Well our third week in Guyana has not been as dramatic as the first two. It has been really hard work getting to grips with everything at school. Turning up to a lesson prepared to teach biology only to be told the class actually has chemistry (despite what your timetable says!). Its really frustrating but at least improves my ability to make up spontaneous lessons! My year 10 class are a really nice, bright bunch but no one has a text book so its up to me to tell them everything they need to know for their exams, which is slightly daunting! Most of the students in the class want to be doctors and are aiming to get a scholarship to study medicine in Cuba which is a lot of responsibility on my behalf! I am really enjoying working with them though and am sure I will work them hard this year! As for my first years they are full of questions and consistently concerned about whether their work should be in pencil or pen and precisely how their page should be layed out. It has already become clear however that even here the girls (generally) put far more effort into their homework (not much different from back home!) As for discipline, the kids are generally very well behaved and have only had to punish a few students for not doing their homework! It seems the ‘dog ate my homework’ excuse is popular here too.
It was the schools 33rd aniversary on Monday, which meant I could not teach on Friday or Monday. Friday was clean up day – the whole school spent the day cleaning the school. We were surprised to see that fishing the fish out of the waste water ditches with home made rods was involved in cleaning up the school. It would however appear that removing the plastic bottles, large scraps of metal, broken desks, chairs and stray animals was not! This place makes no sense!
Back in Blairmont (where we live), we have bought bikes which are not proving very useful since the handle bars tend to move without taking the wheel with them. It also has five gears, one of which is useable! The neighbours are all really friendly and invited us over for a family get together. They fed us so much food that even I couldn’t finish it! One of the family is apparently an ex national volleyball player and now coaches the top team in Guyana. He said he would teach us to play so who knows, I may come back an expert volleyball player. Our back neighbour has been over to help us fix the water which was off for a couple of days. She also taught us to cook chow mien and pumpkin and roti. The blackouts are pretty frequent here as well, almost daily. It makes lesson planning slightly more difficult when you have to do it by candlelight!
We went to Georgetown at the weekend to meet up with some other volunteers. We were hoping for a relaxing, fun weekend but ended up cleaning up the disgusting mess left by last year’s volunteers. Thanks guys! Cleaning it was pretty satisfying though I have to say! Plus I found out that cockroaches can fly!
So far so much has happened I already feel like a changed person. Coming here forces you to grow up so quickly and exposes you to so many difficult situations. It has already changed my attitudes towards many things. It has certainly made me appreciate how easy life is for most people in England. There is such a huge divide in wealth here but everyone lives together. There are a lot of people in Guyana who don’t have much but make the most of what they have got and work incredibly hard to give their kids a better life. A lot of these people are however planning to move out of Guyana since the education system cannot offer there kids the same opportunities as schools abroad.