Bersaba

Ah, weekend, finally! Ellen and Evi still had a school day today, but the rest of us has today off to “work for the project”. The other two needed to go to school for the annual “Kangoeroebazaar”, the school’s carnival. While they were off having fun with the kids, we stayed home to do the weekly cleaning again. While Marij and I did the down stairs, Sharon and Tineke cleaned the upstairs. We got into a little “water fight” at some point, cause I was cleaning the downstairs terrace and they were doing the upstairs one. All the water they used ended up on my clean one, so I just gave up and waited till they were all done to do the rest of mine.
In the early afternoon Marij and I left to the Hermitage Mall to do some project shopping: we need a whole bunch of materials to be able to make all our lessons work. At about 1.30pm we had about half of what we needed and though it was time for a lunch break. Instead of going for the local bamie or nasie, we went for the third option: fries and chicken nuggets!
After the yummy lunch, we continued our shopping spree. After spending around 150 SRD on arts and crafts materials, we thought it was time to get a bit selfish and see if there was something for ourselves as well. So we entered the book store (our heaven!). I bought some very nice Animal Alphabet cards and a Surinam cook book. (not that I’m a good chef, but perhaps one of my house mates would like to try something from it? And I’ll have something to show when I get back home :p)
When we were waiting for the bus, I got bitten by a red ant (and those bites sting!) which didn’t really put me in a good mood… though the sulking didn’t last long.
Dinner looked awful but tasted pretty good. We didn’t do much else and went to bed shortly after. (For some reason we always end up having dinner around 8-9 o’clock…)

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The second day of our weekend started (again) with sleeping in and having sandwiches for breakfast. I think, by the end of this three month period, I’ll have sandwiches coming out of my ears and nose…
After lunch, Gero came around asking if we were interested in going out of town for a swim. Of course we couldn’t say no to that! Sharon and Tineke could come with us. A child from their school had drowned earlier this week and they had to go to his funeral. (Pretty sad really, a 6 year old in a little white coffin, because no one was watching him in the swimming pool…)
The rest of us packed in a hurry and head to Bersaba, a little local holiday centre with a small river you can swim in. when we got there, I unloaded everything from my backpack to discover I left my bikini pants at home. Typical… No swimming for me :( Though I did enjoy just walking at the bank of the river.
There was a big birthday party happening and, like all Surinam people, we just invited ourselves, took a plate and helped ourselves to some delicious food, even though we didn’t know any of the partying people.
Around 5pm we packed everything up and drove back to Paramaribo. When we arrived home, we had about 5 minutes to get changed, because Gero was taking us to one of his friends for a BBQ. No sign of Tineke and Sharon when we got home, so we assumed they were still at the funeral (it started at 3pm).
After a great evening meal, we did get a bit worried, since we hadn’t heard from them yet and it was getting late. So around 9pm I called them. Apparently they had left a note on the table saying we should call them when we get home, cause they were heading into town for the big carnival. But since we had to rush to get ready, none of us had noticed it…
When we got home afterwards, they were a bit pissed at us and we got very short, snappy answers when we asked them any questions about how their day went.
We decided to leave it at that, since we thought they could’ve rang us as well to ask where we were and if we were back already…
After an eventful and tiring day we all went to bed early.

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Last day of the weekend already… nothing much happened really. We had a house meeting to discuss diner plans for the coming week. This way, we can buy all ingredients in advance and don’t have to rush to stores to search for what we need.
We also set up a task schedule: people to do the shopping, people to do the cooking and people to do the dishes. Next week it’s my turn to cook, so I sincerely hope no one will end up in hospital with food poisoning…
The last point on our agenda was trips. When, who, what, where, …? All things were discussed and we decided that we are going on a two day trip to Brownsberg in a fortnight. Brownsberg is a natural environment where you can do all sorts of adventurous or recreational stuff.
After all this was discussed, Marij and I left to do some of the mentioned last minute shopping for tonight’s dinner. We needed to find some fish and “kousenband”, but since it’s Sunday, we needed to ride around a bit before we found what we needed. When we left the shops, one of those typical rain showers had started again, so we hurried back home and changed clothes real quick.
When we were done, some of us started dinner, while the rest of us worked for school.
Not long after dinner we all headed to bed; tomorrow is a new school day after all.

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Pffft, getting up early again…
At school we are concentrating on taking some reading tests to see which kids can and which can’t read and how good they are at it. This will take up about a week, cause we have to test each child individually and we have about 120 students.
We also had our first evaluation with the principal, about our observations. This lasted about the entire morning, so we didn’t have much time left for the testing. We were also advised to have more conversations with the teachers and the students, so this week we’ll also concentrate on that.
Because of the rain this morning, we took a taxi home again.
We didn’t do anything else till about 6.30pm. Tineke and Sharon’s vice-principal had invited us all to a Hindu temple for a celebration. Lots of singing, chanting and talking, but we didn’t understand a word of what they said! (Apart from a few thank you words that were translated)
We also got some very delicious food: barras (a sort of savoury donut) and roti (looks a bit like burritos, but it’s filled with potatoes, beans and some sort of curry).
When we got home, we all ate everything fast (it was 9.30pm) and went to bed.

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On the second day of the week we again did the reading tests and took a taxi home again (two days in a row where we wake up with rain, kinda depressing).
After calling a taxi, we waited for about half an hour. Still no sign of him, so we called a second cab. 15 mins later the first one finally arrived, so I called the second taxi driver again to cancel, but he didn’t pick up his phone…
When we got home, that cab driver was waiting for us at the supermarket on the corner, pissed off cause we “stood him up”. After explaining we did try to contact him, but we didn’t get any response, he got back in his car and drove off.
Marij and I worked a bit for school and then she and Ellen head to the supermarket to buy some flour. Ellen had found a Mac and cheese recipe and she wanted to try that one out. (Let’s just say it was a lot of mac, a lot of cheese and not much else.)
After some relaxing and finishing our work, I headed to bed.
Halfway the working week again, time flies by when you’re having fun!