig a well and install a pump, and three times they’ve left the village without having done either of those things!

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Fingers Crossed…

I just got back from a meeting I was invited to between the village council and various key people within and Sand Creek. That meeting was arranged to discuss bringing Internet connectivity to the village. I hesitate to get hopes up here, but…

The ball is rolling! In typical Guyanese fashion it doesn’t appear to be rolling very fast, and I have no idea if it will roll far enough, but I have my fingers firmly crossed.

If all goes exceedingly well (and the local pigs sprout wings and fly) then we could see Internet as soon as January!

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TG#19 – Sample Some Demerera Rum

As many of my friends will know, I stopped drinking alcohol before I left for my gap year for personal reasons. Since then I have stuck to this decision and intend to continue to do so, so I was reasonably certain this item from the Traveller’s Guide would never be crossed off. Read more »

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TG#40 – Gaff

I spent all of last night just lying in a hammock talking with Gary (an ex-PTV visiting Shulinab) about more or less everything. When I say “spent all of last night” I mean I got into my hammock about 9 in the evening, and then at about 6 this morning abandoned any plans if getting some sleep.

9 hours of solid gaffing – I’d count this one as done.

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Big Day Today…

The date is 1st December, 2012 and it’s a Saturday. Today is a big day for 2 different reasons:

– Today is day #100 of my gap year adventure! I’ve been in
Guyana for 98 days, but I’m counting the 2 days travelling as a part of the adventure.
– As there are now 3 full months down, I get a new toothbrush today! Not big news, I know, but it has become something of a running joke between Harry and I after we spent a good 10 minutes discussing what colour brush I should go for. We settled on purple, for several good, well-argued reasons, before concluding that perhaps the sun was finally getting to us and we might possibly be losing it!

Also, it’s apparently the dry season, but it seems no one remembered to tell the sky about that; it’s been raining heavily for the past 6 hours. Still very hot here though!

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$258.90 = £0.80

Just noticed that petrol is 80p/litre in Guyana 😮

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What Chain of Decisions…

Every now and then I get hit by the reality of the fact I’m thousands of miles from home, on a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I wonder “what chain of decisions lead me to be where I am right now?”.
Read more »

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