Just call me Kapitay Mai

I’m finally here to report on how things have been going so far. So much has happened in the last two months, that it's impossible to hit on everything. I am finishing up my second month here in Suriname, two more weeks of homestay and I’ll be out on my own. I have been living in Asigron, a village in the Brokopondo area of Suriname in a small little house just behind my host mother’s house. It’s almost crazy to think about how I was pretty much dropped off here with no language skills. I remember first getting off the bus and being able to say “I weki no?” which you use in the morning to ask people how they slept, and “Mi ne da Jessica”…My name is Jessica. That doesn’t get you that far when you have dozens of small children running after you and women coming over to take a peek at the new Peace Corps volunteer. I was immediately dubbed with the name Kapitay Mai, which means captain’s wife. The kids here immediately took me on a parade through the village to show me where the other volunteers were living. They laughed at how I flipped dirt up all over my legs from my flip-flops, how I walked, and the fact that every time they touched my skin it would “light up.” They paraded us around and fought over who got to hold our hands. There were six of us living in two neighboring villages, so there were plenty hands to go around and plenty of turf to trek.

For training we have a small Saramaccan language group that means from 8-12pm 5 days a week. Asigron was definitely an adjustment. It gets dark here around 7pm, I go to bed around 9:30 (crazy I know), and then I get up at 6 or 6:30. Everyone here gets up between 6-7am and when I say get up that means blast Sinaid O’Connor/Savage Garden love mix or the latest rasta jams. That also coincides with the 4am wake-up call from my local chickens. They call the early morning “Gania Kanda” or chicken sings…which they do…a lot. A group of us go running in the morning before class, which has been made a lot easier since I am already up, might as well go for a jog.

I living under the careful eye of my host mother Yvonne. She has really been a blessing to me. She comes over and sits with me all the time and helps me stumble through my Saramaccan until we figure out what I mean to say. Her patience is amazing. She also has helped me key in on some of the different cultural practices...i.e. women's herbal tea washings, washing clothes in the river, and learning how to sew. I live in my own little house behind hers (the house in the picture). Yvonne, her manu Hans, and her 2-yr old son Meagynnio live just behind me. Meagynnio is my favorite, he runs around saying “Tay Mai” since he can’t say my whole name and will pull me by the hand and tell me to come sit down in his house. He and his cousin, Sino, who is just a little older, are always running around my house and I love it.


So I was asked by someone if I had eaten any weird foods, and the fact of the matter is that I have eaten a couple of new “delicacies.” One afternoon my friend Shannon and I were walking to local community center to work on one of our projects. On the way we saw the small rasta boy, Urlio, and an older girl, Rubica, walking with a wheel barrow down the street, she yells for me to come over and see what she caught. It was a sloth. Shannon and I are like “Awww! Cute!” and start walking over, sort of freaking out, because we have never seen a sloth in real life before, but after we had been talking to her for a few minutes we realize that she caught the sloth…to eat it. Taking a closer look I realize she has attempted to cut the sloth’s throat…and when I say attempt, I mean she did not even come close to succeeding. I tried telling her to kill it all the way and she told me it was as good as dead. We later found out it was to be another PCV's dinner. And yes, I did try it. Not bad.