An ode to civilization

An ode to hot showers. Clean much better than just cold water showers. Try to get conditioner out of your hair with cold water for example, takes ages.

An ode to banana milkshakes. It’s just the milk (I’m a dairy girl) and banana combination.

An ode to filled shelves in the supermarket. With whole aisles filled with one type of product, just a zillion different brands.

An ode to air conditioning. Self explanatory when it’s always 35C.

An ode to electricity. Cannot imagine at all what life would be like without. I mean how can you live without a refrigerator in this heat?
My survival kit contains matches and candles, lots of those.

An ode to washing machines. Hand washing really takes ages and I always have the feeling that it’s never really clean.

An ode to drinkable tab water. The coming 2 years I have to do all this before I can drink water: first boil the water, let it cool off, put it in the water purifier and wait until it all trickles through. The whole process will take hours. Just to get some water…

An ode to comfortable sofas. The sofas is Guyana are undercover monsters. They look very comfortable, soft and all (but with hideous patterns though, flowers and stuff, normally I’m into flowers, on dresses for example, but these are the really big and ugly ones with seventies colours). But once you sit on it, it just feels like you’re sitting on hard board. I miss my lovely gigantic and ultra soft sofa. Not even sure if I will have a sofa at all in my new palace by the way.

An ode to the many different types of communication tools. It is so nice to be here and be able to communicate with all of you in many different ways (e-mail, sms, phone, Skype, msn, my blog, Facebook etc etc). Just have to wait and see how that will go.

An ode to punctuality. I’m too Dutch, still have to get into the Caribbean mood.

An ode to shopping. Afraid to mention it but yes it’s true. Just not happening in Guyana at all. The shops I can’t figure out. They sell everything and nothing. Clothing looks very tacky (market quality). Will probably ache for Georgetown while in no-man’s-land though.

An ode to spending time with friends and family. You are all (and will be) missed.

And who knows what other little things that we always take for granted I’m really going to appreciate when living in my village.

Because the time has come. I will head for my new home coming Monday. Wowetta will be my hometown, with approximately 300 inhabitants (slightly less than Amsterdam). Mainly inhabited by the Makushi, an Amerindian tribe that live from hunting, fishing, gathering and cassava production. My house is still being built but they promised that it will be ready in 2 weeks… Maybe yes maybe no. In the meantime I’m not exactly sure where I will be staying.
The trip there will be an adventure on it’s own since half of the road is still flooded apparently. Let’s see how long it takes before we get there.
For now so long, if you don’t hear anything from me through the digital gateway in let’s say 2 weeks start looking out for smoking signals or bottle post.

PS: This week I stumbled upon an interesting urban legend concerned with ‘The Dutch’ that I still would like to share with you. As you probably know Guyana used to be a Dutch colony. It’s amazing to see how many villages still have Dutch names (Hoop en Vree, Stabroek, De Kinderen, yeah I know some names are really weird) but let’s put that aside and focus on the urban legend. This legend is concerned with ‘Dutch Trees’, these trees were planted by the Dutch a long time ago and they used to burry their loved ones under the trees when they had passed. The Guyanese claim that it is impossible to remove or chop down those trees. Every time when somebody tries he or she dies. They even built a road around a tree (so yes there’s really a gigantic tree in the middle of the road now) just because it couldn’t be removed. Next to the ‘Dutch Trees’ it is claimed that on the old Dutch roads mainly leading to for example New Amsterdam and Parika often people in 16th century clothing are walking next to the side of the road. When you get near they disappear. At night people that live next to the road hear galloping horses and yelling. So I was wondering why all those scary stories are all concerned with the Dutch and not any of the other oppressors, they didn’t really have an answer to that.