Midnight in the Twiglet House

First comes the pattering- the lizards arrive. They run across the mosquito netting, weight spread, twisting their heads and pooing with avidity. Second comes the quiet throbbing rip of a hungry horse heaving up grass. Then it’s the bat, the one I call Red Bull, on speed as usual, hurtling round corners like a boy racer, also excreting with enthusiasm. And now comes the thunder, first a lapping ripple, then kettle-drum rehearsal at the London Symphony Orchestra, then a threatening roar, and finally Dolby Digital earthquake sound effects. With the last comes the rain,

from rustle

to patter

to splatter

to batter.

Bits of thatch rain down gently, like ash. With the rain come the cows, sheltering under the eaves, a foot from our heads. Tonight they are restless, and knock on the shutters to be let in. Even though I know it must be cows, I still call out “Hello?”, the knock is so human. They “mmrrrrrruurr” low in their throats, upset and jostling. They knead the ground. As the rain dies down, most drift away, and I drift off, to be woken by the sound of dung hitting earth right behind my head. Even at 2am, just startled awake, I immediately think “cow not horse” from the sound of all that shit hitting, the flat splat of cowpat.

I’m tired today. I love the twiglet house. But sometimes it would be nice to spend a night in arid sterility, a clean white soundproof room, insulated from the rustle, splat, rip and growl of nature in all her glory.

Air, hair and a bit of a scare!

I guessed the rain would come in many flavours here. Actually it’s the air. Today it is slightly heavy and moist, like wearing a thick damp fleece jumpsuit. Yesterday the whole atmosphere was a perfect, smooth blancmange, and walking involved pressing yourself forward step by step through a giant milk-based dessert: laboursome, with a sticky residue (so THIS is what it feels like to be a raspberry in a pannacotta!). On a cloudy morning when it’s below 25, the air waits, motionless, humming just below the level of hearing. On changeable days it is like swimming near the shoreline: you enter cool pockets with a shock, and then without warning it’s warm again. You can feel the currents following their own mysterious trails of logic. But best of all are the precious minutes before the rain. The wind jaguars come leaping, roaring, playing havoc with the shutters. You can stand in the cool blast and feel your eyelids blowing back, or use the moment to hurtle around grabbing in your laundry before the rain variously hurls down, chucks itself at you or suffocatingly embraces the world.

Short hair is definitely the ideal choice when it’s hot, AND when it’s rainy. It dries quicker in both cases (sweat or rainfall). But haircuts are gold dust. I had a thousand dollar (£3) haircut in Georgetown, but I don’t get to Georgetown much. And frankly, ‘£3’ suits it better than ‘thousand dollar’- that one certainly gained in translation! So Alison, a good friend and mother of the lovely Ashley, has agreed nervously to cut my hair. I sit on the adjustable salon chair (a bench laid on its side). We sit outside my back door, to the amusement of all the market day bystanders. My gown (binbag with hole in the top) is lowered over my head. B empties the last poisonous remnants from a spray bottle of ‘Shoo!’ insect repellent and fills it with water. Alison has brought her paper scissors. I explain the rough outlines of modern female hairdressing (an area in which I have vast expertise of course), with some demonstrative chopping gestures, and then we’re off. The ‘Shoo!’, it transpires, is still rather potent and needs another rinse. The scissors are a tad blunt. Our neighbour, whose body consists of 30% solids, 10% water and 60% parakari (the local firewater) comes over to lurch, belch and touch my white skin. My demonstration needs some clarification halfway through. But the outcome is definitely less Georgetown and more Toni and Guy. I’m VERY impressed. Alison is a woman of many talents. She is fully qualified as a cook and food handler, and is called out sometimes to local villages when they need caterers for a special event. She cuts both her boys’ hair. She recently completed the sewing training provided by the Basic Skills Trust in Aishalton, and has made some impressive-looking clothes, including Ashley’s Nursery School Graduation dress.

Ashley (in the graduation dress) and Alison

She is hoping to open her own snackette this Autumn. Having tasted her chicken and roti and her cake, we are ardent supporters of this enterprise! Motivated purely by women’s empowerment, of course, not greed.

Alison and Ashley leave after sharing some market day cake and drinks with us (‘Market Day’ is the concept- ‘Cake and Dodgy Home-brew Day’ is the reality) and trying on B's flipflops.

B is heading out the door to search diligently for the photo of the day, just as a snake is heading in. Our first large snake in Aishalton, and it is coming confidently in the back door of my house. ‘Alarming’ is rather politer than the word that popped out of my mouth (let’s just say the bats, birds and lizards do it liberally from my roof). Alison says it was a Whiptail. “You want to careful, it’ll wrap itself round your ankle, that one”. “Is it poisonous?” I ask. She looks slightly baffled. “I mean, does it bite?” Alison and Ashley smile. “A snake is a snake”. Enigmatic smiles, an open little phrase. Compact, clear and yet potent with so much interpretative, storytelling potential.

Aishalton life in numbers

(to the tune of “On the first Day of Christmas”, obviously)

On the 85th day in Aishalton, my tallies said to me:

719,000 Guyana dollars won for the Nursery School (thanks GENCAPD!),
720 dollars for half a chicken,
171 days since we left Ledgard Wharf and came to Guyana,
166.38 square miles that make up Aishalton village,
134 Toshaos (Amerindian village leaders) in the whole of Guyana,
103 paces from the well to our front step,
55 paces to the toilet in daylight, 66 in the dark (with 52 cranks of the wind-up lantern),
39 children in my larger Form 1 class,
20 places on my August music course,
16 children in Natalie’s family,
14 Aishalton people who feel like real friends,
11 bites currently on my feet and ankles (mainly toes, bizarrely),
9 bucketfuls of water to wash two pairs of trousers,
8 arm-hauls per bucket up the well,
5 children from Aishalton Primary who have just won national scholarships in the exams (WOW!),
4 festering mangoes,
3 days of Nursery School staff training,
1 bat living in our house,

And an oriole in the lime tree.

A solidarity of small things

Once upon a previous lifetime, i.e. in Brazil six months ago, I wrote about solidarity. I wonder what you think about when you hear the word? I used to think rallies. Lobbying MPs. Sit-ins, protests, marches. They are all images of struggle. My subconscious thesaurus had solidarity firmly in the activist category- solidarity and oppression as obverse and reverse.

Here in Aishalton, we recently attended a consultation on the Guyanese government’s low-carbon development strategy (www.lcds.gov.gy). After studying all that development theory, it was fascinating to see a ‘grassroots consultation’ from the small end of the microscope. It took place in the secondary school where I have been teaching. Two female government ministers, some environmentalists, Amerindian organisation representatives and facilitators flew in on a specially chartered plane. They proceeded to wilt and sigh their way through an exceedingly hot five hours on the town’s most comfortable chairs (carried up the hill from the Government Guesthouse on the heads of dormitory students), sipping Mount Roraima mineral water and garnering what breeze there was while the rest of us crammed into the body of the school on the children’s benches and regretted not bringing drinks. I wonder if they found themselves sympathising with the children who would sit exams here that same week in hotter weather, on harder chairs, with ‘papers’ written up on a blackboard fifty yards away. Perhaps I am being unfair to suspect they were too preoccupied with strategic thoughts or their own momentary discomfort to ponder the children’s daily reality. Our ‘consultation’ lasted five hours, of which all but twenty minutes was presentations from the front. Many of the local villagers, the bulk of whom left formal education at fourteen or younger, saw the discussion document (57 pages, including appendices, of fairly technical language) for the first time when they arrived that day. Heartfelt congratulations to those who managed to digest the gist, cogitate the debate and respond with aplomb. At four o’clock our Consultors dashed back to the airstrip in a regional government jeep, clutching smart handbags, face powder compacts, high heels and participatory legitimacy to their hot and smartly dressed bosoms. Those left behind variously smiled and chatted, talked positively about the message of the strategy and grumbled about tokenism, insufficient preparation and the authenticity of hasty and information-poor ‘informed consent’.

It’s a strange solidarity we feel here. The solidarity of wondering which battles to fight and which to concede in pragmatic powerlessness. Of walking off to the outside toilet in the rain at midnight. Of operating with a quarter of the information you need for every decision or discussion. Of smelling of pepper-sweat and mould and ripe socks. Of day after day after day of ordinary Aishalton life. Of laughing immoderately at mildly funny jokes. Of living on whatever you can find to cook, alternating between repetitive and experimentally weird. It isn’t grand or portentous. It expresses itself as much in the things you choose not to say (“In the UK a teacher would be sacked for doing that”, “Let’s get an NGO to send us lots of money!”, “how do you LIVE with all these biting insects!”, “No, I do not enjoy eating cassava every day”) as in the things you do say.

Tomorrow we have a meeting with the Toshao (village leader) to discuss the LCDS in preparation for the President’s meeting with all of Guyana’s 134 Toshaos on 20th July. Our Toshao wants to know which questions to ask. The old adage “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference” springs to my mind. The Toshaos cannot meet beforehand, to discuss and then present a unified perspective. This is their biggest and best chance to be heard, and many Amerindians in Brazil or Peru would be astounded to be accorded such a moment, but it’s a hamstrung opportunity, circumscribed by so many things. It’s an Aishalton chance.

“You SHALL go to the ball!”

Graduation- the season of the year for Aishalton’s fairy godmothers to go toke with the wands.

Students here do not give a lot of input into the design of school events. Unusually, for Graduation they were offered the chance to decide on their graduation outfits. They chose deep blue, between gentian and regatta blue. I didn’t know what to expect: American gown-and-mortarboard silliness? School uniform but just in a different colour?

The fabric was ordered in May. It arrived two weeks before graduation. It’s pale lilac. So much for protagonism! The students are matter-of-fact about the lilac. The boys will have black trousers, lilac shirt and tie. The girls will have lilac dresses.

Thirteen girls and two boys are graduating. Exam results will not arrive here until early September (about two weeks after students in Georgetown get theirs). So graduation is simply a celebration of completing five years of secondary schooling. There are 75 students in my first year classes. That is quite an attrition rate.

The day arrives. The school auditorium (i.e. the wide corridor from one end of the building to the other) has been decorated with lilac and white paperchains, ruched lilac curtains tied up with string, balloons advertising Century21, Brazilian car dealers, Budget car hire, Happy Birthday and Its-a-boy! balloons, Christian proselytising balloons.... We begin with a procession of the graduating class, to the strains of the school song, played with one finger and a great deal of flourish to a disco beat on a synthesizer. Here come 13 bridesmaids- tarty bridesmaid with red bra strap, embarrassed bridesmaid whose mother had gone against trend with a short skirt, girly and womanly, stumbling on unfamiliar borrowed heels, made up like a 50-year old matron, in they all come. What dresses! Lilac satin, strappy or strapless, mostly floor length, all fitted. It bears far more resemblance to a beauty contest than a school event. One boy has not turned up (whether because he couldn’t afford the outfit or couldn’t afford the loss of street cred I couldn’t ascertain). The solitary man looks striking, responsible, stiff with borrowed enjoyable formality.

Our programme is long. It seems that all Amerindians have a very high boredom threshold, and can sit through days of thoughtlessly delivered tedium. Perhaps it is simply good manners. We have several speeches, into which any thought that has accidentally stumbled has been solely dedicated to appropriacy rather than diversion, interest or, heaven forbid, delivery style. All of us are seated on the children’s benches, pressed close together. It is as usual over thirty degrees in the school, and the zinc roof presses ever lower as the sun rises ever higher.

Finally it is time for the certificates and trophies. B bought me fifteen sheets of card in Georgetown, so we had managed to print out certificates with eagles watermarked in colour to represent the school motto, ‘Fly to the Top’. Six of the fifteen graduates have won a trophy- best academic, best sporting, most cooperative, most disciplined, most improved, best dormitory student. One of the fathers has bought his daughter a trophy from himself, just for finishing. He is invited to the podium after the six prizewinners have been called out, and he awkwardly calls his daughter forward, stiff in her dress and the embarrassment of a carefully dressed up father, and presents her with a grand trophy. He has found a way for his daughter to be queen of the occasion for one brief moment: the first member of her family to finish secondary education.

It is dignified against all odds. The ballgowns are 1980’s Disney. The auditorium is shabby, the decorations mockable, and Synthesizer Man faintly ridiculous. The speeches are dull and the students’ achievements modest. And yet. For many of those graduating today, this is the grandest recognition they will ever receive. Most will soon be parents. Few will ever have formal employment. A life free of officialdom can also be pretty sparse in affirmation. So the fairy godmothers stay up late stitching, fathers find a way to get a trophy ordered from Georgetown, and the students look solemn and walk carefully on this, a day that ends one era and catapults them into a future without structure.

"Guns don't kill people; people kill people"

I think this is a slogan for the pro-gun lobby. I was extremely amused to have it quoted at me in 'persuasive writing' class, in the following memorable ditty:

"Gon don't kil people
People kil people
It just skeard people
For a time
Gon is just for style"

What a testament to testosterone! Romario got his best mark ever for this one, which flanked an excellent line drawing of a handgun.

People here are not used to advertising. This has the Janus effect: they are extremely gullible, but believe themselves immune. They are an advertiser's dream. But the best part of the class was that people here do not use blandishments. Say it how it is. "Colgate- it cleans your teeth". "Pens- useful for writing with". And this, the best of them all. "Have a gun, tell people it's not irresponsible, scare them into submission, and best of all, be REALLY, REALLY COOL". The trickle effect of peer advertising here in the 21st century Wild West.

All Covered in Cow Slabber

Another normal day. I come out at 5:45, to watch the hindquarters of a large horned cow trotting away from the washing line with my bread cloth. I give chase. The cow speeds up. I shout "Give that back!" and it wags its horns at me and heads across the playing field. I shout in my teacher voice "Don't even THINK about it!" The cow turns, looks at me, flicks the cloth over its shoulder where it hits the ground with a wet gooey smack, gives me a dirty look and keeps trotting. It's so slabbery and yellow that I pick it up by the clothes-peg, but my hands still feel besmirched for the rest of the day.

I go to school for Exam Day 6, and watch 75 children wilt and lie on desks. Some are trying to write well, some to think at all and others aiming to survive the afternoon in 32 degrees at 94% humidity under a zinc roof. The two last arrivals have only a stool to use as a desk. I stand throughout.

I come home in time to mash chickpeas into peanut butter and call it hummous. I notice while I'm kneading dough for flatbread that I've slowed down. I'm kneading gently, more in the spirit of Mozart and less the frantic Led Zeppelin of last week. I sift through the rice for the three resident types of grub: the black ones, the orange straight ones disguised as rice grains, and the tiny brown worm types.

We're asleep by nine. In honour of San Juan, tomorrow night people will be getting extremely drunk (starting early afternoon) and then walking on burning coals. The party is RIGHT outside our house. We're getting the sleep stocked up in advance!

The Twiglet House

We live in a Grimm's fairy tale. One of the Gothic ones, with its triad of fairytale loveliness, surreality and nature's blind harshness.

I lie in bed. It's late- 9pm! I look up through the gauze of netting. We live under a roof of twiglets, knobbly knitting. I now know what it feels like to be a tiny doll in an oversized garter-stitch mud-brown jumper. We are pet fleas in a matchstick dolls-house. The borrowers, playing at real life. (I've never been self-sufficient, but the sensation of wimpish uselessness is different when everyone else is). Our little house feels safe, finite, gingerbread. A child's house.

I go out to the toilet before going to sleep. Tiptoe through the cowpats. Juggling an umbrella and keys whilst winding a wind-up lantern in the dark over rough ground is no mean feat, so I'm happy it's stopped raining. My feet are soaked through by the time I get there, though. Tonight the big beetles are flying, and they are in love with my white skin (the light bouncing off it, to be precise), so they butt me playfully. I'm feeling unplayful and vulnerable (they do, after all, bite), so I'm afraid I swear back at them. The mosquitoes nibble on regardless.

I stumble back in starlight. The planets wink gently. Aishalton's stars effulge and glimmer, diamonds that do not permit envy or ownership, assured in their gorgeousness. Fireflies cruise past with their lovely trajectory- I wish for a vehicle that could emulate their quiet transports of flight.

There is always a strong moment of relief, of protection when I climb back under the net. Sleep holds out its familiar arms and I walk on in, not knowing what I will find but trusting it because I have never had a choice.

And the dragonflies moved upon the face of the water

Yesterday Edgar, a foursquare friend who combines Dickensian dignified portliness with a droll storytelling humour, waterproofed our roof. He climbed a ladder on to the single layer of thatch and clambered around shoving ite leaves into suspicious gaps, while I winced beneath, feeling the roof shake and shudder. It all looked even more precarious from outside, as the whole thatch twitched like a bad toupe. But last night, when the rains came a’knocking, for the first time the roof stayed shut.

Today is a proper rainy season day. I wake to pattering rather than hammering. Morning prayer at 6am up the hill is dark, sparsely attended and everyone is cold (it’s about 23 degrees). On my way back down, the rain-pace picks up, and my coat is drenched through before I head for the well. There is a tautological frustration in struggling to pull up water when it’s descending with such purposeful aplomb, but I need a shower now, not in half an hour. Nevertheless I put out all our empty buckets under the roof eaves, and by the time I leave for school we have twelve gallons of heaven’s water, unlaboured for.

I cannot consider cycling today, so I set off early in B’s coat (mine is beyond “soaking” and in to “pouring”), waterproof boots, my hurricane umbrella and a backpack in its own cute silver mackintosh. A plague of flying worms rises in wafts, drifting like ash, giving me compelling reason to keep my mouth firmly shut. When I reach the road, it is a red river with a clearly discernible current. I have to leap the torrent six or seven times on the walk. At the largest dips in the road, lakes have formed with greenish edges. Here the dragonflies hover scarlet and gold, greeting my bleary incredulity with a darting, nonchalant indifference. Contrasting children pass by; the dragonfly children in normal uniform, carrying their ‘slippers’ (flipflops) and wading, and the anxious-parented children in ankle-length non-breathable macks, creating the moisture inside to complement the outside. A tall girl in tiny shorts hurtles by, sheltered under the umbrella of her passenger balanced on the crossbar.

When I arrive at school, the children are mainly sheltering under the eaves, but nothing else is different. Life continues as normal. I remember London’s six inches of snow in January and chuckle.

Words are deceitful and desperately wicked- who can understand them?

An old friend got in touch the other day, after a long silence due to excessive brain usage (intensive Arabic studies). She had seen this blog and commented on the ‘very lyrical language’. That made me smile and grimace at the same time. I do not mean to be lyrical; I’m trying to be exact, truthful, and unmisinterpretable (is that a word? It is now!).

It’s a losing battle of course. As any avid reader knows, good words are gorgeously woven but empty sacks that we fill with our own ingredients. Posh painting by numbers. And as language learners discover, translation is a search for metaphors, not a set of matching equations. As soon as you read these words, they are your words, not mine. They fill up to the brim with your history, your life, your faces and places. Let’s play a game. I’ll tell you about my rather uneventful day, you visualise it, then I’ll describe it in a bit more detail.

Version 1: I went to school. The education department delivered some books. B did the washing today. A friend dropped by for a cup of tea, and brought a little smackerel of something to have with it. It rained and then the sun came out.

(A pause while you visualise- I shall imagine YOU now, making a cup of tea, sitting in front of a good computer in a well-lit room at a comfortable temperature, being bitten by nothing except possibly pets or relatives).

Right then: Version 2.
I went to school. i.e. I trot off to the outside loo (we still haven’t sanded it, so it’s got a natural exfoliation effect) before getting on my bike for school. The ride up the hill takes about 7 minutes. It’s deep, skiddy sand. I once fell off, to the ecstasy of passing students, and it took days for people to stop approaching me delightedly to tell me all about it- a kind of “Where were you when Miss Sarah fell off her bike?” vibe. I arrive without incident, sweating like a cheese sandwich left out in the sun.
The education department delivered some books. At lunchtime, the fourth year boys are sent off on their bicycles to hurtle and skid their way across the valley to the education department building. They wobble and creep their way back with 40lbs of books each, in cardboard boxes, balanced on their crossbars as they negotiate the steeplechase of sandpits, ruts, rocks and rivers that make up the ‘road’ back to school. I have never seen them concentrate that hard for lessons.
B did the washing today. When I got back after a full day’s teaching, B was just completing the week’s wash that he had started before I left. Step 1, haul buckets and carry them a few hundred yards. Step 2, fill laundry bowl with cold water and soap powder. Step 3, leave to soak. Step 4, haul more buckets for first rinse. Step 5, haul more buckets for second rinse. Step 6, start on a second full laundry bowl. Step 7, curse. Repeat steps 3, 4 and 5, with copious quantities of step 8. (Step 8, sweat two full bucketloads but reject them as too salty for rinsing with). Step 9- hang out the washing and hang out the flags; it’s over for another week!
A friend dropped by for a cup of tea, and brought a little smackerel of something to have with it. Ashley’s mum, Alison, stops in. She accepts a coffee tea (‘tea’ means hot drink, so you can have tea tea, coffee tea, Nescau tea etc) with milk and three sugars. She is miniature, like a hummingbird, so she probably needs the sugar to survive. She brought a sugar cane her own height for us to chew on- she says “just chop it with a knife” but she means a machete, which they call a cutlass here. Our knives won’t do it.
It rained and then the sun came out. The rainy season arrived with panache two weeks ago. It skulked away two days later, and hasn’t returned. People are beginning to speak of drought. The vegetables are dying, the trees are not fruiting, and the wells are getting low. It is frightening- when the well runs dry, and the coconuts are all drunk, what then? People drink creek water and get sick. We, who would simply leave, dilettante with the fear but carry a little guilt of irresponsibility. The semi-solidarity of the spoilt. So today when it rains during second period, the students get restive. They jump from their seats to look. They fidget and joke. It stops almost immediately, the air is heavy and turgid with moisture, gloom and dishcloth air descend on the staffroom.

The gap between the first and second version is no bigger than the gap between the second and reality here. Photos suffer it too- the rubbish pit not taken, the filthy sullen child who isn’t photographed, the National Geographic glamour filter on Amerindian wrinkles that doesn’t ‘take’ on our own unfit or exhausted populace. Sometimes I think I will give up on writing this and let B’s photos speak for both of us, but eyes and ears both have their suitable moments. So I shall carry on fighting the losing battle, and enjoy the many consolations of defeat!