Guyana 08 Hazel Hathway

Travelling up to St Cuthberts is half the fun of the trip. St Cuthberts is an Amerindian village about two hours from Georgetown where there are three volunteers working. The last hour of the journey involves travelling on the legendary sand trail through the jungle in an open back pick up. It certainly wouldn’t pass health and safety rules back in England but its appears to be the only way to travel here.
It was Amerindian heritage weekend where the Amerindians celebrate their culture. It would appear that their culture involves a lot of Amerindian and reggae music, dancing (mainly the men) and a hell of a lot of Amerindian home brews. We sampled a whole variety of new and interesting drinks as well as traditional Amerindian food such as tapir (bush meat) and cassava bread (the Amerindian staple food). We also enjoyed the live Amerindian band, especially the novel lyrics which included lines such as ‘I love you like a plantain’.
The main attraction of St Cuthberts is the creek. It is really pretty with refreshing black water and plenty of trees and banks to jump off from into the water. It was a far cry from the luxury of our bathroom and shower – we had to wash in the creek and use the public long drop. The village is also built on sand, so in a nutshell, you can never be clean. The locals are friendly although the men seemed to talk to us a lot more than the women. One of the locals took us for a ride up the river in his boat. The jungle up the river is really interesting. We were really enjoying the trip until the engine cut out. At this point the driver chose to tell us that there were ‘plenty of Cayman’ in the river. We had to drift all the way back down stream (keeping our eyes pealed). This meant we missed our truck we had organised out of St Cuthberts. The next truck we could get back was at 3am on Monday morning. We enjoyed the rest of the day at the creek before returning home at 3am – rushing to get back to school on time. It was definitely an adventure and we are all looking forward to going again (perhaps on a slightly quieter weekend).
Since the weekend I have been enjoying teaching. I have now taken over a 5th form chemistry class who will be taking their CXC (equivalent to GCSE) exams this year. They have a lot of work to get through so there is a lot of responsibility on my behalf, especially as all of them are ambitious and aim to become doctors, physicists, pharmacists etc. I have also used the lab for the first time with my first form. The state of the lab was a shock – no running water, unlabelled chemicals lying around and everything is incredibly dirty. We have now got the water working again and started the job of cleaning up with the help of some sixth formers.
Today we have sports which was rescheduled due to the rain. It rained heavily again last night so it is possible it may be rained off again! This weekend we have been invited to a Muslim – Christian wedding which we are all looking forward to, but are confused as to what to wear.

This week has been a lot more relaxed. There has been sports going on at school since Monday so we have not taught all week. The main sports event on Wednesday was rained off – the field was under three feet of water. It seems Guyana is not so different to England after all. We have had quite a few thunderstorms recently with some spectacular bolts of lightening. Storms at school are pretty fun. The school has a corrugated iron roof so teaching when it is raining is a bit of a challenge! The kids get pretty excited or scared when there is thunder and lightening and tend to scream and hide under their bags.
It seems I have not been strict enough with the kids so far. I have only had to make a couple sit on my desk with me. Megan, who is teaching in the tutorial school down the road, makes them teach the class, do thousands of lines or stand up for the whole lesson. Last time she walked into one of her lessons one of the children exclaimed ‘dear God no!’ and hid his head under his hands. I am aiming to get the same reaction from my kids!
As for the cooking, I seem to be doing the bulk of it but am really enjoying learning how to make all the new foods. So far our neighbour has taught us to make roti, pumpkin and beef, chow mien, cook up rice and egg plant. Next we want to learn to make tasty curries from scratch. We also went to the mosque for dinner which was really nice. They had made loads of delicious curry and fed everybody who needed feeding whether you are Muslim or not. Everyone here is so religious, in our small community there is a mosque, a Hindu temple and a Christian church. There doesn’t seem to be any friction between the religious groups – there are Muslims and Christians in the same family. Church seems to be the centre of the community.
This weekend the five volunteers from Dora and St Cuthberts came down to visit. We did not know they were coming so five boys turning up on our doorstep at 10pm on Friday was quite a shock. We had a good weekend relaxing and went into New Amsterdam. We went for a bike ride on Saturday and ended up going swimming in the river with some local girls. The river is really dirty and probably full of sewage but it was fun! The clay at the bottom is knee deep but is apparently good for your skin. However, after the boys left we discovered the damage done…it seems that the only thing boys can break that duct tape cant fix is our water pipes.
We have also discovered why we should not buy things in Guyana. Our bikes are now temporarily fixed thanks to our neighbour. However, foolishly, we decided to buy a CD player. The first time we used it we heard a bang and smoke started coming out of the top (the voltage we used was not too high). The shop does not have a returns policy and we can now understand why.
There are some changes taking place at school. I am taking on the 5th form Jolene was teaching and she is teaching the sixth form chemistry. We might also be doing the A level biology after school. Whats more, we might be moving to the house on the school compound but I suspect this will take a while since it has no furniture and there is rubbish everywhere. The house is nowhere near as nice but it would be far more convenient.
This weekend we are heading up to St Cuthberts for Amerindian heritage weekend which we are all really looking forward to. It involves six hours of travelling but travelling in this country is so much more interesting than travelling in England!
it is now monday - i wrote the blog on thursday but will update you all about the weekends event when i have time! was very eventful and not at all relaxing!

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.

The trip got off to a rather traumatic start. Everyone was upgraded to business class on the flight to New York, except me. After this, our next plane from NY to Trinidad was struck by lightening! Due to the damage caused we had to change planes at Trinidad and were delayed. When we finally arrived after travelling the whole night we found our bags had not accompanied us to Georgetown. It was then decided that we should go out and see the nightlife of the capital city with no sleep and no clean clothes. We eventually got to sleep at 2am (7am British time) having been awake for 46 hours. Our bags turned up the next day and I have never appreciated my own clean clothes more.
We spent the week together in Georgetown socialising, seeing the sites and waiting around ALOT. The highlights included being interviewed for the six o’clock news, 2 boys being mugged at knife and screwdriver point, swimming in the British high commissioners pool and going to the Carifesta.
We arrived at our house in Blairmont (across the river from our school in New Amsterdam) on Friday morning. Our journey was fairly entertaining as we had a big, cool black guy driving the bus who enjoyed listening to classic 90s tunes such as the spice girls and boyzone. Pretty typical of Guyana,it is a really bizarre country (a guy just rode past the internet cafe bareback on a horse).
Our house is luxurious compared to the other volunteers. We have running water, electricity, double beds, a fridge and two balconies. The hammocks are already up but so far not much chance to ‘lime’ in them. We bought lots of fresh fruit veg and meat at the Saturday market. We have been attempting learn how to cook Guyanese food and so far it is going well. First on the menu was shark which is surprisingly tasty!
We started school on Monday which was a little overwhelming. For the first three days we were waiting for our timetable to be sorted, losing hope as we watched the teachers argue over which classes they wanted to teach! I finally started teaching today. I am teaching year seven integrated science, year 10 Chemistry and biology and may do some sixth form lessons when they arrive in October but this is yet to be decided. My first day of teaching went pretty well - got a fairly easy start as i had three year seven classes. The year 7s are really keen to learn and are pretty amusing to teach at times!
At the moment we are all finding the 5am starts and the hour long commute on the ferry and by taxi pretty exhausting especially when we have to wash, cook, clean and plan lessons when we get home. I’m sure we soon all settle into a routine and everything will get easier as we get used to it. The mosquitoes are also giving us hell! I started off thinking I didn’t need repellent and have paid the price with 50 bites on each leg between my knee and my toes, with the swelling making me look obese from the knee down. Cankles are not a good look! I have reacted badly to the bites and can only wear trousers as much as possible and hope the swelling goes down soon!