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?