Evacuation, going to Lethem and Christmas

These hurt when they bite!

The peanut factory

Another busy month and time is flying by – I want it to slow down!

I have been supporting the Nursery schools over the past few months and went and did some workshops at their clusters and also helped to run a parent’s meetings. The nursery kids here are very cute as they wear uniforms just like the children at primary school, but they are always too big for them. Nursery education is quite good here and seems to be the most successful of the three.

Both myself and the teacher who will be taking on my role when I leave, have been carrying out observations of the teachers on the Professional Development Course. Overall I have been really impressed with what I have seen. They have taken onboard the ideas and activities from the course and put them into their classrooms. I gave examples of using drama for reading comprehension and it has been great to see the kids playing out different characters – sometimes a little too well -we watched a child acting to be a drunk! The teachers have assignments to carry out in both their classroom and clusters; they are getting more confident at presenting in front of others. Whilst the course is up-skilling them individually, a big part of it is training them to train others and to be a resource people for their schools and clusters.

We have also been into a few more schools and delivered the Jolly Phonics kit and provided training. As always it is so lovely to get in front of a class and teach the children. I often take the children outside or make the lesson really practical to show teachers ideas which move away from the blackboard (and talk and chalk). A big problem I find here is the noise, the schools tend to be one big room with the classrooms being made by dividing blackboards, there can be 200 children in one room, and as you can imagine the noise from the neighbouring classes can always be heard, you really have to raise your voice when you teach!

An area in my region I have not been to before is Bara Cara. It is 50 miles in on the Canje River and the only way to get there is by boat. There is a school there and the head teacher is one of my course students. We arranged to go and see her about 6 weeks ago. I tried to call the one village phone to confirm we were coming but it was broken so we took a chance and went anyway! Myself and a friend had walked to the stelling earlier that day and had seen a big boat full of water and joked that was my boat – hmm no joke, it was. When we arrived in the evening it was still full of water! The men spent a while bailing it out so it only had a tiny bit in the bottom. We set off at 11pm (just 2 hours late) and luckily could tie out hammocks from one side of the boat to the other. There were four of us on the trip, myself, another volunteer, my colleague and her husband. She had told me that she wanted him to come to look after us. I, in my independent way had told her there was no need for that, both myself and the other volunteer were experienced travellers but he was welcome to come along. Well I was quite glad that they did as we had a few bad experiences of some people on the boat wanting to rob us, charge us more for the passage and try to do something to the other volunteer whilst he was asleep. Luckily with my colleague and her husband those things were avoided. The journey was very pretty with thousand of stars shining above us and we saw several shooting stars, but it was a long journey and we didn’t arrive until 11 hours later! There was no toilet on the boat and needless to say we were all pretty desperate when we arrived! Bara Cara was started when the African slaves were given their freedom and could buy land to farm. Its main income is from farming both ground provisions plus marijuana! We were eyed with suspicion as we arrived but people did start to warm to us.  Bara Cara has a population of 400 which is spread out on both sides of the river bank – the church is on one side and the school and medical centre on the other with houses on both. Everyone had a boat whether it is a dugout canoe or a motor boat. Even though there was very little at Bara Cara it was the hub for smaller villages up and down the river from it. We met the head teacher who arranged for us to stay in the medical centre and we slept on the hospital beds they had. We went to bathe in the water trying to decide whether to go for a swim as there were piranhas in the water, in the end the hot day got the better of us and we dived in! When we got back up to the medical centre a sick women had arrived from a nearby village  so we cleared one of our beds whilst she lay on it hooked up to a drip but it was fine for us to still go in the room and get out things, all very surreal! Bara Cara has no electricity and no running water. Everyone gets their water from the creek for drinking, washing, cooking etc. Creek water is supposed to be ok to drink but we filtered ours just in case. We had to keep on going down to the river with buckets and fill them up with water for whatever we needed. We arrived on a Sunday and there was a cricket match being played so we went down to watch it. There was quite an aggressive feel to the village, a huge amount of rough-play between the children and then ‘sparing’ would break out between men and everyone would gather around to watch. With no electricity we went to bed pretty early – there were bats flying around but I felt safe under my mosquito net!

On Monday we got up and bathed again in the river, this time just on the edge using a calabash as a bowl to pour water over ourselves. We went to the school and watched the children arrive in their boats; all of them can swim and most can paddle a boat too. The morning we spent doing observations and demonstration lessons and in the afternoon the school took a half day so we could do training with the teachers. We looked at reading comprehension and differentiation. The teachers felt very de-motivated and that they, their school and probably the village as a whole had been forgotten, and they are probably right. They get very few official government visits and have to live quite a basic life. There was also not the sense of community that you often get in the Amerindian villages where they have set up a leader and a council. The teachers appreciated us coming but felt they had tried all our suggestions already and they hadn’t worked.

The journey home was suppose to be shorter as we had the same engine but a much smaller boat, but as we went 4 hours late we caught the tide coming in at the end of our journey (i.e. we were going against the tide) so it still took 7 hours. We actually got off the boat early and caught a car up as soon as we hit the road. It was a good thing we did as when out boat reached the main river the sugar boats were passing and it had to wait another 2 hours!

I turned American for the day and went and celebrated American Thanks giving. I was invited to go for dinner at one of the American embassy staffs houses. This house would have been posh back home, so it is uber posh here! I sat on carpet (not done for 10 months) sat on a comfy sofa, had ac, hot water came out of the taps, there was a dishwasher, and lots of wine! Was a very fun evening and nice to meet a new bunch of people.

Because of the elections myself and 3 other volunteers were moved from our regions all the way to Region 9. We travelled for 16 hours to get down there which is on the Guyana / Brazilian boarder. Where we live (in New Amsterdam) was identified as a hot spot and with only one road in and out they thought if anything did happen then it would be hard to reach us. We weren’t complaining, a week’s free holiday in the most beautiful part of the country!

I have been to Lethem once before for Easter when we went to the Rodeo. It was really nice to spend longer and see the place properly. The day of the elections was a national holiday so a big group of us set off in the heat of the day and walked for an hour to a beautiful creek, we were every glad when we reached there and jumped into the cold water straight away! There was a tree over-hanging the water so we climbed up it and jumped into the water (after watching the school children do it first!) Lethem is also a shopping hub for Brazilians. Goods are often imported from Brazil or from Georgetown and sold in big warehouses where Brazilians come across the boarder and shop as they don’t have to pay tax on them.

We went and visited some of the VSO projects going on in Lethem. One volunteer runs a wood workshop training locals in using the tools and woodwork skills. They had been working on a project where they made Special Needs equipment for the Rehabilitation department at the hospitals. They provide training whilst making the equipment and the trainees get paid for it. They also met the disabled children so built up relationships and decreased discrimination. We visited a Peanut butter cooperative where 5 or 6 women worked together to make Peanut butter, it has been running for a few years and is a successful project.

Another day we visited a volunteer in an Amerindian village about 16 miles outside Lethem called Moca-Moca. There we climbed up 1000 steep steps (in one place having to use a rope) to reach the top of a disused hydro-electric station (not in use any more due to a landslide). We climbed out onto the black rock and had stunning views of Lethem and into Brazil. When we reached the bottom we went for a swim in the Moca-moca waterfalls, again enjoying jumping in and off the rocks. We spent the rest of the day in the village eating the delicious food the volunteer prepared for us. Her project is to cultivate a garden growing different crops and introducing some natural pesticides for ants which are a huge problem here. She also has a pond in the garden and a target of Justin Bieber which you can shoot a bow at!

On a different day we visited the Kumu Falls, I went to these at Easter but they looked quite different due to the higher level of water. We had a lot of fun climbing up the rocks, sliding down them and swimming in and out of the pools. At the creek by the bottom there were 100s of butterflies that happily flew around you.

My host kindly took me across the boarder to Bon Fim (Brazil) on her motorbike. You are allowed into Brazil for 24 hours without having to stop at customs. I did feel very suspicious as we drove past the boarder police without stopping. It was a great way to see the landscape sitting on the back on a motorbike!

Coming back for New Amsterdam I decided to fly – the journey is about 22 hours on the way back (with a stop on the edge of the jungle as you cannot pass through until 4am) the one and half flight meant I got back not feeling quite so tired!

The elections were won by the current party the PPP, there was a lot of confusion around the results as they has to be recounted and there are still protests going on as there are claims on rigging. The PPP don’t have a majority in parliament so things are going to be different. There were some problems during the elections but most of it was small scale and everyone was kept safe.

Each month I work with a group of Fast Track learning educators who run a remedial programme after school. The programme is supposed to be coming to an end (still to be finally decided!!) so we knew our December meeting could be our last. The teachers organised a party with A LOT of food and made a presentation to me of a lovely gold chain. It was all quite emotional and gave me a little taste of what it is going to be like when I leave! The Learning Educators have worked so hard over the last year and have a really tough job to do. I have really enjoyed working with them.

So Christmas has finally hit Guyana. There is a lot of cleaning going on, each night after it gets cool people are scrubbing their walls and washing their furniture. Also people buy plastic flowers and put up new curtains. Christmas decorations are starting to go up including some plastic trees. The balconies are being decorated with balls and tinsel and lights. Our office looks great with lots of decorations. Here Santa exists but children don’t believe he is real, but he does play a big part in Christmas. People get presents on Christmas day, they eat Pepperpot which is meat (can be wild) in a sauce made from cassava. They would eat it with bread. They also eat black cake which is similar to the fruit cake we have a home. People will go to church on Christmas Eve and Old Years Day (New Years Eve) and then onto parties afterwards. There is a lot of going from one house to the next.

I went to a Nursery Christmas Concert this week. The children sang Christmas songs and said poems. There were also Christmas skits by the parents and staff. They were every different to ones done back home but the best thing was the audience reaction to them – people know how to laugh here and it is very infectious!

I am off to Panama for Christmas to meet up with my Family. I hope you all have a great holiday and super Christmas!

The Kanuku Mountains

Butterflies

New Amsterdam

Who can think of a caption!?

The boat

The hospital

Arriving at school

Pulling a boat out of the water

Lethem

Selling ice cream

Standing frame

Guess what this is!?

Amerindian house

It has been a while!

I am sorry it has been such a while since I have written – it has been very busy and I have been working away from home quite a bit. This blog may be a little long but a lot has happened!

I managed to get 5 Jolly Phonics kits for 5 schools in the regions. Each Primary school is supposed to have one, but only about a third of them do. The schools that got them were delighted and I have been doing demonstration lessons on how to use them. It has been lovely to be teaching in the classroom as this is something I don’t get to do often. The teachers are scared of using the kits and “messing them up”, there is a belief here that things need to be kept pristine by locking them up in a cupboard and often you will find resources kept away from the children so they don’t get ruined. Head teachers can get fined if they don’t keep their books in good condition so you can see where this feeling has come from.

We had the second module of the professional development course and I think it has been my favourite workshop so far. The teachers did so well and everyone was participating. I shared the facilitation of the workshop with Simone (the teacher who I am training up) and she did really well. We FINALLY have all her paperwork through so she is now officially seconded to the Department of Education for at least 18 months. The placement I am doing has been done by volunteers for around 10 years and I am the last person. A lot of my role has been about sustainability and finding a Guyanese person to continue with it. Simone is such an excellent teacher who is really passionate about this job so I am leaving it in good hands! The workshop was on reading comprehension and it has been great as when I have gone into schools to do observations, I have seen some of the ideas and strategies being put into place.

I have also made a Literacy display showing all the good things which are going on in the region. I think sometimes people can be a bit negative and focus on the failures, so I wanted to do something positive which can be celebrated!

At the end of September we had New Amsterdam Town day. People said it wasn’t what it use to be – a big family event with a lot more stalls but it was still good fun. There were a lot of bars, a lot of speakers and people selling food, there were a few games like hoopla or face painting. There were 6 large speakers within ½ a mile of each other and if you stood in the middle you’d get a confusion of music! The speakers were stacked several on top of each other and later on, the kids climbed up to the top and were dancing on them. In the evening we went down to the Stelling for a big outdoor club. They played a lot of dancehall and dub music. The music was good but the DJs shout across it all the time, play a song for 10 seconds, then stop it, shout some more and then start the song again – there is a lot of stop/starting with the dancing. It rained quite heavily at one point and everyone ran to the sides to cover under the bars at the edge!

I then went to Bartica for two week to help with a VSO literacy project. Bartica is around 5 hours from where I live and I had to get a car, mini-bus and boat to get there. It is not an island but you have to go down a river to get there, and it has two big rivers either side. On the way we passed a car which had crashed a few hours’ previously killing 4 people – was a sobering moment though didn’t slow down the speed of our driver. The boat ride to Bartica started out beautifully but half way there we got caught in a storm and I was sat in the worst place – the front! We got slammed up and down by the boat for the rest of the journey and the boat started to leak so we all had our umbrellas up! When I arrived the normal entrance out of the Stelling was locked so I had to balance (with my big bag, rucksack and umbrella) on a plank of wood and then climb through a hole in the fence! I bumped into some people I had met once before who very kindly drove me to my hotel.

Bartica is a frontier town for miners. Miners go into the back dam for a few weeks or months, mine for gold and then come to Bartica to sell it and have a good time; Bartica is full of bars and Brazilian prostitutes! There are big trucks and ex-army lorries everywhere and it has a different feel to where I live. Food was definitely more expensive but you could buy different things in the shops. There was a huge amount of rubbish (and rats) in Bartica – there is a lot of rubbish everywhere in Guyana but it just seems so much worse in the water. There are so many Riverain communities here who use the water for everything, it’s already been turned brown by the dredging and yet people are still throwing rubbish into it.

The literacy project is something which has happened 4 or 5 times over the past few years. There is a Guyanese – Canadian Poet who comes to be a Diaspora volunteer for a month at a time twice per year. He is a retired teacher and incredibly inspirational. He had a fantastic manner with the children and it was great to work alongside him and the other volunteer. We spent each week in one school which was a great opportunity to get to know the children. We worked with a story about a turtle and her journey around Guyana and developed it throughout the week using a variety of literacy techniques. By the end of the week every child had one piece of work to go in a book we are going to publish. The children were hard work as they were the weakest of the Grade 5 classes but it was amazing how much their behaviour and work changed in just four days. It was a luxury as we had 4 adults working with 35 children but does show what can be achieved.

We were supposed to be working in the main school which was a two storey building each part of it crammed with children; it was so noisy I couldn’t have worked in there. Luckily there was a church next door and we were allowed to go and use that.

The second week we went to a Riverain school which we had to take a speed boat to get to – what a commute! On our way we passed the prison – it’s not on an island but has thick jungle one side and the river the other side – there is a legend that there is a tunnel which goes from it – but no one has found it! It was a beautiful journey down the Mazaruni river. For the second week we used a story about a woodcutter wanting to cut down a tree, but the animals persuading him not to. We did a lot of teaching outside under a mango tree. We were disturbed a few times by the wildlife, including a hawk and a sun bee (which makes a lot of noise). We hid a letter up one of the trees for the children to find, they were so observant they found it in a few seconds and then one of the boys climbed up and retrieved it very quickly. We made him do it again so we could take photos!! The teacher here really took on board the project and the children did extra work around the book when we had left. On the Friday of both weeks the children came to the Bartica Learning Resource Centre – which was an amazing resource with lots of books, some computers and a space for children to do their homework. They operate a library system for children to borrow books. It was nice to see what can be achieved.

I came back from Bartica for a few days and then headed to Tobago for a long weekend. There is a new easy-jet like company set up in the Caribbean called Red Jet and they offer similar priced flights. It means we can fly to Tobago for less than 90 pounds. We stayed in a guest house and enjoyed lying on the beach. We went snorkelling and I got to use my underwater camera! It was good to have a few days break from Guyana and have a chance to think about the future.

I have developed a small obsession with photographing the clouds and sky here – they are so beautiful and very different to clouds back home. They are much more three dimensional and vary in shape and the colours at sunset are gorgeous. I think the UK will feel very flat and grey afterwards.

I went to a friend’s birthday party a few weeks ago. She has no electricity but that didn’t matter as the bar opposite played its music loud enough for us to dance to and we use a lantern for light. The children were having a great time and their dancing resembled the adults pretty closely!

Divali was a wonderful festival to celebrate. The Sunday before we watched the Motorcade – floats from different Mandirs dressed up with lights and flowers. Little children sit on them frozen in the position of a Hindu God. There arms must really ache! On Divali day, we spent it with the same family we spent Phagwah with. In the afternoon we ate traditional food including the sweet meats (made from sugar and flour, sweet rice etc). We then went for a walk to see everyone setting up the Mandir’s for later. The children went of a swim the cannel. We headed back to the house and my friend very kindly lent us all Indian dress (and even more kindly let me keep mine). It was so much fun dressing up, and putting on all the jewellery, makeup and bindis. We lit Divas and put them around the house and set off to walk around the village and visit the Mandir. Everywhere looked amazing with thousands of sparkling lights everywhere. People were letting off fireworks, waving sparklers and spinning wire wool around their heads. You attach some wire wool (brillo pad) on the end of a piece of metal, light it and the spin it fast around you. Lots of sparks fly off and it looks great – we had a go at it too (and luckily did not burn our clothes!) Again everyone made us feel very welcome and we went to visit some people in their houses for more food! It was an amazing night and will go down as one of my favourite memories of Guyana.

We visited another friend and her family just outside of New Amsterdam. They have a small farm at the back including a pond. It took a while but I managed to catch a fish! They gave us some cassava and eggs to walk home with!

Halloween is a small festival here which is starting to get more popular. A new club has opened in New Amsterdam so we went to check it out with our lovely masks and glitter! The dancing here still makes me laugh / shocks me. You will have to Google whining to see what I mean! It was a good night even when we had a blackout. They played mainly soca, dancehall and dub all night but the most exciting part was when they had a medley of Elvis Presley, Cindy Lauper and Michael Jackson!

I was asked to be Godmother for a friend here. She is the one who had her baby early in August. He has turned into a big chubby baby and is very alert to everything which is going on around him. I had a friend down for the weekend so we set off for the church in the rain. They live quite far out but we managed to find the church and walked up the muddy grass to reach it. The service was lovely and it was a complete honour to be asked. Little Christopher Isaac made it through most of the service without crying. We sang lots of hymens just with a tambourine as accompaniment and everyone made us feel very welcome. Afterwards we went back to the family’s house for food. 

It was then back to Bartica to support the Guyana Book Foundation in their annual Fair. They had a variety of different organisations promoting literacy. Another volunteer and I went to show teachers, parents and children simple literacy games they could do. I also demonstrated story reading and comprehension activities.  I read Waldorf the Water drop several times! The Guyana Book Foundation is a charity which supplies much cheaper than usual educational books to schools. They also support other literacy projects in the country. It was a good networking opportunity too and I have (hopefully) organised some training for parents later this months. I was also involved in my first car accident – nothing serious and we were going quite slowly when we hit the other car. But with no seat belts all three of us in the back ended up on the floor.

I came back and we had a three day weekend – a Muslim holiday this time, called Beef Day here! It was a good chance to catch up on housework (how does my house gets so dirty when I am not in it!) a huge pile of washing and see a few people. I went with a friend to a service at the Seventh Day Adventus Church. It was a special service as the prisoners from the local prison were there. They were in prison for a variety of things including murder, but they were not handcuffed or any armed guards. There are quite a few prison/community activities here which must help with rehabilitation.

At the end of this month we have national elections – we are advised to not talk about political things on here, but tensions are starting to bubble a bit. Hopefully they will be peaceful but as a precaution we will be moved somewhere else. Because the two main parities are race related, elections bring up race issues. We will have to wait and see what happens.

Today I hit the 9 month mark – I cannot believe I have been in the county 9 months and now completed 75% of my placement. It has been an amazing 9 months – with some wonderful and bad times but I wouldn’t change it for anything. I have been so lucky to have this experience, meet these people and do this job. I feel very happy and settled here and Guyana feels like my normal life. It will feel strange when I eventually come home (and cold)!

Warm-up at a course

Shelley on the telly!

Working in a school

Big speakers at town day

Parrots

The prision

The school boat

A petrol station for boats

Tobago

Underwater camera!

The motor-cade

I cannot claim to have dug it up!

Halloween

Being Godmother