Hotel La Petite Maison Paramaribo

... something herbal. Suddenly a tropical rainstorm saturated everything within minutes and we tried to keep dry against the wall. The rainstorm stopped as suddenly as it started, which seemed to be the sign for many of the waiting boats to leave. We saw no sign of Ronald and hoped for the best as all our gear had already been loaded onto the boat, and Aniel had left to go back to Paramaribo. We were unable to identify which boat our stuff was on as all looked the same ...

... around us as well as exotic birds, lizards and little squirrel monkeys. They are greenish with yellow feet. The historic part of town contains many picturesque wooden buildings in the Dutch style. The area has been designated a world heritage site by UNESCO, so we feel honoured to be staying in it. We really like Paramaribo, it is very culturally diverse, Dutch, Black, Asian, Indonesian, Indian, all seem happily integrated and living ...

... TOO nice. I was afraid of losing street cred with you, my readers. You don't want to hear about what's happening 'in there'; you want to hear what's happening 'out there', right? So I reluctantly moved into the center of town yesterday 30 Jan., even lying to the inn keepers that I was going on to Guyane Francaise so as not to hurt their feelings. Can you believe that? But I was right. There was a huge street party last night and today was even ...

... so much - she hardly speaks any of her family's orginal language. Behind me was a man holding a young toddler who kept stroking my back over the top of the seat, fortunately not unpleasantly. The other person who had been transferred with me had a disagreement wioth the driver about paying for her luggage which, together with mine and that of another woman who had got off earlier, was occupying a seat. The issue was that, in the first vehicle, neither of ...

... tussen Bami en Nasi met kip. Alhoewel één van beiden soms wel verkocht wordt maar "even op" is. (we verkopen het wel maar we hebben het niet) Vaak is er ook Saoto, een heerlijke heldere soep met kip en taugé. In Domburg is ook een "Cyber, Games en copyshop" Er staan zo´n 15 oude pc´s en het is er niet duur. Daar staat tegenover dat het zaakje meer dicht dan open is. Als je binnen weet te komen is het altijd maar weer afwachten hoe de vlag er voor staat. Soms breken ...

The daily ferry across the Correntine river to Suriname eventually left after a long morning of not doing much at all. This was followed by an unnecessarily long and thorough passport and baggage check in the customs building before we were eventually let through to the waiting minibuses. "Which one is Brian's?" I asked, having been told a few hours earlier that 'Brian' was expecting me on his. Nobody knew, and few ...

... fire. No electricity. No telephone. No internet. Much different from the life I left behind. That's something you've got to hand to us volunteers, our willingness to "give up" the comforts of home for the hardships of developing communities. Some people think we're crazy for doing it, while others think we're altruists, but it's more like a mix of insanity and idealism if you ask me. We welcome the challenges we encounter, even the malaria, dengue, giardia, infections ...

... this for some time so I expect she is normalizing herself into the idiosyncrasies of bus travel in Parimaribo. Settled into a seat one of my favourite pastimes is watching the little old wooden houses along the streets. They often seem to me to be slowly melting in the tropical sun as they often have a slightly crooked appearance of the old and tired. Shades of days long gone. These, I expect, would have been homes of the less well to do Dutch in the colonial times who weren't ...

... no real needs assessment and no real identification of the existing HIV/AIDS radio programming currently being developed and/or delivered. We had been of the impression in the beginning that there was none and were quite surprised to hear from various people that this or that radio station or organization was doing HIV/AIDS radio. Jess and Sherilyn are both creative and skilled young women, but they are also high achievers and inexperienced in project development ...

... tanks to catch rain water. The lake is contaminated with murcury from the mining and they try to use rain water. This isn't always possible as the tanks run dry in the dry season. There are homes that have TV's and DVD's and we saw a couple of deep freezers which seems bizarre considering that the power is run by an unreliable generator and is off as often as it is running. It wasn't running all the time we were there. However, Dara's neighbour, Michael has his own generator ...