This is development?

“Jennie.”

“Inside?”

“JENNIE”

“INSIDE?”

“W’happen man?”

“I just go scraping scraping around the dirt in the yard-end. Yuh know how me does?”

“Yea, mad like fowl.”

***

“Aunty, yuh never guess what me man found in the dirt by we yard deh?”

“He found heself work?!”

“He find heself two pound gold gyal!”

*Suck teeth*

“Is how yuh go fuh carry yuself like that gyal. Is big news we have here yuh hear? This go really help we out and you go shout yuh mout like is gold we sharin?!”

***

Two years ago, Wauna started on the pork-knocking path. The gold rush hit. Faster than the boys and men could buy their long boots and scramble into Venezuala, the business owners were driving in 4x4s, dredges and excavators to get the gold out fast.

I spent the past week in Wauna and never saw a speck of gold but I saw the influence it had everywhere. The conversations with old friends. The new cars/buses/bikes. The community, disappearing.

Another huge thing has happened in that tiny village in the last two years. The village generator was finally transported 13 miles from where it had been left in storage for two years and now every house that could afford £20/month had electricity.

Imagine a place that has filled your mind for the past six years, all the people, the sounds, the smells and hundreds of memories that make you feel content on their thought alone. Wauna was a small village of about 300. There were two shops, no crime, and a handful of personal generators in the village. The kids I was teaching were most likely to grow up to dig sand or move lumber unless they left Wauna. This place has fascinated me for the past six years. I realised last week that this fascination is why I came back to Guyana (It took me a while and I never really had a proper answer when people asked).

Seeing the few extra houses on the drive in to Wauna didn’t upset me. I wasn’t upset at anything really. Some things just fuelled my fascination. The electricity has had a huge effect on the community. People don’t lime on the road any more. The boys and men don’t openly drink and smoke in the streets in the evening. People stay home watching pirate DVDs. There were no community events on in the evening this time. Normally there is a bingo or a pageant. This is development.

Whilst I was there, a seven-foot high corrugated zinc fence was just being constructed around the ball field. I remember long September evenings in 2007 watching the sunset over Wauna complete with 50 kids running around the ball field chasing an old leather ball. This didn’t happen once last week. This is development.

I met a student, Benedict, who I used to teach one evening. I asked him what he was doing.

“Wondering if this is Christmas Sir. Me dun think Christmas cancel this year.”

It was a joke but it was true. He was the ring-leader. The community man. Now he was with the rest of the boys I used to teach. Mining gold for weeks in the bush, coming out then getting smashed on high wine. This is development?

Searching for sings of Christmas among soca and explosions at school

It is freezing cold. Most mornings I wake up to frost and have to shower and have breakfast in the dark. I get to school at my normal time and I sit in the dark for the first two hours. The kids come in from the cold. I spend my first 30 minutes of the day telling kids to take their coats and hats off. We trudge up to assembly breathing misty breaths and continue breathing misty breaths in the cold, airless hall that we sit in waiting to hear how bad all the kids are behaving and how we need to change.

“If not now then when, if not you then who?”

These are the two things I think about when I miss home. And I’m so glad I have moved.

Christmas in Georgetown is full of new experiences and I’m loving it. The music in the buses and blaring on the streets has changed to be the normal music interspersed with Destiny’s Child version of ‘12 days of Christmas’ every other song. This is just one of the things that twists Christmas to the Caribbean compared to the UK. There is currently a Christmas procession outside my house playing not “Santa Claus is coming to town” but “Soca band is coming to town.”

This week has been a strange week at school. The past two weeks have been just exams and this week is kind of a ‘dump-week’ on the end. Lots of the kids know this so they have stopped coming to school. 50-70 of them turn up each day, we do the regular assembly then make our way to the classrooms. On Monday there was a sports afternoon then yesterday we had the ‘Miss Nations Pageant’ in the evening.

America is arriving people! A few girls from my form group were in the pageant hoping to be crowned queen. They had to compete in a few different rounds- a talent piece, a cultural-dress, a fashion dress, evening wear and an intelligence round. And also, a Facebook page where they competed for likes to be crowned Miss Photogenic. I know; it is sickening. Watching it turned out to be quite entertaining. The girls’ talents were amazing and it was great to see them playing the piano, singing and playing the guitar when I’m normally teaching them chemistry.

Today there was a Christmas Concert and another chance for the students to display their musical talents and dance moves. Form 4 had decided to be Crazy Scientists so I showed them how to do some explosive experiments to wow the audience on stage. I’m so thankful that there are less health and safety barriers in this country. I told the Principal about the safety precautions I had and she laughed about how exciting it sounded. The students went on to make brightly coloured solutions, blow up sodium chunks in water, pull a cow heart out of their chests and set their arms alight with methane bubbles. The audience loved it.

This evening I took minutes off my life by making a chicken soup and adding too much ‘all-purpose seasoning.’

Drying up before the rainy season

The ground is soggy, the place is hot and the mosquitos are loving it!

The flooding from last week past and now the news is full with who is to blame. Everyone moans at the government all over the world but in Georgetown the moans are quite load and consistent. With corruption being a big political party here, it is no wonder that the news quickly realised money for flood protection wasn’t going in the right pockets. Now that the flood and thick oozy mud that it left has washed away, it is only the mosquitos that are staying. They can be so annoying sometimes.

This morning I was sat at work marking some papers and soon found out that my knees were being eaten alive; four or five itchy bites on each knee cap. They had gone straight through my trousers.

Marking is all school is about this week and possibly next. Marking papers, invigilating exams and the students sit the papers then go home early. Two weeks of this is such a waste of time. I have been keeping lessons for the A-Levels, which goes against the grain of the school culture. They are split into groups and they each deliver a session on one of the past topics. This has gone down terribly with one or two students. The majority have just got on with it but I had one student trying to persuade me to let them stay at home to revise. Today a few students missed class so I made personal phone calls to all of them to politely ask them to come to school tomorrow.

I feel such an ass sometimes and I know that this is the UK and things might be different but there are right and wrong things in both countries and I think I have got this call right.

Last night I brought India to Guyana and cooked up a coconut fish curry. I went over-board with the hot peppers but thankfully the fish was in such big chunks that they soaked up some heat.

Now to make some Chirstmas cards. They won’t get to England in time but it is the thought that counts, right?

The gods heard me and pissed on my city

Saying, “It rains and it stops,” three times last night must have tickled the gods and they sneezed today.

Last night the rain came down heavy and didn’t stop until 11am this morning. By the time I had to leave for school, the road outside was over my knees with water. I saw cars coming up the street and the water was running over their headlights. It looked fun so I put on my waterproofs and stepped outside. First mistake. “Yuh need fuh get sum lang boots bai.” Yes wellies would be amazing but all I had was trainers and wet socks so they would have to do. My tactic for riding was having my feet on the handlebars and over-revving my way down the river in first gear. It worked until I got to the middle of Middle Street, the engine conked out and I had to put my foot, no wait, my leg down in the water.

School was a strange place today. The minister of education announced that all public schools would be closed. By this time a few students and most of the teachers had turned up. During first lesson, school decided to cancel the day’s exams and students were allowed to go home if they wanted. I ended up teaching a half-filled AS Level class in the morning and a Form 5 chemistry revision class in the afternoon. I also demo-ed a lessons on seasons with them that I want Form 3 to do tomorrow:

The rain is such a strange thing in Guyana. I remember the rainy days in Region One; the whole village would go to sleep and everything would feel so lazy and quiet. Unbelievably this happens in the capital city. School felt like a ghost town and everyone wanted to go home and sleep.

Currently, they are pumping water out of Oasis Café downstairs. The street outside now resembles a 7m wide river that you would be more likely to see in the English countryside on a fishing trip. The scene is as eerie as it is beautiful. Christmas lights from neighbouring buildings are casting long shimmering reflections over the water whilst crappos bellow out low, rumbling croaks. The crappos must really love it like this; normally I see their charred flattened bodies pasted to the road in the middle of the day.

Eyyyyy, Redman! Kick up yuh stand!

“Ayyy, Redman, kick up yuh stand!”

This was the phrase shouted at me out of a bus today as for the millionth time I had forgotten to put up the stand on my scooter. I don’t know how I forget and every Guyanese person remembers!

It rains and it stops. It rains and it stops. It rains and it stops. I love this weather. The rain came as I was about to leave school but I had my waterproofs and within 10 minutes, it had stopped and the Sun was back to peak between the clouds. For some reason I am crooning for cold though. I saw a picture of a dog in my mum’s park and it looked so cold with the crisp autumn leaves on the floor.

School has turned into exam nation this week and will be the same next week. Every class is off timetable and has two or three exams per day then the students can go home. I don’t see the need for it but it gives a bit of respite at the end of a 15 week term with no half term break! Although I still have to teach A Levels. I think these guys are having their exam week in the last week of term.

I have been mingling with (or trying to mingle with) the government this week. I have almost set up a meeting with the minister of education, Priya Manickchand, to talk about LRTT Guyana next summer. She has been very elusive but sounds keen to meet me.

Next up is the President himself. I want to take one of my classes on a trip to State House, where the President lives or is supposed to live. I managed to get the number of the secretary to the First Lady today so I will call tomorrow and sweet talk my way into an epic school trip. It is nice to organise school trips without all the paperwork and the weeks of planning that they require in England.

Play Dough and Superbikes!

To get anything done here, you need to know someone. That’s what they say anyway and more and more I am finding this true. I would have been in that police station for hours and be a few thousand dollars out of pocket if I didn’t know certain people. Again today, but in a more welcoming establishment, I would have been there for hours if I didn’t know certain people. I have almost set up a Guyanese bank account, which I think is an incredible achievement.

I was sat planning a lesson on coastal erosion last night and pretty stumped for ideas. I trawled youtube looking for those dramatic clips of houses falling down cliffs but could not find anything awe-inspiring. Then I hit the jackpot. Someone had made a stop-motion video of a headland eroding using play-dough. At school today I went straight to the reception class and asked for their play-dough. Form 5 loved it. I loved that kids nowadays have smart phones. Their videos were hilarious. One of them featured a seagull flying in and out of the frame with added sound-effects.

I wish I could feel so happy about the A-Levels though. I have 17 students in my class but haven’t had a full class since September. They just don’t seem to turn up. Last month there were no students at all and the excuse was that they were revising for exam-retakes. This week, the same thing is happening again- more exams. Two students showed up today and we had a chat about attendance. They were getting annoyed but not as much as me. They seem to have accepted it as the culture. It happens in all of their subjects too. This made me feel more relieved but it still didn’t solve the problem. I went to speak to the head of sixth form who said I needed to talk to them... It’s a school-wide issue though and I just don’t know what to say to persuade them.

Another attendance problem hit the school this week. This weekend is an international car and superbike championship and as I teach well-off kids, a few of them are involved. This means that they practice late into the night and have early morning weight-training sessions to get them in shape and make them late for school (and tired). I pulled out my trump card this afternoon and made phone calls home to their parents. They said in unison, “It will be sorted next week; it is just that there is a big race-meet coming up.” I sat there a bit baffled.

It is a new dilemma for me. In London, I knew that education, school and me as a teacher could be a social changer for the kids due their socio-economic backgrounds. But here I don’t feel the same pressure. These kids will do well in their exams. Their parents mostly know the importance of education and how to work the system. They will get personal tutors if they start failing. When they graduate their families will have contacts to get them into great jobs.

I don’t feel disheartened because I love teaching at this school. I just feel odd. There are so many loose ends that need tying up.

Power-cuts and bribery in the city of sin

I am sat here typing in the dark. Power cuts are pretty frequent in Georgetown. There is one ever few weeks at home and probably more frequently if you looked at the city as a whole. Most nights I will hear a huge explosion like a gunshot. It took me a few weeks to realise that there weren’t that many guns going off. Just power-surges that blow the electricity pylons and drown whole blocks in tropical blackness.

I had a wonderfully cultured weekend as I was lucky enough to go to a play that a couple of friends were in on Saturday. The play was in the National Culture Centre and the main character was Cuffy. Cuffy was the leader of the Berbice uprising at the time when all the African slaves in Guyana took hold of plantations and the Europeans mainly moved out. The set was great and it was nice to see something like a play after seeing the raw, brashness of Georgetown’s streets. At the end however, everything got a bit awkward. For some reason, an acting judge came to the microphone and harshly critiqued what they must have put a whole lot of effort into! I just sat there and cringed!

Sometimes I forget how beautiful Guyana is. That didn’t happen on Sunday. I rode out to the Essequibo with my friend in the afternoon. It only took an hour of long winding tarmac roads with crazy undulations and random cows roaming onto the street. We reached Parika and my fingers were tingling through the vibrations but my ears were tingling as well with the instant re-population of the town of Parika compared to the empty road all the way down the highway. My ears were tingling because anywhere there’s people in Guyana, there’s a huge set of speakers blaring dancehall.

On the ride back to the city, the Sun started setting and for an hour everything was beautiful. The sky was torn across the horizon with a deep orange that slowly faded into pink then black as we rode on.

Everyone knows that Guyana is a place full of contradictions and my day was nothing different. Following a beautiful afternoon, as we were riding back through the city I turned a corner and found a police bike, lights flashing, asking me to pull over. Officer Johnson was incredibly efficient at belittling my friend then stating that my Guyanese driving licence was my dad’s! His confusion continued to the reason why he arrested me in the first place. Was I arrested?! Who knows? He then escorted us to the station where I was asked to give 10,000GYD (£33). I flatly refused, sat there for 30 minutes until they gave up and let me go, no details taken.

It was a strange experience but it didn’t ruin the day and it was only a matter of time until something like that happened.

The water is coming!!!

My goodness! I have just had a break-through! Today is the first day since I started the job in September that I have planned all of my lessons for the next day before the end of the day. It is 2.30pm and I can happily say that I have planned all of tomorrow.

Yesterday the school had a day off for a religious holiday. The principals are both of Baha’i faith, which is a seemingly little known religion about unity of humanity and unity of other religions. It sounds reasonable and there is little presence of it around school so I quite like it. Anyway, this holiday was much-needed. It made Monday feel like Friday again! The rain didn’t stop on Monday. A crazy Guyanese sentiment surfaced though; Guyanese like to sleep when it rains. I think it is because the sound is calming and the place is cooler. This meant that at the end of Monday, the teachers in my department were all commenting about how they are praying it is raining on the holiday so they can spend the day sleeping!

Some things are so similar to teaching in UK but some things are the complete opposite.

On the drive home, Georgetown got a bit scary. The roads were flooded and the drains running next to them were as well. With the sea level being higher than the city, just seeing this was scary enough.

The actual day of the holiday was less wet. There were intermissions between light drizzle and Sun. I spent the day working on LRTT (Limited Resource Teacher Training) stuff, which happened to include a Skype call to Andy in Uganda- I love technology. I really want to go back to Nepal next summer to make sure the project works with double the number of teachers that we took this year. Although I did say that I would run a project in Guyana, however, this is looking unlikely now as I can’t see any opportunities in the community around me. The big problem is finding a location that has 200 teachers because the countries’ population is very low.

                        

Liming near Linden

I have just finished reading the best modern account of life in Guyana, “The sly company of people who care” by Rahul Bhattacharya. This guy is an Indian who came for a year-long visit to Guyana and managed to capture Guyana in such an authentic way that it shocked me. He wrote most of the book in Creolese and the longer he wrote, the more Creole he became. He was so damning in most of the book but his descriptions were so perfect that it kept me reading. Finally he made the mistake of finding a “fat fowl” (gold digger) of a Guyanese girl who he never really liked and who ended up breaking his mind and turning his experience sour. Books get to me and after this happened, I wondered around feeling somber.

I got a lot of reading done this weekend as I went to a friend’s farm up the Linden highway (the same one I went to last month). We started the journey on Friday after school. This time we loaded the car with two key ingredients; mosquito spray and a mosquito net. Driving down the highway is a hand-sweating experience. The tarmac, single-lane road so obviously cuts through the jungle and you can see how the long-straight road stretches up and down over the valleys between small creeks. Parts of the road make it feel like an earthquake had just hit. At one of these undulations, I caught my friend sleeping and as the car rocketed up and down the dips, it must have felt like we were taking off in a plane. She shook herself awake as if the plane was crashing, but found me laughing as she realised what had just happened.

At the farm we met Dreads. He looks after the place when nobody is there and he helped us set up the generator and pump water for showers. On Saturday we woke up to find out why we bought a mosquito net. The outside of the net was covered in mosquitoes, all flicking their back legs waiting for a careless bit of flesh to be leaning on the net. Sadly this bit of flesh was the end of my second toe which swelled up and felt like the mosquito had drilled to my bone.

The area we were in was separated into lots of farms but each was done so inefficiently that the bush had reclaimed most of the farms and it looked like a cross between jungle and wild savannah. We walked through the farm to the edge and sat watching an eagle soar over a huge field in front of us. A guy came walking across the field towards us and after standing at a distance to suss us out, he introduced himself as Albert and quickly asked which part of New York I was from. Strangely he told me about his life in London over 10 years ago so I’m guessing he has a bad grasp of accents. He showed us round his farm, told us about constructing the Excel Centre in London and introduced us to his wife. We ate his cherries, laughed at his Creole chickens then made our excuses.

My friend made baiganee so we munched on these when we got home. Baiganee is boulangee (aubergine) deep fried in a coating of chick pea flour-paste. So basically pholourie with a slice of aubergine in the middle. After running out of these we jumped in the car and drove another 20 minutes down the Linden highway to Linden. Linden is the bauxite capital of Guyana and a bit of a smear on the pristine nature that surrounds it. The town itself is so spread out and when you manage to find the centre, it is such an annoying maze of one-way streets with no one-way signs that I just wanted to drive straight back out. But we were here for one thing and we couldn’t leave until we found it; a dutty chinee. When Guyanese leave Guyana, it is said that they don’t miss the jungle, the rum or the roti. They miss a big fat dutty chinee. I parked up and we got out to be welcomed by a guy who walked past us saying, “You two look wonderful.” 20 metres further and we stumbled upon a chinee. Linden is an awesome place.

Dutty Chinee:

Mek sure fuh put yuh wife and yuh pickney dem

“Mek sure fuh put yuh wife and yuh pickney dem,” said the wonderful accountant at school yesterday as she handed me another form for something else I have to get. National Insurance Scheme apparently and hopefully there is a work permit on its way to me soon. I have been reassured that I am not an illegal immigrant as some paper work has been filed for me but it is crawling its way through the dusty underbelly of Georgetown’s Agency of Bureaucracy.

Talking about dusty places, my lunch box has become the target for a minute world of sugar ants. For two months now my lunchbox has sat undisturbed on my desk until lunchtime. Sadly Wednesday became the day the sugar ants discovered its home and I munched half my way into a slightly too crunchy cheese sandwich. Thursday came and I stupidly didn’t learn my lesson. The ants learnt theirs so before break time they were tucking in. Finally it is Friday and this week has taught me well. I left my lunch box in my bag and carried it around with me. I also had a back-up of a thick aluminium foil coating around the sandwiches.

Yesterday I thought back to my summer of Teach First training and planned a lesson “outside the classroom.” The troublesome year 9s were out in the tropical Sun measuring speed, distance and time of toy cars racing down ramps. I thought this was a great idea until Guyana found a practical joke; torrential rain for precisely 10 minutes whilst we were outside. Thankfully the kids were undeterred and carried on their physics just underneath tiny bits of shelter dotted around the back yard.

Last night I was absolutely shattered. I went for a nap as soon as I got home. Waking up an hour later, I realised I still had to plan all of the next day’s lessons and make three 100 mark end-of-term tests by the next day. I prioritised and forgot the last two lessons, smashed out the tests and was done by 8pm. Just in time for the expat arrival- a few Canadian/English friends came round to do some rum sampling.

A Caribbean Diwali- Flashlights, Explosions!

Today was a whirlwind of emotions! Somehow four of my classes’ tests coincided with each other. Form 4 did a fantastic job, six A*s and 100% A-C. I made some calls home to parents to congratulate their kids; one in particular got a D in the last unit and has been working his socks off to pull his grade for this unit up to an A*! The two A Level classes probably fared slightly less well. I’ll have to wait until they get marked to see. One of the classes opted for me to mark them (that’s my evening gone!) whilst the other class wanted to peer mark them. Finally form 3 was more of a mission. Last lesson of the day and 3 walked in late; immediate detentions. The rest did the test, some lost marks for talking, some for cheating.

Back to Friday and the best moment of the day was hearing a fellow colleague singing ‘Single for ever:’

“I don’t have to stay at home, I don’t have to answer me phone, I could have any gyal in me car.”

Friday afternoon was market day, a great idea to get the students thinking about businesses. They had to run their own business and sell their product to the other students. It was nice to get the afternoon off teaching and be able to plan for the week ahead but bittersweet in that I would have had 4S and 5S who are a delight to teach.

Finally the bell went for the end of the day and the start of the three-day Diwali weekend. The Diwali pageant itself was on Saturday. It was just like Titchfield Carnival that I remember from my childhood. Lots of trucks decorated with lights and costumed people parading down the sea wall road. Being Guyana, there was added lime, more sticky-hot heat, hand-held explosives (instead of sparklers) and a Hindu twist for Diwali.

As the trucks went past our section, people started to leave for home but we had some friends further down the procession so we jumped on the back of my bike and road right through all the lit up trucks, got a police escort for part of the journey then continued through thousands of people all shooting fireworks over our heads as we road by. We reached our friends before the carnival so got the pleasure of watching all the floats again!

Sunday was a bit more relaxed. The floats moved on to Berbice. There were still hundreds of people blowing things up on the sea wall though. One of my friends/ Guyanese cousin made us Seven Curry. Apparently this dish is exclusively Guyanese and a big mash-up of seven different Guyanese curries. It was really tasty and we stuffed our faces.

Guyanese family :)

Lay-Z Boy chairs- School got SWAGGER!

I’m through to Wednesday! This week at school has been fantastic. Over 30 students have forgotten their homework for over 30 different reasons. One kid got a detention for closing a door to hard next to me. 5 kids got detentions for turning up late to my class. 10 of my form class turned up 20 minutes late to school.

At the same time, I’ve taught some great lessons. I’ve witnessed a class of A Level students calculate solubility product correctly (crazy). I’ve taught a class sat lazy boy chairs in 16^oC air conditioning. I’ve been asked on a school trip to the space centre in French Guiana. It’s been so “cold” in Georgetown that the kids have worn jumpers in school.

Going back to the lateness in the mornings... Most students have excuses of transport issues. I can’t decide if this is a reasonable excuse. Some of them have this issue every morning. It is true; to get into Georgetown, you have to deal with one road that gets incredibly busy once 7am hits. But surely congestion in London was worse and they managed to turn up on time.

5S are a class full of heroes. I had geography and chemistry with them today and I enjoyed them both. In geography, I set them off on a research task and was stood there starring out of the window over the coastline of Georgetown almost crying with how content I was. In chemistry they figured out how to separate 5 different gases from air all by themselves. They should get medals but instead I gave 200 (mystery) points to the winning team.

My other classes are probably as good but I spend 7 hours a week with 5S so lessons go so smoothly. Well, all except first thing this morning. I found out why the students have to make sure they close their classes’ windows before they leave school each afternoon. 5S was flooded. Half of the desks and chairs were soaking and there was a big puddle down one side of the room after the storm last night. The past two days have been relentless in terms of rain. Torrential tropical downpours are interspersed with a few minutes of Sun but mainly hours of drizzly English rain. The benefits of this are many. I have forgotten about sweating, my finger-tips actually get cold and the students are so much less lethargic.

Last night I won at all-you-can-eat Brazilian. I strolled out without stomach cramps. A life goal has been accomplished.

A tropical 10km

Yesterday I met some incredible athletes. I met some of South America and the Caribbean’s best distance runners. I met guys and girls who travel round the world competing in 1500m to half marathon races and funding a lifestyle off it. Sadly I also had to meet them as I had signed up to a 10km road race with them as my ‘competitors.’

I turned up at the National Park on time (2pm) as I always do in Guyana only to be caught out by Guyanese time. They organisers were still setting up so I sat around in the Sun trying to catch some shade under random bushes. I signed up to the event because the security guard of my building had mentioned it so when he turned up we had a good chat about running. The other runners also started turning up and after a few conversations, I found out that everyone is either there to win the prize money or a veteran who used to be there to win the prize money and now comes for fun.

I found myself slipping into the veteran category as the younger guys (and girls) were dropping finish times about 10 minutes faster than I have ever ran! At the start line I realised how serious this was. A few athletes had turned up from Suriname, Grenada, Trinidad and other islands along with the Guyanese athletes and a handful of veterans. Then there was me! Being white I often feel out of place in Guyana but here I just felt stupid. Anyway the start whistle went and we set off. There was about 70 runners in total. A lot of them went for a quick start and my start was fairly quick too but I was still swamped by most of the field. I got into a rhythm behind a modest looking runner and found myself running along the sea wall feeling pretty good. The wind was cooling me from the front and my legs were feeling fresh.

At the half way point we made to turn around and head back along roughly the same route. Then BAMM! I turned around and the wind was now behind me. No cooling breeze. Baking Sun on my back. My legs went tired, I felt dehydrated and my face (and strangely feet) felt like I was in an oven! This continued for the rest of the 10k and I crossed the line after almost an hour of running.

After thinking about it, I am pleased to have finished the race. It has given me the urge to get out doing some longer distances now instead of the short runs I normally do.

Thankfully I didn’t feel achey at school today. I had a set of good lessons. We had a practical in AS chemistry and the kids successfully did some calculations using their results so that was a big achievement. My form is supposed to go on a trip to Suriname next year so they were all talking about this today. They are planning different fundraising ideas to afford to go to French Guiana instead. I would love to go there as they have a big space station that you can visit.

Where does your rice come from?

Thursday was the big day for a bunch of the A Level chemistry students. They were retaking their practical exam from last year and I had to invigilate. The technicians had done a brilliant job in setting the practical up; each student had hundreds of pieces of equipment and tiny beakers of multi-coloured chemicals. I had to carry out the practical myself to check the chemicals were working so as soon as the exam started, I set to work following the exam paper like a recipe. I felt like Harry Potter sat in Snape’s classroom as I mixed together all the unknown solutions. From what I saw, the students did really well. There was an issue with one of them swallowing the dark purple solution as she tried to use her mouth as a pipette instead of using a pipette.

I headed to the University of Guyana after school to have a tour around. One of my friends is due to start working there soon so she showed me around the place. The campus is a good 20 minute drive from the city centre so there is a lot of open space. The buildings are no more than 3 stories and each one is spread out with neatly trimmed lawns between them. The buildings, as anywhere in Guyana, are battling living in the tropics and they look in need of some new paint. I walked past one classroom full of student nurses in their matching uniforms. The class was packed with people and they had no fans or air conditioning.

At 5am on Friday, I was up and ready to hit the road. I had been asked to accompany a school trip to the Essequibo. The Essequibo is Guyana’s longest river and the banks of the river by the mouth are full of industry, mainly rice mills and some sugar plantations. The plan was to visit some of these industries as part of a humanities trip. After being asked to meet at school at 6am, I reached school bang on 6am. The next person to arrive came at 6.30 and by 7.30, we left school in the bus. One day I will know how to deal with Guyanese time.

We drove to the Demerara river and crossed the bridge in the bus. As we drove down the West coast, we picked up a few students who lived along the route. At 9am, we made it to Charity; the launch point for boats heading into the Essequibo and further. Our boat took us out into the middle of the river. At its mouth, the Essequibo is over 20km wide so it really is more like being at sea than in a river. The water was murky-brown from all the silt being washed through the country and apparently it was salty but I didn’t taste it. On the other side, we landed in Supernaam and continued the journey by road to a big rice mill.

 

The Bacchus rice mill supplies most of Georgetown and certainly every Chinese restaurant in Georgetown with rice. I had never really imagined what a small countries’ daily supply of rice looked like but I got to see it on Friday. The rice mill was filled with rice. Every space without rice either had sacks for putting rice in or old Chinese machinery for dehusking/sorting rice. Just as I started to think of it, one of the boys got a handful of Class-C rice and shoved it down another kids back. Great work.

One of the owners gave us a tour of each mill then we had a tour of their poultry farm (I can still smell it) before heading to their community projects. This was my favourite part and I found a new hero in this country. Using capital from the rice mill, one of the sons had started doing community work in their local area. He had built a lovely school, library and park just opposite their business so I spent a long time picking his brains on this. The library was very impressive. It had so many books and looked so clean, ordered and tidy. They even had an Xbox Kinect and computer area that were free to use. His aim was to fund it through the school which was fee-paying.

 

I’m just off to do my first Guyanese 10k now!

"So, how's the teaching going?"

We have a couple of night watchmen/ security guards who works around our flat to check for intruders. Well, I like to think it is for our safety but it is probably for the café, news broadcasters, insurance firm and key-makers who also occupy the same building. They are really friendly and always say “Morning,” when you pass them. This morning I made a comment about one of their trainers. This pair of trainers would have looked at home at the start line of a marathon; a nice pair of Asics. The guy went on to explain that he is a runner and that there is a 10km race coming up this Sunday put on by the Guyanese Olympic Committee. Straight after school I signed up.

I’m now past the hump! I find that on Wednesdays, I can de-stress and visualise what is left of the week. This week has been fantastic at school though. Teaching has gone really well. No behaviour issues. More homework handed in. Better understanding of my accent. Less sweat in the classroom. I even felt like I was differentiating this week! It is a real teacher-ish thing to say but I feel really good when I notice that this is happening ad-lib in the middle of a lesson.

I did have two blips in the week though. The first was graph drawing with year 9. I love graphs. I love teaching graphs. I love seeing a good graph done by a student and I love watching students figure out how to graph something. It also happens to be a topic that you need to practice. Some students get it perfect, some get it perfectly wrong and some copy the perfect kids. I had my graph lesson planned for last lesson on Tuesday. The room was hot. The kids were angry. I knew it was going to be a struggle. I didn’t let them give up though. By 3pm, five kids had perfected their graphs and went home. 25 were sat there get angsty. Gradually more and more would get it, draw their graph and trot home. One kid, however, didn’t. She decided to make a rough copy of a perfect kid’s at 3pm. I noticed this and asked her to start again. She then decided to get grumpy and sat for 15 minutes not doing it. Between then and 3.30, she realised that I wasn’t going away, she made the graph, I helped her plot it and finally she left.

I don’t know if they hate me now but I don’t care. I know that all of them can draw a graph and I also know that they know I won’t give up!

The second blip was an AS chemistry test today. I had given them a topic list to revise the day before then made the mistake of giving a different topic of questions. A few of them came up to moan about it afterwards and I blagged some excuse about having to “know the whole syllabus.” I felt bad but then I think it has been a good thing for their knowledge. They revised for a topic as well as getting exam practice on a past topic that they should know anyway. The results were mixed. Half A*-C, half failed. I found out they got the same in biology so I am happy with that. I always found chemistry a lot harder than biology and I still feel that I am improving every day with my A-level teaching.

This is a picture from my favourite class. Form five absolutely love this group points system we have going. Neither me nor them have any idea what the winner gets but holding top place for a lesson is a massive achievement.

Parents day. Yes... DAY!

Last night I had a French feast. My housemate had invited a group of friends round to have dinner and he was planning on making them crepes. All but one of us were expats/ volunteers, which was a bit strange as I try to keep a mixed bag in Georgetown. It is very easy to fall into the expat vibe and not really live in Georgetown.

As everyone started arriving (at least 30 minutes late; for some reason Guyanese time is very contagious even for non-Guyanese people living in Guyana), I went down to welcome them in. As I opened the door I was greeted by three English people. I mean properly English people. One I had met before but the other two were new faces so it was surprising to have so much English presence in the room by the end of the evening.

The crepes that we had for dinner were amazing. Bacon, chicken, cheese. Then everyone munched down their sweet ones. I had lemon and sugar. The sugar had been melted onto the crepe a bit and the lemon was freshly squeezed. It was a glorious moment to see each person take it in turns and bite into this. I had a couple of lessons on crepe making but it turns out I haven’t got a wobbly wrist so mine turned into more of a pancake.

Today has been parents’ day at school. The teachers and students have been getting really apprehensive about getting their parents involved in what really happens. I wasn’t fussed at all. I think it is because I spent the past two years in regular contact with lovely parents and freak-show nightmares that you wish never had children. I have experienced the worst and now don’t think much will phase me! This week lots of students have been rushing up to me to ask about repeating exams. They are terrified of their parents it seems.

This last comment rang true today. I saw a pretty shocking sight at another of the teacher’s tables whilst they were having a meeting. One of the mums picked up a stapler and smashed it into the boys head. I was speaking to another parent at the time and it made me pause mid-sentence and lose my words! I’m now thinking about the kids in my classes who have been doing badly and will get a stapler or something similar to their heads when the reach home tonight.

All the meetings that I have had had been fine today. They run really smoothly and I think I feel a positive vibe positive overall.

I am so ridiculously tired now though. I got to bad late last night then got bitten by a mosquito 3 times on the face in the middle of the night. Two on the forehead and one on my upper lip, which swelled up and itched the whole night! I couldn’t sleep at all. By morning I was tired and knew I had a whole day of parents meetings ahead of me.

So here I am now. VERY tired but glad I have managed to sit through a whole day of work and met some lovely parents.

Change happens- but does it need to?!

I have thought so much about that staff meeting when we spoke about water-only policies and installing a computer system at the school. Should these things change or are they just ideas that I have seen happening all over England so I assume they are progress/development? Yesterday I was sent an article about my old school. This year they have banned the use of slang: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-24522809

That seems wrong to be but then again, banning drinks except water is pretty militant. Anyway, today another teacher asked me about the water ban and said that we should trial it for a week and show our findings to the principal. I have decided to pick my form class to trial it with because they are nice and understanding. When I told them this morning they were a bit shocked and many turned their noses up. I explained about the diabetes rates in Guyana, the improved levels of concentration when drinking water and finally that it was a pilot, like a mini-experiment where they are the guinea pigs. By lunch time I had won them over and I asked them to vote on a week-long trial starting next week. All but two voted for it. We now have Water Police with special badges and vigilant eyes.

So yesterday was Eid. Eid Mubarak everyone!

Tuesday after school I went down to the sea wall to watch the sunset. I ended up finding some fishermens’ discard, roughly 20 puffer fish and one huge ray. The puffer fish gassed-out as I stood on it. I’mm not sure that is the right word but it sounds workable. I then went to a lovely restaurant called Nightcap where they serve draught beer! Mmmm.

To celebrate Eid I went to a huge Indian party on Tuesday evening. The party had nothing to do with Eid and was quite awkward at the start. I walked in with Javan and a few of our friends so our group was 50:50 girls to guys ratio. They party however was completely different! The dance floor was empty and lining it were around 50 guys all staring at us as we walked across to get some seats. The only other girls there were hidden in the corner by themselves. I started chatting with a guy who had traveled to India and England so we spent a while talking about Indian food and English countryside. Hilariously, my friends taught me how to do an Indian dance. This was exactly as you can imagine; an embarrassingly cringe-worthy white guy moment. Somehow it went down well and I got a chance to sit back down and eat lots of mutton and duck curry.

Sunday was a chill day. I may have spent most of the morning in bed but eventually I went to look for some food with a friend. Holidays in Guyana are unpredictable. There are so many of them and you can never predict the shops that will close. We ended up finding a Chinese restaurant called Kam Boat that was open. Afterwards I went home to do some planning but ended up talking on the balcony as a few friends had decided to come round. We had a really nice time but I ended up getting up at 5am this morning to make sure that I got all my work done for today!