The Day Leon John Made the First Yupukari Ocarina

March 12 ,2013 

Kel and Meaghan

Today is Tuesday and somehow with everything going on we missed the blog entry yesterday.  Tricia has kept us all very busy with planned activities and so Meg and I (Kel) are going to write about both days.  Where to begin?  Monday morning we awoke to our fabulous breakfast of, bakes, fruit, eggs, and lemongrass tea.  Following that we had a tibisiri workshop with Latia. This involved taking the hearts of the Ite Palm and stripping them of their fibers that create the materials used in basket weaving. We all got to try our hand at weaving some baskets, although Mary and Michelle were the only successful ones of the group. Kendry learned to braid while the rest of us made 'eco bling” bracelets. After a short rest and some lunch, we prepped for the day’s workshop in school. The younger grades got to learn a bit about printmaking using leaves and the rubber fish we brought.  The older students worked with local clay and learned how to make pinch pots and press bowls. This is the same clay used to make the bricks used in the construction of their houses and buildings. Tricia also introduced them to the Ocarina and had her class whistling away in no time. Some of the students came back to the Caiman House where we showed the kids how to make their own ocarinas. Leon John Park, one of the students in Tricia’s class, was completely focused on learning how to make one, and by the end of the session he had managed to figure out how to make an eight hole ocarina start to finish entirely by himself – pretty amazing, considering that most of the group still can’t do it without help. Later in the afternoon, a bunch of us met up with some locals to play some football/volleyball while Kel and I (Meg) got distracted by a nearby abandoned home that had lots of fun wood scraps which we mosaicked into interesting geometric sculptures. Later that evening (after another amazing dinner, of course) Tricia, Kendry and I finally got our turn to participate in the nightly Caiman research night expedition. We all have some really awesome experiences from the three different groups that went over the weekend that we’ll post in another blog entry. We returned safely (all limbs intact) took showers, hit the sack and had sweet dreams of gators, snakes, and bakes.

So here we are on Tuesday, and yet again breakfast was phenomenal, and we headed over to Auntie Madeline Francis’s home. She gave us a tour of her field where she harvests all kinds of Cassava, the Amerindian staple food. She showed us how to cut, harvest, and replant the cassava. We proceeded to go back to her open air building where she peels, grates, strains the toxins, and then cooks the Cassava into a bread. We had to cut our visit short to get ready for today’s school work so tomorrow morning we’ll be back to learn how to make and taste the bread. In school, we switched lessons so that the younger grades could play with clay (they made pinch pots and little animals) while the older grades did some printmaking. All of the kids had a great time and the younger ones got to take clay home to play with it on their own. After a brief break, Tricia, Kendry, Cydney, and I (Kel) went out fishing with the two Felixes as our guides.  The catching was slow, the snags were plenty but overall Tricia and I each caught a catfish. We finished the day off with a great dinner and preparation for the next day’s final lesson at the school.    

The Best Lime in Guyana

Sunday March 10

Blog Post by Tricia Fay

First, please let me apologize for the delays in our postings. Despite all the efforts of all sorts of people to keep the Internet up and running here in Yupukari, we are sharing electronic access space with the entire North Rupununi region. So even though we have our very own computer whiz kid on the trip (thank you Chris !) there are some limitations to our technological capacity, particularly when it comes to uploading pictures. And on top of that, with the Indigenous Wisdom Program in the morning, the Primary School Art Camp in the afternoon, and catching black caiman with the research team in the evenings (more on that tomorrow !) we have been wonderfully busy.

Sunday was a day of rest Guyanese style, with our group and much of the Caiman House staff traveling down the Rupununi River to the legendary Karanambu Ranch  for a half day ‘lime’ – a time of rest and community and dialogue and all over goodness. We stopped off on the way to gawk at the fabulous Victoria Amazonica lilies in Mobay Pond, with their humungous lily pads and white and pink flowers. Along the river there were of course a zillion critter sightings – endless birds, tons of black caiman (gators to you Florida folk), and even two capybara backsides disappearing into the bush (the world’s largest rodent). We reached Karanambu Landing and walked up the hill from the river to one of the most comfortable and welcoming spots in Guyana. 

For five generations Karanambu has been a cattle ranch, a balata rubber business, an acclaimed ecotourist lodge, a site for rehabilitation of giant wild river otters, and a global study center for many university and research groups. It is also the home of Diane McTurk – as amazing a woman as I have ever met – and we all descended on her for a morning/afternoon of laughing and storytelling, and an outrageously tasty vegetarian Italian brunch. This kind of Sunday ‘lime’ reminds me of all the things that I love about the Caribbean region, and all the reasons why I chose to bring my students and friends here. Ranch managers Andrea and Salvador De Caires told us wonderful tales about their connections to and encounters with Guyana’s most famous self-taught artist Phillip Moore; staff member Gerry Pereira and I resumed a years-old conversation about the pottery collections at the Walter Roth Anthropology Museum; Diane walked us through the colorful history of Karanambu; we saw eye-popping digital images of recent wildlife sightings on the property (jaguar, ocelot, anteater, harpy eagle, capybara, etc etc etc etc etc),and  ate until we could eat no more. After saying our goodbyes to all (including Diane’s hopelessly adorable new puppy Aster Lord of Luna), we rode back up the river to Yupukari playing games to see how many caiman we could spot lurking along the banks.

What a lovely day, and we spent the rest of it getting ready for school and working on art projects. This is an unforgettable trip, and I am so grateful for everyone who has made it possible.

Woodworking, Katoka, and Balata

Yupukari Day 3

March 9,2013

Posted by Mary Voytek

Woke up to a surround-sound choral ensemble of howler monkeys, yellow crowned parrots, village roosters, with cicadas maintaining the steady beat. Our days are extremely long and overflowing with experiences that are causing all of our senses to fire like sparklers on the Fourth of July. Today was no exception. It started with a wakeup call at 4:30, AM that is. Can you imagine getting a troop of college students up at 4:30 AM on a Saturday morning? Not a problem with this crew, in fact they were just as effervescent as I was for this early morning workshop with the village artist and woodcarver, Combrencent Ernest. While the dew was still dripping from the trees and the skies were starting to light up with pastel washes we found ourselves outside under the thatched gazebo in awe of the beautiful leopard wood log we were instructed to cut into smaller usable slabs that would be then be chopped into nuggets using a machete. Leopard wood has an amazing deep reddish color that is reminiscent of the local red clay earth and black hieroglyphic type markings that truly resemble a leopard’s coat. We all dove into the process of sanding and shaping our treasured tidbits absolutely surprised when the breakfast call came at 7:30. I heard a few students pipe up that they would gladly skip breakfast in order to continue their carvings and I have to admit it was mighty tempting. Knowing we needed our strength for the day ahead, Tricia and I encouraged everyone to take a break and come inside.

Breakfast consisted of hot porridge, eggs, Brazilian sausage, fresh baked bread, local peanut butter, guava jelly and green mango juice. Has anyone told you yet, the food here is divine? When I walked into the breakfast room which is also command central as it houses the open kitchen, work tables for the never ending and always changing projects, internet couches, and general informal meeting arena, I overheard a conversation about the research efforts with the black caiman. “We’re not catching caiman for the tourists”, Mike explains, “we have a variety of ongoing studies, we are publishing our research and you are observing this research in action….” Made me think how fortunate I would be when my turn came to observe the research team in action the following night. Wondered how it would compare to the other research efforts I have participated in.

After breakfast, a 20 minute walk though the village of Yupukari to the Rupununi River brought us to the flats boats that transported us upriver to the neighboring village of Katoka. The hour long boat ride and 45 minute walk through the savannah to the village provided us with a wide variety of nature sightings: osprey, egret, striated little blue heron, white wing swallow, banded swallow, giant river otter, caiman, cormorant, many types of hummingbirds, rusty-margined king bird, tiger heron, black cap heron, ring kingfisher, stork, yellow footed tortoise, and of course mosquitoes.
Our first stop in outskirts of Katoka was at the house of Guy Marco’s relatives.  They were all so happy to see Tricia again. (Guy - everyone is doing great, and Tricia will send lots of pictures after we get home. We saw Loretta, Gibson, Geoff, Nathalie, your mother, Annette, and her sister Susanne - it was great !) We then proceeded to Katoka’s main village compound where we were greeted by the village dignitaries: The Toushau, the school headmaster, the health officer and microscopist.  Of course we were offered  the ceremonial juice. This time it was passion fruit and my tribe from FGCU all agreed there is never too much passion.  We spent the next two hours working with a local sculptural material, balata. It is a caramel colored rubbery material that comes from local bulletwood trees. This material is heated over a wood fire in a hot cauldron of boiling water in order to reach a consistency that is pliable enough to shape it. I found it very difficult to work with but the local villagers whipped out all sorts of items such as bowls and little figurines.

We toured the village and primary school and headed back to our boats to make our way back home to Yupukari. We counted 38 caiman on our return trip and those were only the ones we happen to spot. Tired and hungry we arrived back to a delicious meal of fried tiger fish, pumpkin, steamed greens, rice and of course more juice. This time it was Jamon juice, made from a small purple fruit that is sweet-sour. Yum!

Combrencent cutting leopard wood

The Pit and School Day 2

March 8^th, 2013

Blog Writers: Cydney Chasky and Michelle Manta

We awoke to a service announcement from Kendry saying “Attention guests of the Caiman House breakfast is now served”

After a lovely breakfast we hiked downhill to the clay pit located by the river’s edge with our guides Felix and Combrencent.  Upon arriving at the clay site Combrencent quickly changed into his clay digging clothes and jumped into the pit where he carved away at the wall to mine the dry clay. Then it was our turn to scrape the clay pit wall. When we mined enough clay we mixed it with water from the river and Combrencent showed us how to make the bricks that the village people use to build their homes. All of us made bricks of our own, this wasn’t as easy as Combrencent made it look but it sure was fun. Once all our bricks were made we mined some more clay and bagged the powder up into a wheel barrel to bring back to the house to make clay for the kids to use at school on Monday. We struggled back up hill with the clay and then relaxed on hammocks before lunch was served.

Then it was back to school for the second day where we worked with watercolor and ink resist. The younger children drew on paper with crayons and then painted over the page with watercolor. The older ones used the same process but advanced to a method of using chalk and oil pastels instead of crayon. In place of the watercolor, India ink was brushed over the entire sheet of paper and then wiped off in a bucket of water. The ink filled in any remaining spaces between the pastels, and replaced the lines of the chalk.  The students, no matter the age, became immensely intrigued by today’s lesson and quickly went through every sheet of paper that was brought for the day. It was decided that they would bring some of the works home to show their friends and family, but choose one to hang up in their classrooms.  As a pleasant surprise, the students of grade 5 and 6 ended the school day by singing the first verse of Guyana’s national anthem. We departed the classrooms smiling and laughing and returned to Caiman house for a siesta before dinner. While we were resting we were shown the baby turtles that are residing at the Caiman house for a year before being released into the wild. This is to ensure the babies survive without getting attacked by pray. Jeff, who is here from Connecticut and helping the turtles, answered questions and let us hold them.

While 8 of us prepared for dinner, the 4 others, who luckily chose the letter “A” from the cup the night before, tried to prepare for a night of adventure on the river.

At Caiman house, the remaining 8 enjoyed another incredible meal of chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans and salad, followed by dessert of mango and cashew cookies. We then spent the evening just hanging out around the Caiman House relaxing, laughing and learning how to shoot a bow and arrow.

Meanwhile the “A” team: Cam, Cydney, Knoel, and Lauren are the first group to join the Caiman research team on a night out on the Rupununi. Details will be coming up along with groups “B” and “C” in just a few days! Stay tuned for the “River Monsters of the Rupununi” featured blog post.

First day of school!!!

March 7^th 2013

Blog Authors: Maria Jijon and Kendry Vasquez

We awoke to a wonderful breakfast of fresh bakes, eggs, potatoes and coffee as well as some fresh honey and local made peanut butter. As we were finishing up breakfast and planning out the first day of lessons for the art camp, we threw on our FGCU Yupukari T-shirts and were paid a visit by the school’s Headmistress Maisie Li, who filled us in on the schools formalities. After meeting with Li we had Anthony, a former Toushao give us a tour of the magnificent village of Yupukari. First we took a tour of the primary school and continued on walking throughout learning about all some of the history, traditions, and customs of the people there. We also got to meet many of the warm welcoming people there including the village’s health officer, Sylvester, and one of the villages former Toushaos, and current elder, Uncle Issac. He treated us with a couple of traditional tales of how some of the neighboring village names came to be as well as teaching us some Makushi phrases and teaching about the many ways of preparation and uses of cassava. We headed back to Caiman House, freshened up, and worked a little more on the lesson plans for the day. We then ate a delicious lunch of noodles (some with beef) with fresh picked veggies such as okra, cucumber, bora (local Guyanese green beans), and tomatoes! We then put some final finishing touches on the lesson plans and headed off to the primary school. 

We got to the school right on time to start our first art class. After introductions and name tags we started our paper cut out project. We used fish, palms trees, frogs and butterfly cut out shapes to make these colorful string figures that were used to decorate the classroom. The children were so creative that they ended up taping them in a circle and using them as crowns! At the beginning, until we were able to break the ice, everyone was a little nervous, but as the paper project continued we started bonding with the students and we got a lots of smiles and giggles. Back again at the Caiman House we had more preparing to do for tomorrow’s lesson so we all put our creative hands together again and got everything ready really fast. After that, everyone had a chance to do laundry by hand which was a new experience for many of us. We had another amazing meal followed by relaxation and storytelling at the six hammocks outside of our rooms under the stars.  Our group bonding just grows stronger every day.