Shelley in Guyana: Four Months

Another mile stone reached today – 4 months – 1/3^rd of my time here. Wow!

The past few weeks have been really busy. I have been presenting at a lot of cluster workshops. Each school meets twice per term with their clusters. Usually 3 or 4 schools get together to have staff development training. I have run an hour workshop on some literacy topic – at the moment mainly comprehension and composition. I have prepared some handouts, then give an introduction to the topic, demonstrate what I am talking about and then get the teachers to practise. I try and give as many practical examples they can us in their own classrooms such as activities or lesson plans. Then we have time for questions / feedback. A lot of the cluster meetings are on the same day so I have been trying to squeeze two in one afternoon which has been quite tiring and involves a lot of travelling!

About 3 weeks ago we had very heavy rain here. It is the rainy season again at the moment and that can be all day rain to just a shower in the morning. As Guyana is below sea level it floods quite easily. There is a picture below of my street. The water is knee deep and I had to wade through it. At the moment there is very heavy rain in region 9 which is at the bottom of the country – it has destroyed all their crops and stopped most transportation. They usually get flooding each year but this year it is particularly bad.

I took a week’s holiday in Barbados (as you do). It is a short flight from here and I met a friend from home (was a little emotional at the airport). It was such a lovely week and lots of catching up was done. I enjoyed the hot showers, ac, nice food, wine and cocktails. We swan with turtles and rode on the beach. Was a super week!

The night before going on holiday I had to pack in the dark due to a blackout, found quite a few cockroaches and then after having a shower (power was back on by now) I heard some scratching noises. This is not that unusual, I have bats living above the ceiling, there are chickens and dogs outside. Suddenly a small hole appears in the wall and a little nose pokes out. I’m not sure if it was a mouse or a rat. It is 9pm and I am in my towel having just got out of the shower. I clap my hands to scare the rodent back into the hole, grab the bug spray and spray the hole to make it go back in. Keep repeating this for a few minutes until it disappears. I phoned my landlady who lives upstairs and she came down with some duct tape to fix the hole. I was worried about coming back off holiday to a rodent infestation but luckily there wasn’t one! Last Sunday I came back to a new bigger hole near the original one – it was quite a big hole! But no sign of mice etc. So I am hoping that the mouse / rat came out, ate the poison I had left down and then went outside to die. I covered that hole with more duct tape – fingers crossed I wont get another hole!

I was taught how to make Dhal Puri at the weekend – there is a picture below of the mill used to grind the peas. It is a type of roti with grounded peas inside –very nice! I spent the day at a friends house – was very peaceful where she lived and I was sent back with lots of vegetables from her house and coconut water.

This week I have been watching my students present at cluster meetings. One of their assignments is to demonstrate a lesson on phonics and teach their colleagues the Jolly Phonic actions. They have done really well (it is a big thing to stand up in front of 30 – 50 of your colleagues and present) and I have been really proud of them!

It is exam season at the moment – I thought the UK had a lot but here they have even more!! I went to supervise some of the Grade 2 exams this week. Poor kids have 5 exams in one week! And the scores from their grade 2 and grade 4 contributes towards the grade 6 test to see which type of school they will get into!

I spent a day at a school this week and did demonstration lessons for Grade 4, 5, and 6. I have never taught that age children before but it was really good fun. I was very tired by the end of the day. I do miss teaching, but I forgot how tiring it was! I used the Gruffalo for all three classes and we did activities on comprehension. There is a photo below of some freeze frames the children did. I also read them stories and sang songs with them – we had a lot of fun!!

We are having a lot of blackouts here at the moment – sometimes all night. There are lots of rumours flying around as to why but most people think it’s to save money by the electricity board. I think I need to buy some sort of lamp as the candles are fine but they don’t allow me to do too much in the evening. At least the electricity bill will be cheaper!!!