Shelley in Guyana: November 2011

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)!