Host Volunteer Visits: PQ edition

Last week our group had the amazing opportunity to go on our HVV, or Host Volunteer Visits. An HVV is where the Peace Corps connects trainees, us, with currently serving volunteers and then has us shadow their lives for a week to get the general feel for what our Peace Corps experience could be. Because we are married we had a unique opportunity to experience two distinctly different site locations and get a more rounded feel for what we want to experience. Because our experiences are so different we will each be sharing our own posts and stories of our separate adventures.

I (Paul) went to what Peace Corps Guyana currently considers their most remote, and difficult to get to, site in Aishalton which is 60 miles (as the crow flies) from Lethem. Lethem is a spralling town directly on the SouthWest border with Brazil. Because of its location Lethem has a large mix of Guyanese, Amerindians (native Guyanese) and Brazilians. To get to Aishalton one must take a 12 hour bus ride (not a luxury bus) from George Town. About an hour out of George Town the road loses its asphalt and becomes a single lane, pot-hole filled dirt road. Once in Lethem one must get on a 4x4 vehicle and drive over 5 1/2 hours South on a narroweer and more pot-hole filled road.

To really get a feel for what Southern Guyana and the general area South of Lethem looks and feels like you should watch Planet Earth when they are going through the African Savanahs, except think of all of that landscape without the animals. Its hot, dry and scarsely inhabited by animals or plants. Occasionally near creeks or rivers you will find your self in the rainforest, or "bush" only to be out of it again as you travel 50 meters from the water. A fellow volunteer described it perfectly as the "wild west". Completely untamed land.

In Aishalton we, Charlie (a fellow volunteer) and I, met up with a a couple who is serving down there. The husband is a community health volunteer who is working the district hospital and the wife is a education volunteer working to develop a learning and resource center. They live in the Secondary School's teachers dorms which recieved electricity the day we arrived and has running water, which includes a flush toilet. They have taken the time to develop an amazing garden which they use to throw a little variety into their diet. It was overall not the living situation I had expected for being in such a remote site.

Charlie and I spent the next five days exploring the village, learning village politics, visiting work sites and gaining knowledge on how our projects may run, swimming in Phiriah invested waters, brainstorming ideas for our own projects and overall relaxing and getting a second wind for the final weeks of training.