Archive - May 29, 2010

by Katherine Jamieson (Guyana 1996–98) This essay was published in the newsletter Peace Corps Writers in 2000, and won the Peace Corps Writers’ 2001 Moritz Thomsen Peace Corps Experience Award • FOR TWO YEARS I LIVED in a country with no seasons. We measured time by other means than falling leaves or snow, new buds on trees. There was a fresh breeze in the air, the ash of burned sugar cane floating in the window. There were times to go to work, times to stay home, an election, an eclipse; all of these differentiated the rising and setting of the same hot sun, and the appearance of a glowing moon and full set of stars. Rain would break the swelter like the fever of a child dissolves into sweat, and the whole city would breathe differently that day. Then the sun would come again and dry what had fallen, and . . .