New Amsterdam

This time I'll post twice to get everyone up to speed about living in New Amsterdam and my first week of school.

Our long awaited departure from CPCE arrived Saturday, August 28th. My housemates (Corin and Colleen) and I Ioaded up in a minibus for the drive over to New Amsterdam. After a long delay (the minibus was 45 minutes late, and then we waited for more passengers in Stabroek market for another hour or so), we were off. It’s a pretty easy drive out here from Georgetown, but certainly not boring. On the way we discovered yet another use for a machete (as a whip to herd cows across the road), passed a random parade/ protest against domestic violence, and crossed over the new floating (read: scary) bridge over the Berbice river. We were tired and a little shell shocked when we finally arrived at our house on the Multilateral Compound, but thankfully Sir Buster (a teacher at Multi who came to collect us) bought us dinner and water, so we settled in the best we could.


New Amsterdam consists of three parallel roads, Strand, Main, and Republic, connected by several cross streets. Berbice High School is on the other side of town, so Corin and I will have to master the fine art of biking with skirts to get to school every day. Across the street from us is an internet café/ “snackette” (kind of like a mini convenience store with tables to sit and eat there), and we’ve made friends with Miss Lolita and her family who run it.

Over the last few days, we’ve been exploring the town and slowly getting the house set up. Our house has three bedrooms, a toilet and a shower room, a living/ dining room, and a small kitchen. The biggest task was fumigating the kitchen to get rid of the cockroach population that had taken residence in the cupboards. Once that was done and the shelves were lined, it started to feel a little more like home. I shared a room with Corin for the first few days here, because my room didn’t have any curtains. However, the house is pretty much set up for now, and I’ve moved into my room.

The major problems that we’ve been dealing with have been the lack of running water and the lack of a refrigerator. First, the water situation. The water supply to our house connects to the city line via a PVC pipe that runs through an overgrown trench. Due ot the large mass of weeds, the city line disconnected from the house line pretty much every day. Last year, the girls who lived here had to connect the main water line from the city to the water line to the house because it disconnected all the time. In addition, the city water is not on 24/7, so everyone has a reservoir tank that they fill while the city water is on to save water for the off periods. When we got here, the line to the city water was disconnected, and the water tank was empty…which made for an interesting 24 hours until we could get help to connect the lines and fill the tank.

Everyday when the water was supposed to be on, we first had to turn off the pump and check to see if the lines were still connected. Mostly, they weren’t, so thankfully the maintenance man helped us connect the pipes for the first week and a half. Then we had to fill the tank and pray that the line stayed connected until it filled. This system was kind of annoying, but for the most part it worked when we could get the water lines connected. After many calls to our field director and the Regional education officer (REDO) who is supposed to take care of these issues, it seems like we got the problem fixed.



The refrigerator, on the other hand, is still an issue. We’ve had a couple of people look at it, and someone was supposed to pick it up on Monday to repair it, but it’s still a glorified pantry sitting in our kitchen. This is annoying because we can’t store meat or fresh vegetables, and we have to eat what we cook immediately the fact that the water got fixed within three weeks gives me hope that this will be resolved soon as well.