July 2007 Newsletter
I am sure you have never heard this out of me before, but man, it is crazy how fast a year can go. It’s hard to believe that I am home sitting in my mother’s house, typing on her computer, lights and computer on into the wee hours of the night. I have gained the ability to stuff my face with any vegetable, or multiple other foodstuffs I want, with pretty much any variety of seasoning I chose to douse it with at any time I chose to do it. It is 12:11 a.m. in the morning and I don’t consider it the middle of the night, I do not feel mosquitoes attempting to make me their dinner, torrential rain is not falling on my zinc roof that must have a leak in order to explain the wetness my bed achieves on these very nights (I realize this fragment might suggest that my wetting the bed might be explanation B as I try to make a determination, but I assure you this is not the case), I am not afraid the snake that lived in the shower is going to snuggle up with me in the night under my bug net, not to mention feeling like a shower, especially a warm one, is no longer a luxury in the first place. There is no fear that the centipede I wore inside my pant leg for a single second, which was way too long for me, is going to make an appearance in my day.
I miss that place so much. Here I could only wish to go a long bike ride where I didn’t have to dodge people, to go on a run where I could see macaws and hear their pissed off calls they made to each other around dinner time, to go on a nighttime bike ride that often resulted in forgetting to bring my headlamp, which left me fearing for my life come the ride home. Not to mention all the people I realized I had grown so attached to, despite our differences. I am all around missing a lifestyle that we seem to be trying to move so far away from for God knows why…
So I will thank you all now, and I will thank you again in closing, for giving me the chance to have this opportunity. I don’t want to sound like an actress that just won an Oscar, but I don’t see another way around it. I will give my appreciatory speech at the end, but I just wanted to warn you about the cheese to come. I figure you have already read a little of it, but this is the big mamma of cheese sessions, so just brace yourselves…But I will tell you some stories that I hope you can enjoy before this turns in to a tear session.
The Final Week
So, it goes without saying that this was a hard week in terms of to realizing that this was the moment I thought I had been waiting for since the day I landed in this strange and foreign land of Guyana. I remember waking up one morning mad at myself for ever wishing one second away, for wishing that I could just go home. There were too many days where I lived in my future, and on this morning I wished all those days could come back to me and I could live them all over again in a way that I could feel I had appreciated every waking second of this experience at hand. But obviously while I was in Guyana I did not have access to the means it would take to invent and construct a time machine, so in the end I had to live with it. Besides, an invention of that sort would take me just a little more than a year…So, what could I do? Well, I could fully immerse myself into living in these last few moments and looking around at all of the things I was going to miss. These things are so numerous, but I thought for the story’s sake I would mention a few…
Alma and her smiling, funny, and adorable daughter Claude. Jess, Kirsty, and Grace. All of my students, and yes, despite my troublesome few, I will miss them all. The lack of walls and windows, the snake that never left my mind as I bathed, and saying “bathed” instead of “shower”. Getting woken up in the early hours of the dawn to someone clapping or knocking incessantly as they yelled “Inside?” through the windows. Trying to cook dinner before the sun went down so the bugs didn’t eat me alive, riding my crappy but wonderful bike “The Green Machine” to scrounge up some vegetables before 4:00, either at Rock View or the Bina Hill garden, which made for a very sweaty ride. Riding to Rock View and Oasis on Friday’s to definitely get some Nova Schinn beers and maybe some cutters. Running away from the sun at 5:30ish in order to catch a nice sunset on the way back at 6ish all the while listening to the macaws screech because they are pissed off that evolution gave them monogamous genes. Hearing people call me “Miss” as they tell me not to stress myself, walking though the savannah during the dry season during a full moon that makes the white-sanded spots glow, lying in my hammock as I read a book, doing wash in a bucket that I will hang on a line so it will hopefully dry before the rain falls while I listen to my recently charged i-POD that I am able to play due to the fact that the generator was working the night previous. Hearing “please for a ___________”, or “Miss, you sharin’?” as well as to hearing dogs beat the shit out of each other right outside my window during mating season. Going to the shop with the same shopping list we have had since we moved there, minus some rice maybe if we were able to score some farine the week before…. And I can’t forget Tulip, my beloved, starving little dog with a heart of gold…The list could go on forever.
But for now I will humor you with the very first entry I wrote in my journal during my first days of living this experience…
Journal entry: August 5, 2006
I really don’t even know how to start explaining all this. Coming in was so beautiful. I have never seen so many trees in my life, all the rivers, all the green. I couldn’t wait to get off the plane see what the air smelled like. When we landed in the tiny airport we were the only jetliner, let alone the only plane there. We got off on the runway and walked into the tiny airport that was smaller than a 7-11 back at home. 26 Americans (actually 24 and 2 Canadians). Once we got though “customs” it was busy, busy at 8 on this morning. People were yelling, trying to get us to pay GUY$100 to carry our bags. We loaded up our bags on a big truck and hopped aboard a big minibus, which actually wasn’t big and didn’t seem much of a bus. It was hot, hot, hot. It was crazy to start driving through Guyana seeing as I have never seen a place like this before. All the houses are on stilts and some of them such broken down shacks it was hard to believe that people actually lived in them. Everyone was walking on the streets and almost getting hit by the passing cars, I kept clinching my fists in fear of the body that might soon fly through the windshield.
There were wild dogs running all over the place, the roads are hardly paved, and the passing of the cars is madness incomparable to Chicago’s traffic. Honking every 2 seconds. There are people with boards nailed together to provide a roadside stand to sell their goods.
We arrived at Cyril Potter Teaching College exhausted 45 minutes later. They call it the “school compound” and we stayed on the second floor of the dorms. It was a wonder how the second floor’s floorboards held the 27 of us with all its holes and shortcomings. There wasn’t a real window in the whole place, just glass luevres. There were 6 showers we all shared with the cockroaches, the frogs, the beetles, and species of Class Insecta I have never before seen. There were no toilet seats and the only way to flush them most of the time was to dump a bucket of water into the bowl. I wonder what I had really gotten myself in to. I just hope I can find the strength in me somewhere to keep patient and flexible throughout all these challenges I am about to face in the upcoming year. Sometimes I stop and wonder if I fully realize the magnitude of what I have gotten myself into…I just have to try and understand even when I don’t understand.”
We held a farewell party/fundraiser the night before Jess and I were to leave. It was a big, fun party. Some of our students were there. We played Bingo and danced, danced, danced. It was so much fun, but when the end of the night quickly approached it was all I could do not to break down. A big group of us got a ride back up to the school and I quickly had to walk into the house because I was about to lose it. And I did. The flood of emotions I felt poured over me, and there was no controlling the intensity of the flow. I wanted to feel the sadness. Feeling it let me realize how rich this experience had been and how much I was going to miss it.
The next morning we were finishing up on packing and some students were in the house. There was a very intense few minutes. I was in my room trying to find a way to pack up my bows and arrows and all of a sudden I hear sobbing in the other room. Some students started crying, which made Jess break down and then the breakdowns moved as a chain reaction through the house. It really was intense. I still had to pack my bags, run up to Bina Hill, and finish cleaning when all I really wanted to do was collapse on the floor and cradle my sadness as I cried. But I couldn’t. I had stuff to do and I had to be strong. So we all pulled it together. We had no choice but to clear the house of students just so we could finish. When the minibus came to get us the waterworks turned on again. It was another intense moment, but I let myself feel this one as I bid my students farewell. Some were very, very hard to say goodbye to. That’s the thing with life though-if you are going to have these kinds of experiences you will inevitably have to say goodbye at some bittersweet point, as hard as it is.
Home sweet home
While I can’t say it felt sweet, I was home. I thought I would be more excited, but I wasn’t. I wanted to go back to Annai. I met my mom in NYC and we stayed for a few days, which was nice, but as soon as I arrived in Chicago a gloomy feeling overcame me that still hasn’t receded. I have felt this sense of loser-dom since the day I came home due to the fact that I am broke, I have no job, and I live at home with my mom. I hope these feelings soon cease to exist in my mind, but in the meantime, I am just trying to figure out what to do with them.
I was reading my first journal entry about the first days in Guyana, and let me tell you, I found myself laughing out loud as I recounted a year where I was challenged, I was let down, I was brought up, I was able to give myself room to think for once, and I opened myself up to an experience I felt so compelled to tell you about through these newsletters.
I miss it. I miss the people. I miss the simpleness. I wish that everyone could have seen what I saw, but I know despite how much I write about it and try to paint a picture I could never be the artist Mother Nature is, I could never convey the people in a light that would justify who they really are. This isn’t the type of thing, no matter how great of a vocabulary I could ever achieve, that could be put into words, that could be made real on paper. I think I made a positive impact on my students and I succeeded in doing what I hoped I would when I first left. Of course, I am walking away feeling enriched by them in a way that far exceeds what I was able to give them. My life was impacted by them in a way that I could only hope was equivalent to what I was able to give to my students, although I severely doubt it.
So now what to do? Well, I want to rest. I want to have some time to reflect on what I saw, what I learned, and how this experience has changed me. I know I learned about differences and how they are beautiful. Mass production no longer is appealing (if it ever really was). Sometimes I feel like globalization is going to make a monotonous world void of individuality and paved over with Starbucks, McDonalds, and Hollywood homes. “You paved paradise and put up a parking lot” is the song I think of when I say this. I have realized that while I have learned so much, I learned that I know nothing at all. I suppose channel 11 knew what they were talking about in that commercial that said, “the more you know, the more you know you don’t know.” It is very true. Instead of coming out of this with answers, I came out with a million more questions. Where are we heading? Why do people think they have no control over the big issues that the world is dealing with? When are we all going to stand up and preserve ourselves instead of being shaped into square boxes that sit in square boxes (thanks Dan Bern)?
This is the end…
I could not have had this experience without all of you that supported me. I want to thank you from the depths of my soul and shower you with gratitude for helping me on this path my mom especially. What she has done for me in the past year, and continues doing on this day, I only hope I can repay her for. Without her, none of this would have been possible. It was an incredible journey that I have heard so many people say they with they could do…I come out of this feeling like I can do anything, and so can everyone else. You have to follow your dreams, no matter how scary they may seem. We only have one life as far as we know and we have to live it for ourselves doing what makes us happy, what makes us feel right.
I hope you have enjoyed reading these newsletters as much as I enjoyed writing them. Right now tears are coming to my eyes knowing that this is the last one and I am about to finish it…From this moment on I can only hope my memory can hang on to so many moments and feelings and thoughts I have experienced in the past year. I hope you have been able to live with me and learn with me through this newsletter. I hope we can all find peace within us and around us, and I hope that each and every person on this world can come together and feel empowered to make the changes that need to be made.
“Change happens not by trying to make yourself change, but by becoming conscious of what’s not working.”
Shakti Gawain
Thank You!!!
THE END
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Friday, July 20, 2007
June Newsletter
June 2007 Newsletter
Hello and a happy summer to you. It is hard to believe that it is the month of June, which means it’s my last full month here. It seems so unreal that almost one whole year has past when it feels like it has only been one long summer. The school term, which feels like it has just begun, is swiftly coming to a close. This month was a fun month having two weekends of field trips and a third weekend that held the graduation of the fifth form students upon the completion of their CXC exams.
Fourth Form’s Payback
In May I mentioned how my form four students have now become my new fifth form, meaning I am working them extra hard by trying to do as many SBA’s as we can so they will not end up in the same situation as fifth form was in when I got to the school. Well, we are done. Biology students turned their completed SBA’s in at the very end of May and everyone turned in their integrated science SBA’s on June 15th. As a way to pay them back for all the hard work they did in the last 2 months I took them on a field trip to see the cock-of-the-rock, which is a very beautiful and ornate bird that brings in eco-tourists and provides a means of livelihood for the village of Wowetta. I do not think that any of my students have seen this bird, sadly even the students that come from the village. The bird is found in more ancient and highly eroded mountain habitats that are rich in the presence of vines. The males are the more spectacular creatures to see with their colorful plumage of a deep orangeish-red and their crest that fans in front of its face. The female, who is maybe not so spectacular being a darker brown, is equally exiting to see. I was fortunate enough to hike this trail last November and was able to see many males who almost seem to glow against the gray rocks and greens and browns of the vegetation.
We hired a tractor to take us the 3 miles down the road to Wowetta and off maybe about 1 mile through the savannah and bush to the site of the trail where we would begin the 5-6 hour round-trip hike. We ended up having to split the trip into 2 weekends due to the amount of students in fourth form and the amount that would be allowed to hike the trail at a time. This meant that transportation, food, and snacks had to be paid for twice. I was able to cover the foodstuff, but the transportation was beyond my means. Luckily, Jess offered to put forth some of the money that her family’s restaurant had raised and sent to the school (Bruno’s Restaurant in Philadelphia), so I gratefully thank them. Early in the morning 4 of my students and I went into the kitchen to start preparing the breakfast of farine and eggs. Once finished, we called the rest of the fourth form students that were going on the trip. I made sure that they ate as much as they could, seeing as most mornings they only get served bakes and tea (bakes are deep fried dough-not very nutritious). Once everyone had a full belly we set off on the tractor. It was fun seeing the students having fun, relaxing, and enjoying the day so far, and it was only 8 a.m.
The hike in takes about 2-3 hours, depending on how much wildlife is available for viewing along the way. The first weekend we went we were able to see monkey’s playing in the rain. We also were constantly hearing macaws and these great sounding birds called screaming pijas. All this noise makes you stop and realize that you are really in the rainforest, you are in the jungle. Our guide, Huxley, pointed out tapir trails, many other small birds, and various fruits and plants used by the indigenous population. He showed us these plums that the tapirs eat that cannot be eaten raw by humans because there are these small worms that, if ingested, grow in your stomach until they burrow through the stomach lining and literally out through the skin of the abdomen. Yuck-despite my cravings for fruit I opted to stay away from those….
So, like I said, the trip was divided into 2 weekends, with half of the fourth form students going the first weekend and the other half going the next (although some lucky students got to go both weekends since we had extra room). The first weekend we only saw the female, but everyone was still pleased to see her. We also were able to climb under the rocks in a cave to see the nesting sight (and a lot of bats). The female builds a nest on the side of a massive boulder. In one of the nests there was a female brooding and in another there were 2 baby chicks, which sadly enough were dead by the next weekend. The second weekend, alas, we saw the male. The students were so excited, as they often are by birds (bird watching is a very big thing in the Rupununi).
Both weekends granted 2 long and enjoyable days. I think the students really appreciated being able to go, and for me to see them and interact with them in an environment outside of school, but in one where they were learning about something important to the area was just as rewarding for me, and I was happy to be able to do something like that for them.
Form 5 Graduation
Fifth form finished their CXC exams on June 13th and the graduation ceremony followed on Friday, June 15th. It was exciting to see them all dressed up in their fancy clothes, walking the stage to receive their confirmation that they are no longer secondary school students, but instead all grown up.
Unfortunately, most of this story is going to be about the Headmistress and how she acts under pressure, and basically her negative attitude in general. First of all, let me give you her background. She is from the coast, as you will constantly be reminded, and also an active member of the armed forces of Guyana. She is generally laid back and works hard to make things function as they should at the school, mostly in terms of admistrational duties. However, when under pressure or stress, she can turn into a monster, which she did on this very day.
The regional officials were in for the graduation from Lethem, and in Guyana, looks often surpass all measures of meaning. Despite that fact that there was a torrential downpour that delayed the onset of the ceremony, that some students hadn’t even arrived yet because of the rain, that the PA system was not yet set up, the headmistress (HM) still tried to get the ceremony started and was freaking out snapping at people because of how bad this looked to the regional officials, who I myself have never seen be very competent of much themselves. She tried to start the ceremony by getting the procession together and trying to talk in the huge benab over the rain. She created a disaster by not having patience and acclimating to the conditions the environment provided. What could we do? The rain was falling hard, and also, we had been kept in the dark about the details of the graduation but were expected to be psychic at this moment and figure out with no direction what needed to be done to get it going smoothly. Once everything got in order and the PA system was hooked up, which she wouldn’t stop for a second to let them fix it the right way, it seemed as though everything was moving along nicely, despite her awful speech that made me realize why she was not very welcomed by the locals. Oh, but she didn’t think it was nice at all. When we went to serve the food she said that this was unacceptable and we would all hear about it later. How I maintained my patience with her at this moment I don’t know, because all I wanted to do was kick her in the shin. If anything went wrong it was because of her lack of patience and overemphasis on how something looks on the outside. Added to this overemphasis is something I didn’t find out until after the ceremony when questioning why some students were not in attendance, but some students were not allowed to walk in the ceremony because they could not afford the $10,000 (US $50) outfits the HM and another teacher bought in Georgetown that were to be worn so everyone looked uniform in the ceremony, a uniformity that only lasted for those 2 short hours, but whose cost may have left their family members hungry for the rest of the month. This is absolutely unacceptable to me considering that this is a massive sum of money for so many families who have either no or very little income, and who may still work with their neighbors on a barter and trade system. To deny and embarrass a kid in a moment that was supposed to be so special not only to the student, but also to his/her family, friends, and teachers, is superficial and cruel. And at many times this is how I viewed the HM: superficial and cruel. Too many times in too many staff meetings she would put down the people of the Rupununi by saying, “this might be okay in terms of Region 9 standards, but on the coast this is unacceptable.” She was constantly reminding us that she was from the coast and that “these people,” the same people that were sitting in the staff room with us, were this and that, and she would not accept getting the reputation of being someone from Region 9 who has fallen to the level of Region 9’s standards. My respect for her was dwindling upon hearing all of her racist remarks, and on the day of the graduation I lost the rest of what I had. In one way she is good for the school because she does get things done, but in another way I feel it is people like her that make the Amerindian people of the area ashamed of who they are.
After the graduation we all went to Rock View (minus the HM!). It was some of the teachers and fifth form students combined. For many of the students, this would be one of the last times they see their teachers, as well as their classmates. It ended up being a big party, and it was fun to see them having fun liming (hanging out) and dancing.
Random Things I wanted to tell you…
· I was on a run and I got to see 5 pairs of macaws as they flew overhead. They always fly in pairs or as a threesome. They mate for life, (if they lose their mate they will not find a new one), and they screech like they are pissed off. I don’t know if these two things are related. I love them.
· Every morning and afternoon there is an assembly where the students say the morning/afternoon prayer, a thought of the week, a song of the week, and the national anthem/pledge. A different teacher led assembly each week, and when it was my week I taught them “Keep on the Sunny Side.” I loved hearing them sing it. One evening around sunset I was on a run, and I played it on my I-pod, succumbing to the feelings of sadness I was beginning to experience when the reality that I was leaving kicked in (even though I still never fully realized it). I stopped on the road and cried my eyes out. There are moments where I feel very excited about going home, but as more and more time passes, as it quickly is, I am starting to feel an enormous amount of grief and reluctancy about leaving this magical place, this simple place where life has time to be enjoyed, despite the lack of vegetables and flavors.
· The sky here is amazing.
· The generator was broken for the better part of June, so to save myself from going crazy by being locked in my bed to protect myself from the hungry mosquitoes unable to turn on my headlamp to read because it attracted the sand flies, those tiny little devils that are able to insidiously enter into my mosquito fortress due to their minute size, I started going up to Rock View at 6 p.m. to watch the news. All I heard was “ more civilian casualties, more civilian casualties….” And I wondered, can the world get itself out of the mess it has gotten itself into? More civilian casualties, more civilian casualties...
· I keep having dreams that I have been home for 2 months and I haven’t turned on my cell phone yet.
· The frogs, crickets, and God knows what else have been so loud during the nights lately that I have to pull my blanket up over my ears and cover them up because the pitch is so high it hurts.
· There have been some big, loud, heavy storms passing overhead.
· Things I have read
o “Appreciate what you have when you have it-those experiences you have on your way to wherever it is you want to go. Just enjoy those moments.”
-Jeff Corwin
o “I have always found people love you best if you can laugh at your own foolish misfortunes and keep mum about everyone else’s.”
-Barbara Kingsolver in Prodigal Summer
o “There are two ways of looking at the problem:
1.) Oh my gosh, what a burden, or
2.) What a great time to be born! What a great time to be alive! Because this generation gets to essentially completely change the world.”
-Paul Hawken
The following are quotes taken from articles found in the May 2007 Vanity Fair Green Issue
I read this magazine (despite obvious flaws considering it was supposed to be a “green” issue) and was enthralled with the information in it, and I only hope that others read it. One article that I found extremely interesting and shocking was “An Ecosystem of One’s Own.” I don’t think we intentionally do harm, I think it’s more that we just don’t know the harm we are inflicting not only on the environment and the organisms in it, but to ourselves as well (well, we are organisms in the environment, aren’t we?). I don’t want to sound preachy, once again, but I just want to inform. I think the only way that we can save ourselves is by educating ourselves and finding alternative methods and ways of going about our everyday lives, no matter how big or small, that will help move us in a more positive direction than we are headed for now.
o “Mercury is a by-product of plastic production that gets converted to methyl-mercury by microorganisms which accumulates in the tissues of organisms.”
o “If you are eating KFC in Liverpool, you’re eating the Amazon.” (the trees of the Amazon are cleared to make way for soybean farms, that of which 5% of the product is eaten by humans-the rest is sold to US an European markets to feed livestock).
o “Styrene molecules from polystyrene cups/plates migrate into food from containers and, once in your system, become estrogen mimics. These have bizarre effects on reproductive anatomy and fertility (precocious puberty, undescended testes) and may increase your chances of getting breast or testicular cancer.
o “One flush of an American toilet uses more water than most Africans use in a day.”
o “We did not inherit the land from our fathers. We are borrowing it from our children.”
Until next time…take care.
Hello and a happy summer to you. It is hard to believe that it is the month of June, which means it’s my last full month here. It seems so unreal that almost one whole year has past when it feels like it has only been one long summer. The school term, which feels like it has just begun, is swiftly coming to a close. This month was a fun month having two weekends of field trips and a third weekend that held the graduation of the fifth form students upon the completion of their CXC exams.
Fourth Form’s Payback
In May I mentioned how my form four students have now become my new fifth form, meaning I am working them extra hard by trying to do as many SBA’s as we can so they will not end up in the same situation as fifth form was in when I got to the school. Well, we are done. Biology students turned their completed SBA’s in at the very end of May and everyone turned in their integrated science SBA’s on June 15th. As a way to pay them back for all the hard work they did in the last 2 months I took them on a field trip to see the cock-of-the-rock, which is a very beautiful and ornate bird that brings in eco-tourists and provides a means of livelihood for the village of Wowetta. I do not think that any of my students have seen this bird, sadly even the students that come from the village. The bird is found in more ancient and highly eroded mountain habitats that are rich in the presence of vines. The males are the more spectacular creatures to see with their colorful plumage of a deep orangeish-red and their crest that fans in front of its face. The female, who is maybe not so spectacular being a darker brown, is equally exiting to see. I was fortunate enough to hike this trail last November and was able to see many males who almost seem to glow against the gray rocks and greens and browns of the vegetation.
We hired a tractor to take us the 3 miles down the road to Wowetta and off maybe about 1 mile through the savannah and bush to the site of the trail where we would begin the 5-6 hour round-trip hike. We ended up having to split the trip into 2 weekends due to the amount of students in fourth form and the amount that would be allowed to hike the trail at a time. This meant that transportation, food, and snacks had to be paid for twice. I was able to cover the foodstuff, but the transportation was beyond my means. Luckily, Jess offered to put forth some of the money that her family’s restaurant had raised and sent to the school (Bruno’s Restaurant in Philadelphia), so I gratefully thank them. Early in the morning 4 of my students and I went into the kitchen to start preparing the breakfast of farine and eggs. Once finished, we called the rest of the fourth form students that were going on the trip. I made sure that they ate as much as they could, seeing as most mornings they only get served bakes and tea (bakes are deep fried dough-not very nutritious). Once everyone had a full belly we set off on the tractor. It was fun seeing the students having fun, relaxing, and enjoying the day so far, and it was only 8 a.m.
The hike in takes about 2-3 hours, depending on how much wildlife is available for viewing along the way. The first weekend we went we were able to see monkey’s playing in the rain. We also were constantly hearing macaws and these great sounding birds called screaming pijas. All this noise makes you stop and realize that you are really in the rainforest, you are in the jungle. Our guide, Huxley, pointed out tapir trails, many other small birds, and various fruits and plants used by the indigenous population. He showed us these plums that the tapirs eat that cannot be eaten raw by humans because there are these small worms that, if ingested, grow in your stomach until they burrow through the stomach lining and literally out through the skin of the abdomen. Yuck-despite my cravings for fruit I opted to stay away from those….
So, like I said, the trip was divided into 2 weekends, with half of the fourth form students going the first weekend and the other half going the next (although some lucky students got to go both weekends since we had extra room). The first weekend we only saw the female, but everyone was still pleased to see her. We also were able to climb under the rocks in a cave to see the nesting sight (and a lot of bats). The female builds a nest on the side of a massive boulder. In one of the nests there was a female brooding and in another there were 2 baby chicks, which sadly enough were dead by the next weekend. The second weekend, alas, we saw the male. The students were so excited, as they often are by birds (bird watching is a very big thing in the Rupununi).
Both weekends granted 2 long and enjoyable days. I think the students really appreciated being able to go, and for me to see them and interact with them in an environment outside of school, but in one where they were learning about something important to the area was just as rewarding for me, and I was happy to be able to do something like that for them.
Form 5 Graduation
Fifth form finished their CXC exams on June 13th and the graduation ceremony followed on Friday, June 15th. It was exciting to see them all dressed up in their fancy clothes, walking the stage to receive their confirmation that they are no longer secondary school students, but instead all grown up.
Unfortunately, most of this story is going to be about the Headmistress and how she acts under pressure, and basically her negative attitude in general. First of all, let me give you her background. She is from the coast, as you will constantly be reminded, and also an active member of the armed forces of Guyana. She is generally laid back and works hard to make things function as they should at the school, mostly in terms of admistrational duties. However, when under pressure or stress, she can turn into a monster, which she did on this very day.
The regional officials were in for the graduation from Lethem, and in Guyana, looks often surpass all measures of meaning. Despite that fact that there was a torrential downpour that delayed the onset of the ceremony, that some students hadn’t even arrived yet because of the rain, that the PA system was not yet set up, the headmistress (HM) still tried to get the ceremony started and was freaking out snapping at people because of how bad this looked to the regional officials, who I myself have never seen be very competent of much themselves. She tried to start the ceremony by getting the procession together and trying to talk in the huge benab over the rain. She created a disaster by not having patience and acclimating to the conditions the environment provided. What could we do? The rain was falling hard, and also, we had been kept in the dark about the details of the graduation but were expected to be psychic at this moment and figure out with no direction what needed to be done to get it going smoothly. Once everything got in order and the PA system was hooked up, which she wouldn’t stop for a second to let them fix it the right way, it seemed as though everything was moving along nicely, despite her awful speech that made me realize why she was not very welcomed by the locals. Oh, but she didn’t think it was nice at all. When we went to serve the food she said that this was unacceptable and we would all hear about it later. How I maintained my patience with her at this moment I don’t know, because all I wanted to do was kick her in the shin. If anything went wrong it was because of her lack of patience and overemphasis on how something looks on the outside. Added to this overemphasis is something I didn’t find out until after the ceremony when questioning why some students were not in attendance, but some students were not allowed to walk in the ceremony because they could not afford the $10,000 (US $50) outfits the HM and another teacher bought in Georgetown that were to be worn so everyone looked uniform in the ceremony, a uniformity that only lasted for those 2 short hours, but whose cost may have left their family members hungry for the rest of the month. This is absolutely unacceptable to me considering that this is a massive sum of money for so many families who have either no or very little income, and who may still work with their neighbors on a barter and trade system. To deny and embarrass a kid in a moment that was supposed to be so special not only to the student, but also to his/her family, friends, and teachers, is superficial and cruel. And at many times this is how I viewed the HM: superficial and cruel. Too many times in too many staff meetings she would put down the people of the Rupununi by saying, “this might be okay in terms of Region 9 standards, but on the coast this is unacceptable.” She was constantly reminding us that she was from the coast and that “these people,” the same people that were sitting in the staff room with us, were this and that, and she would not accept getting the reputation of being someone from Region 9 who has fallen to the level of Region 9’s standards. My respect for her was dwindling upon hearing all of her racist remarks, and on the day of the graduation I lost the rest of what I had. In one way she is good for the school because she does get things done, but in another way I feel it is people like her that make the Amerindian people of the area ashamed of who they are.
After the graduation we all went to Rock View (minus the HM!). It was some of the teachers and fifth form students combined. For many of the students, this would be one of the last times they see their teachers, as well as their classmates. It ended up being a big party, and it was fun to see them having fun liming (hanging out) and dancing.
Random Things I wanted to tell you…
· I was on a run and I got to see 5 pairs of macaws as they flew overhead. They always fly in pairs or as a threesome. They mate for life, (if they lose their mate they will not find a new one), and they screech like they are pissed off. I don’t know if these two things are related. I love them.
· Every morning and afternoon there is an assembly where the students say the morning/afternoon prayer, a thought of the week, a song of the week, and the national anthem/pledge. A different teacher led assembly each week, and when it was my week I taught them “Keep on the Sunny Side.” I loved hearing them sing it. One evening around sunset I was on a run, and I played it on my I-pod, succumbing to the feelings of sadness I was beginning to experience when the reality that I was leaving kicked in (even though I still never fully realized it). I stopped on the road and cried my eyes out. There are moments where I feel very excited about going home, but as more and more time passes, as it quickly is, I am starting to feel an enormous amount of grief and reluctancy about leaving this magical place, this simple place where life has time to be enjoyed, despite the lack of vegetables and flavors.
· The sky here is amazing.
· The generator was broken for the better part of June, so to save myself from going crazy by being locked in my bed to protect myself from the hungry mosquitoes unable to turn on my headlamp to read because it attracted the sand flies, those tiny little devils that are able to insidiously enter into my mosquito fortress due to their minute size, I started going up to Rock View at 6 p.m. to watch the news. All I heard was “ more civilian casualties, more civilian casualties….” And I wondered, can the world get itself out of the mess it has gotten itself into? More civilian casualties, more civilian casualties...
· I keep having dreams that I have been home for 2 months and I haven’t turned on my cell phone yet.
· The frogs, crickets, and God knows what else have been so loud during the nights lately that I have to pull my blanket up over my ears and cover them up because the pitch is so high it hurts.
· There have been some big, loud, heavy storms passing overhead.
· Things I have read
o “Appreciate what you have when you have it-those experiences you have on your way to wherever it is you want to go. Just enjoy those moments.”
-Jeff Corwin
o “I have always found people love you best if you can laugh at your own foolish misfortunes and keep mum about everyone else’s.”
-Barbara Kingsolver in Prodigal Summer
o “There are two ways of looking at the problem:
1.) Oh my gosh, what a burden, or
2.) What a great time to be born! What a great time to be alive! Because this generation gets to essentially completely change the world.”
-Paul Hawken
The following are quotes taken from articles found in the May 2007 Vanity Fair Green Issue
I read this magazine (despite obvious flaws considering it was supposed to be a “green” issue) and was enthralled with the information in it, and I only hope that others read it. One article that I found extremely interesting and shocking was “An Ecosystem of One’s Own.” I don’t think we intentionally do harm, I think it’s more that we just don’t know the harm we are inflicting not only on the environment and the organisms in it, but to ourselves as well (well, we are organisms in the environment, aren’t we?). I don’t want to sound preachy, once again, but I just want to inform. I think the only way that we can save ourselves is by educating ourselves and finding alternative methods and ways of going about our everyday lives, no matter how big or small, that will help move us in a more positive direction than we are headed for now.
o “Mercury is a by-product of plastic production that gets converted to methyl-mercury by microorganisms which accumulates in the tissues of organisms.”
o “If you are eating KFC in Liverpool, you’re eating the Amazon.” (the trees of the Amazon are cleared to make way for soybean farms, that of which 5% of the product is eaten by humans-the rest is sold to US an European markets to feed livestock).
o “Styrene molecules from polystyrene cups/plates migrate into food from containers and, once in your system, become estrogen mimics. These have bizarre effects on reproductive anatomy and fertility (precocious puberty, undescended testes) and may increase your chances of getting breast or testicular cancer.
o “One flush of an American toilet uses more water than most Africans use in a day.”
o “We did not inherit the land from our fathers. We are borrowing it from our children.”
Until next time…take care.
Monday, July 16, 2007
May Newsletter
May 2007 Newsletter
This month was a good month. It went by quickly and it is hard to believe that there is only one month of school left, not even. It did not take long for us to get back in to the swing of things after returning from Easter Break, and with each week that passes we watch with incredulity as the time flies by.
Fifth Form Finale
All of our hard work is coming to an end, and it will hopefully pay off as fifth form students finish their classes and begin writing their CXC exams. They start on May 13th and end on June 13th. At this point all I can do is hope I have done a good job teaching them all I was capable of, and all they can do is study their bumsies off before they write their exams.
When test time comes by us in a land that is not here, even the poorest of the poor students start to cram for their exams so they can at least pretend to make some sort of attempt to do well on them. Here, however, I see some students, mostly the students that live in the dorms, stroll around lackadaisically like none of it matters…and it has made me realize the following: maybe this doesn’t matter to them. Some of them don’t see the importance of school, and to be fair, why should they? Yes, education is great. We would all rather talk to someone who has half a brain than someone who is ignorant to everything around them. But I know we have all met people who have gone through the education system to the highest levels and still managed to maintain their imbecilism. We have also met those people who have had very little formal education that blow our minds with their intelligence. In light of this I think it is fair to conclude that even though some of these kids don’t find an importance in getting educated doesn’t make them stupid, and even if they did find it important, what really is going to happen to most of them once they return home to their villages, even if they do amazing on their CXC’s? Does Guyana have jobs available for these graduates? And, if they take them, do they have to move away from their cultures and customs for a life on the coast and leave not only their families, but possibly their identities as well? I know that most of us would think that just because you move away from where you are from in no way translates in to you having to leave your identity at home. However, the perception I have formed in my time here is that to be an Amerindian in Guyana, especially an Amerindian living on the coast, is not a desirable trait. It is more out of fear that I say they would leave their identities at the doors of the coastland because they would be too ‘shamed’ of who they are and where they come from, perhaps because the ominous people on the coast, who think they do not share the same burdens, they seem to believe the same troubles of poverty do not plague them, would make them feel this way (you will understand this bold opinion of mine next month-hopefully). So the point is, is that I gave up caring how well some of them were going to do on those standardized exams. If they don’t do well, well, hopefully they learned something they can apply to their real lives, wherever it shall take them. There was nothing I could do to make them sit down and study, at this point their lives were their own, and they could do what they wanted. Most of them will be returning home to live in their village, the same as their parents, and their parents, and their parents…and I, we, should consider this okay. I have heard two different reactions from parents. One parent said that them leaving to go to secondary school, especially those students that come here more to hang out for a few years and ‘lime’ with friends, leaves the parents with less help to maintain their own subsistence, as well as making the students lazy upon their return to the village after graduation. It really does seem that some students see this as a 5-8 year vacation, depending on how long it takes them to get through all 5 forms. The other side, which made me re-think my original opinion I had upon coming here in the first place, was that if a student upon graduation decides they want to leave the village, the region, the country, well, who is the parent to stop them? Would any of us agree to our parents holding us back from our dreams, the things that we believe will make us happy? Would a parent want this of their child? The child is no longer uninformed, despite what a parent would hope to believe. There comes an age where a person is free to make their own choices and decisions to find their own way through their life. How does this relate to my opinion of what values I thought I would bring with me during my experience here? My original idea in a nutshell was that I didn’t want to bring in an outside influence that would make these kids think that life was better on the other side so they would want to leave. While I still firmly believe this idea, it is not necessarily in the same framework I came here with. I want them to hang on to who they are and where they come from, but I know that I can’t come here with my I-pod, my clothes, my Nike shoes, getting some packages that contain stuff like good cotton underwear and not think they won’t get curious, or they won’t see these things and want them the same way I did. I just don’t want them to think that life is better in the “civilized” world, because is it really? From what I can see Guyana, and more specifically the Rupununi, does not get bomb threats, does not have tankers rolling around with armed militants sprouting out their tops, does not emit mass quantities of greenhouse gases, does not eat all the cattle that it’s neighbours are clearing their land to produce a product for export, does not have thugs running around with ‘gats’ tucked into their pants (maybe in GT, but this is the Rupununi I am talking about), does not start devastatingly myopic wars over money (the only conclusion I can draw out of it all, but let me state that this is only my opinion) and put sanctions on countries already in shambles politically, economically, environmentally…I suppose I could go on for a long time, but I will spare you all of my ranting and raving. Just put it this way-why does the Western world believe that they have it so right? What makes some of us believe that every other person should live just as we do when we are facing so many serious crises that I wonder where we can even start to begin to clean up some of the massive messes we have created? From this perspective in the peaceful atmosphere of the Rupununi where I get very little news (which I am sometimes grateful for), except for the occasional Newsweek magazines that come my way or on the BBC World News I get to watch, it makes me reluctant to ever want to go home for fear of entering a world gone mad. Being here has made me scared for all of us, no matter where we come from…ppphhhhwwwoooooo…all that out of study habits of my students.
Journal entry:
“If the whole world got amnesia, how would we all relearn everything? Would all those sacred books that determine so many people’s lives be looked at as just books or would they still be the “moral doctrines” they are today? Lily said that people innately know what is right and what is wrong. Last night I came across this in my book (Wicked)…
‘Evil is moral at its heart-the selection of vice over virtue, you can pretend not to know, you can rationalize, but you know it in your conscience.’ (p.370)
The New Form 5
Seeing as the 2006-2007 graduating class has left the building (or at least moved to the dining hall to take their exams), the new top dogs to rule the school are my Fourth Form students. They thought they were going to ride in the glory of it all; all the while I had another idea for them.
Work, work, work. I would not feel like I was a success in my time here if I did not try my hardest to prevent the fourth form students from having to endure the same madness the fifth formers of this year did when they get to Form 5. Therefore, there were notes, and notes, and more notes for them to copy of the bulletin board in order to move through the material as rapidly as possible to make some time to perform our SBA’s. I will reiterate, for those of you who either forgot, or just so happened to skip the newsletter where I explained the predicament fifth form when I got here, we were in bad (bad, bad) shape when I first got here.
They must do 24 SBA’s, which are lab practical’s they must write up to be scored as part of their overall CXC score. When I got here in September they not a single one done and had only covered 6 out of 24 chapters in the book. Needless to say, it was quite a mess compiled on the fact that I had absolutely no idea what these things were and how I was supposed to go about figuring out what needed to be done, what topics needed to be covered, which skills needed to be assessed and how many times, and how to write a mark scheme for each.
Why is fourth form having to work extra hard because of this? Well, considering that their 2007-2008 teacher sadly will not be me, but indeed will be another volunteer, I wanted to make sure that they have enough done and they were as much a part of the process as I was so that they will be ready to go no later than October. This time frame will give the new volunteer time to get situated and give my students time to fill them in and help guide them along together, teacher and students. I have complete faith in my Form 4 students, whom I have grown very, very attached to, and I know they will have a successful year next year. This whole month was SBA after SBA. The due date for their books is June 15th, and they will have 10 out of the 24 completed by the end of this term. That will leave them in really good shape for next year, and they should have no problem getting the other 12 done by the end of March. As a reward for all this hard work we did in May, I took them on a special trip in the first week of June, but you will have to wait to hear about that…
Aranaputa Trip
Aranaputa is a village that is about 6.5 miles from the school and many of our students travel this distance every rainy morning and swelteringly hot afternoon. One of our student’s sisters has been very welcoming to us, and invited us to hike up the Aranaputa mountain trail and camp over night at the cabin there. It was such a great trip and I felt so alive once I got to the cabin. It was a cabin up in the middle of nowhere, and it made me come to life in the way only something you really love can make you feel.
Journal entry 5/20/07:
“This weekend we hiked up the Aranaputa Mountain to camp at the cabin overnight, and as soon as I saw the cabin I felt so alive, and I realized what I really wanted in my life…Like all of a sudden life just clicked…after this weekend, and feeling so ALIVE and free-spirited once I got to that cabin, I felt that is what I want, a place in the middle of the woods, a home out in nature. I feel like this weekend has set my brain in motion thinking about what new adventure awaits me. This experience was one that would have left a hole in me somewhere had I not come to do it. Now, I feel like it is time to start wrapping up my thoughts and what this place has taught me about people, the differences in the world, and me and my place in the world. My answers seemed to come to me as I was on that mountain about what I felt about myself and finally feeling like I knew more of what my place in the world was to be in the future…So we hiked and it was really fun, and it was hard work, but I felt so unbounded in feeling so physically and mentally strong. It makes me happy to finally have my head out of the clouds, or to think I do. It makes me so happy that I did this, that I came to Guyana, an experience that has shifted me in a straighter direction. I feel confident that even though I don’t know where I am going I have finally gained the ability to make good decisions. Not knowing is what makes life so exciting to me, especially realizing that life can take you anywhere if you let it.”
Rewa
Rewa is a village very close to us…it hides just in Macarapan Mountain, which is a mountain I have mentioned before, the one the sun hides behind while it lights up the morning sky. Well, this village might be in trouble. I think that it is in trouble, and it worries me to no end, and makes me feel like I have to come back and help every aspect of the village and ultimately the surrounding area. The people, the culture, the wildlife, the land…the ecosystem as a whole. Why do I feel so worried? They have done preliminal oil drilling to see if there was any oil in the depths of the Earth, and sure enough there was. They are going to start drilling there soon, and I fear that in the same way that Brazil’s indigenous populations have been lost to this type of industrialization, the same will happen to the Macushi tribe in this area of Guyana. And it won’t only be Rewa that is affected. I suspect they will build a road branching from the main road, which would be a junction just off to the South of a village called Wowetta (you will hear about this village and what makes it so special in June’s newsletter). That would therefore have an effect on that village, and I am sure the road will be paved, the macaw population that flies to Macarapan mountain would be affected, the people’s subsistence as they know it would be forever changed, the groundwater will be polluted, and the list goes on and on…Paving the road would bring in so many negative changes that I warn my students to be careful of what they wish for. I am not sure when this drilling is going to take place, but from what I can tell it is going to be soon. I fear that a small, poor, developing country like Guyana does not have the governmental infrastructure to keep out the corruption of greed in order to preserve it’s natural resources, one of those being the Amerindian heritage, the forest and savannahs, and all the life in them that they depend on. It’s hard because they don’t know about drilling for oil simply because they have never been taught or had a need to know, so when the companies come in and start their destruction on a mass scale (I have no faith that they would comply with governmental law the same way they would in a more developed country that had the money to oversee the project) they might not know what hit them until it is too late and they have become essentially slave labourers on their own land because, like all living organisms, they just need to eat, not to mention all the other necessities these big brains of ours demand that we find. There is one man I know that is persistent on not letting the drilling happen, but unfortunately it seems as though he might be the only person who is educated about the issue, but he is dutifully trying to spread his knowledge as he pleads his case to the locals. Another deplorable fact is that I have not had much of an opportunity to talk to this man, although I hope to sit down for a chat before I leave. There are a few more key people who I can only hope the Amerindians in this area will look to as leaders and heed their words of wisdom in the years to come…I will keep positive that it will all work out okay, but it will definitely be interesting to come back in 2-3 years and see how much it changes here.
Random…
Sometimes I am not quite sure about including stuff like this in my newsletter, but then I think-hey, why not? Despite how idealistic, smug, young, and whatever other words of criticism I would think I could endure, these are the types of things that being here and living this experience makes me think about, so why would it not be a part of what I tell you about my life here? I suppose it’s due to the fact that I feel like this shouldn’t be about me, it should be about the community and the students, but, like everyone has told me and I knew myself, I am going to leave here with having learned more from this place and the people that inhabit it then I could ever teach…So here is some of what I feel like I have learned, some of what I feel they have shown me, not told me, is important in living life.
Journal entry 4/20/07:
Why do we let ourselves become so busy that we don’t have time for our close friends and family? What is it that we are all so busy doing? Buying a car that will rarely take us to our brother’s house? Buying a new house that will rarely feel the presence of people enjoying each others company because there just isn’t enough time? Without intending to sound preachy, why are we here? Was my soul put in this body to work like a slave for things I have been made to feel, somewhere along the way, that I need? Was I born into this world to build a paper cutter house, buy a brand new car made to break down, to buy clothes designed by Madonna, J-Lo, and Mary-Kate and Ashley, to buy stocks and bonds and build a massive bank account so when I get to the gates of heaven, or some kind of equivalent, I can tell So and So when So and So asks me what I thought of life that…Well, I don’t know. Maybe that’s what so many of us will realize once we reach those pearly gates of heaven, is that we don’t know.
“I have a big bank account, a nice car, I built a massive house. I was rich.”
“Ah,” says So and So, “but I asked you what you thought of life.
“I just told you.”
So and So replies,” That is not life my friend, those are things. When you tickled your car, how did it react? When you called your car just because you wanted to say hello, what did it say? When your house took its first step, how did it make you feel? When you celebrated another year of life with your stocks did they blow out all the candles in one shot?”
“But, So and So, I had the money to do things. I had money to eat, I had money so my kids got to wear nice clothes and have good things. My wife got to have her nails painted every weekend and her hair highlighted at the best salons.”
“Okay then, let me ask you this,” says So and So. “How did your kids look in those clothes? Did those things make them into caring and understanding people? Did you ever take notice of your wife’s nails and hair and wonder whom she was trying to attract with her beauty? Life is not a collection of inanimate objects. Life is experience, a collection of memories. Life is family and friends. It’s sharing, not hording. It’s understanding, not outcasting. It’s good, not evil. It’s sharing lunch with a friend over friendly conversation, not getting it to-go (in a polluting Styrofoam container) to get back to your desk to read Financial Times. It’s reading a good book, not straining your eyes at a computer for 14 straight hours to collect overtime to pay for that new living room furniture you couldn’t really afford. Life is experiencing moments and sharing those moments and remembering those moments with family and friends. Without these moments I just don’t see how life is lived.”
He looks down, quite unsure of what to say to So and So, and he realizes that he didn’t call his best friend for two months when he heard that he had passed. He acknowledged he didn’t know his wife anymore and even worse, how old his children were, and even more importantly, who they were. He hadn’t seen his family in over a year, and before that, sparsely. However, the ultimate sin he felt he had committed as he stood in the presence of So and So was that he didn’t know himself. No matter how busy he had ever gotten, his heart, his mind, his soul had always walked around with him. Essentially, it was really the only thing in life he shouldn’t have been able to escape; yet somehow he had. But since he was always so preoccupied with other things he never took the chance to sit down and listen to those 3 components that made him up, so therefore, he never knew what they were trying to tell him all this time.
“I will not judge you or send you to the gates of hell for such a sin, but I cannot let you enter now, my friend, because you have gained no insight since you last left. Instead you will be reborn, an infant, your soul placed in the womb of your mother filling a body that waits the journey of this world. Live this life over, try again. LIVE this life over, and I will meet you again.”
And so it was.
What if we had that chance? Maybe we do, who knows? What would we do differently? Would we change anything about ourselves if we fully understood that life in these bodies is mortal, that no matter how hard we try to drink from a synthetic fountain of youth that is being created for us by all these pharmaceutical companies, by Dr. 90210, we are all going to die? What would you change if you could do it all over again? We should each make a list, look at it, and then hopefully realize that we are not dead yet.
Alright, I have either thrilled you or bored you, or maybe you found a happy balance. In any way, I hope that all is well, and I hope that everyone is starting to enjoy the daffodils and tulips spring has brought you. Take care of each other. Until next time…
This month was a good month. It went by quickly and it is hard to believe that there is only one month of school left, not even. It did not take long for us to get back in to the swing of things after returning from Easter Break, and with each week that passes we watch with incredulity as the time flies by.
Fifth Form Finale
All of our hard work is coming to an end, and it will hopefully pay off as fifth form students finish their classes and begin writing their CXC exams. They start on May 13th and end on June 13th. At this point all I can do is hope I have done a good job teaching them all I was capable of, and all they can do is study their bumsies off before they write their exams.
When test time comes by us in a land that is not here, even the poorest of the poor students start to cram for their exams so they can at least pretend to make some sort of attempt to do well on them. Here, however, I see some students, mostly the students that live in the dorms, stroll around lackadaisically like none of it matters…and it has made me realize the following: maybe this doesn’t matter to them. Some of them don’t see the importance of school, and to be fair, why should they? Yes, education is great. We would all rather talk to someone who has half a brain than someone who is ignorant to everything around them. But I know we have all met people who have gone through the education system to the highest levels and still managed to maintain their imbecilism. We have also met those people who have had very little formal education that blow our minds with their intelligence. In light of this I think it is fair to conclude that even though some of these kids don’t find an importance in getting educated doesn’t make them stupid, and even if they did find it important, what really is going to happen to most of them once they return home to their villages, even if they do amazing on their CXC’s? Does Guyana have jobs available for these graduates? And, if they take them, do they have to move away from their cultures and customs for a life on the coast and leave not only their families, but possibly their identities as well? I know that most of us would think that just because you move away from where you are from in no way translates in to you having to leave your identity at home. However, the perception I have formed in my time here is that to be an Amerindian in Guyana, especially an Amerindian living on the coast, is not a desirable trait. It is more out of fear that I say they would leave their identities at the doors of the coastland because they would be too ‘shamed’ of who they are and where they come from, perhaps because the ominous people on the coast, who think they do not share the same burdens, they seem to believe the same troubles of poverty do not plague them, would make them feel this way (you will understand this bold opinion of mine next month-hopefully). So the point is, is that I gave up caring how well some of them were going to do on those standardized exams. If they don’t do well, well, hopefully they learned something they can apply to their real lives, wherever it shall take them. There was nothing I could do to make them sit down and study, at this point their lives were their own, and they could do what they wanted. Most of them will be returning home to live in their village, the same as their parents, and their parents, and their parents…and I, we, should consider this okay. I have heard two different reactions from parents. One parent said that them leaving to go to secondary school, especially those students that come here more to hang out for a few years and ‘lime’ with friends, leaves the parents with less help to maintain their own subsistence, as well as making the students lazy upon their return to the village after graduation. It really does seem that some students see this as a 5-8 year vacation, depending on how long it takes them to get through all 5 forms. The other side, which made me re-think my original opinion I had upon coming here in the first place, was that if a student upon graduation decides they want to leave the village, the region, the country, well, who is the parent to stop them? Would any of us agree to our parents holding us back from our dreams, the things that we believe will make us happy? Would a parent want this of their child? The child is no longer uninformed, despite what a parent would hope to believe. There comes an age where a person is free to make their own choices and decisions to find their own way through their life. How does this relate to my opinion of what values I thought I would bring with me during my experience here? My original idea in a nutshell was that I didn’t want to bring in an outside influence that would make these kids think that life was better on the other side so they would want to leave. While I still firmly believe this idea, it is not necessarily in the same framework I came here with. I want them to hang on to who they are and where they come from, but I know that I can’t come here with my I-pod, my clothes, my Nike shoes, getting some packages that contain stuff like good cotton underwear and not think they won’t get curious, or they won’t see these things and want them the same way I did. I just don’t want them to think that life is better in the “civilized” world, because is it really? From what I can see Guyana, and more specifically the Rupununi, does not get bomb threats, does not have tankers rolling around with armed militants sprouting out their tops, does not emit mass quantities of greenhouse gases, does not eat all the cattle that it’s neighbours are clearing their land to produce a product for export, does not have thugs running around with ‘gats’ tucked into their pants (maybe in GT, but this is the Rupununi I am talking about), does not start devastatingly myopic wars over money (the only conclusion I can draw out of it all, but let me state that this is only my opinion) and put sanctions on countries already in shambles politically, economically, environmentally…I suppose I could go on for a long time, but I will spare you all of my ranting and raving. Just put it this way-why does the Western world believe that they have it so right? What makes some of us believe that every other person should live just as we do when we are facing so many serious crises that I wonder where we can even start to begin to clean up some of the massive messes we have created? From this perspective in the peaceful atmosphere of the Rupununi where I get very little news (which I am sometimes grateful for), except for the occasional Newsweek magazines that come my way or on the BBC World News I get to watch, it makes me reluctant to ever want to go home for fear of entering a world gone mad. Being here has made me scared for all of us, no matter where we come from…ppphhhhwwwoooooo…all that out of study habits of my students.
Journal entry:
“If the whole world got amnesia, how would we all relearn everything? Would all those sacred books that determine so many people’s lives be looked at as just books or would they still be the “moral doctrines” they are today? Lily said that people innately know what is right and what is wrong. Last night I came across this in my book (Wicked)…
‘Evil is moral at its heart-the selection of vice over virtue, you can pretend not to know, you can rationalize, but you know it in your conscience.’ (p.370)
The New Form 5
Seeing as the 2006-2007 graduating class has left the building (or at least moved to the dining hall to take their exams), the new top dogs to rule the school are my Fourth Form students. They thought they were going to ride in the glory of it all; all the while I had another idea for them.
Work, work, work. I would not feel like I was a success in my time here if I did not try my hardest to prevent the fourth form students from having to endure the same madness the fifth formers of this year did when they get to Form 5. Therefore, there were notes, and notes, and more notes for them to copy of the bulletin board in order to move through the material as rapidly as possible to make some time to perform our SBA’s. I will reiterate, for those of you who either forgot, or just so happened to skip the newsletter where I explained the predicament fifth form when I got here, we were in bad (bad, bad) shape when I first got here.
They must do 24 SBA’s, which are lab practical’s they must write up to be scored as part of their overall CXC score. When I got here in September they not a single one done and had only covered 6 out of 24 chapters in the book. Needless to say, it was quite a mess compiled on the fact that I had absolutely no idea what these things were and how I was supposed to go about figuring out what needed to be done, what topics needed to be covered, which skills needed to be assessed and how many times, and how to write a mark scheme for each.
Why is fourth form having to work extra hard because of this? Well, considering that their 2007-2008 teacher sadly will not be me, but indeed will be another volunteer, I wanted to make sure that they have enough done and they were as much a part of the process as I was so that they will be ready to go no later than October. This time frame will give the new volunteer time to get situated and give my students time to fill them in and help guide them along together, teacher and students. I have complete faith in my Form 4 students, whom I have grown very, very attached to, and I know they will have a successful year next year. This whole month was SBA after SBA. The due date for their books is June 15th, and they will have 10 out of the 24 completed by the end of this term. That will leave them in really good shape for next year, and they should have no problem getting the other 12 done by the end of March. As a reward for all this hard work we did in May, I took them on a special trip in the first week of June, but you will have to wait to hear about that…
Aranaputa Trip
Aranaputa is a village that is about 6.5 miles from the school and many of our students travel this distance every rainy morning and swelteringly hot afternoon. One of our student’s sisters has been very welcoming to us, and invited us to hike up the Aranaputa mountain trail and camp over night at the cabin there. It was such a great trip and I felt so alive once I got to the cabin. It was a cabin up in the middle of nowhere, and it made me come to life in the way only something you really love can make you feel.
Journal entry 5/20/07:
“This weekend we hiked up the Aranaputa Mountain to camp at the cabin overnight, and as soon as I saw the cabin I felt so alive, and I realized what I really wanted in my life…Like all of a sudden life just clicked…after this weekend, and feeling so ALIVE and free-spirited once I got to that cabin, I felt that is what I want, a place in the middle of the woods, a home out in nature. I feel like this weekend has set my brain in motion thinking about what new adventure awaits me. This experience was one that would have left a hole in me somewhere had I not come to do it. Now, I feel like it is time to start wrapping up my thoughts and what this place has taught me about people, the differences in the world, and me and my place in the world. My answers seemed to come to me as I was on that mountain about what I felt about myself and finally feeling like I knew more of what my place in the world was to be in the future…So we hiked and it was really fun, and it was hard work, but I felt so unbounded in feeling so physically and mentally strong. It makes me happy to finally have my head out of the clouds, or to think I do. It makes me so happy that I did this, that I came to Guyana, an experience that has shifted me in a straighter direction. I feel confident that even though I don’t know where I am going I have finally gained the ability to make good decisions. Not knowing is what makes life so exciting to me, especially realizing that life can take you anywhere if you let it.”
Rewa
Rewa is a village very close to us…it hides just in Macarapan Mountain, which is a mountain I have mentioned before, the one the sun hides behind while it lights up the morning sky. Well, this village might be in trouble. I think that it is in trouble, and it worries me to no end, and makes me feel like I have to come back and help every aspect of the village and ultimately the surrounding area. The people, the culture, the wildlife, the land…the ecosystem as a whole. Why do I feel so worried? They have done preliminal oil drilling to see if there was any oil in the depths of the Earth, and sure enough there was. They are going to start drilling there soon, and I fear that in the same way that Brazil’s indigenous populations have been lost to this type of industrialization, the same will happen to the Macushi tribe in this area of Guyana. And it won’t only be Rewa that is affected. I suspect they will build a road branching from the main road, which would be a junction just off to the South of a village called Wowetta (you will hear about this village and what makes it so special in June’s newsletter). That would therefore have an effect on that village, and I am sure the road will be paved, the macaw population that flies to Macarapan mountain would be affected, the people’s subsistence as they know it would be forever changed, the groundwater will be polluted, and the list goes on and on…Paving the road would bring in so many negative changes that I warn my students to be careful of what they wish for. I am not sure when this drilling is going to take place, but from what I can tell it is going to be soon. I fear that a small, poor, developing country like Guyana does not have the governmental infrastructure to keep out the corruption of greed in order to preserve it’s natural resources, one of those being the Amerindian heritage, the forest and savannahs, and all the life in them that they depend on. It’s hard because they don’t know about drilling for oil simply because they have never been taught or had a need to know, so when the companies come in and start their destruction on a mass scale (I have no faith that they would comply with governmental law the same way they would in a more developed country that had the money to oversee the project) they might not know what hit them until it is too late and they have become essentially slave labourers on their own land because, like all living organisms, they just need to eat, not to mention all the other necessities these big brains of ours demand that we find. There is one man I know that is persistent on not letting the drilling happen, but unfortunately it seems as though he might be the only person who is educated about the issue, but he is dutifully trying to spread his knowledge as he pleads his case to the locals. Another deplorable fact is that I have not had much of an opportunity to talk to this man, although I hope to sit down for a chat before I leave. There are a few more key people who I can only hope the Amerindians in this area will look to as leaders and heed their words of wisdom in the years to come…I will keep positive that it will all work out okay, but it will definitely be interesting to come back in 2-3 years and see how much it changes here.
Random…
Sometimes I am not quite sure about including stuff like this in my newsletter, but then I think-hey, why not? Despite how idealistic, smug, young, and whatever other words of criticism I would think I could endure, these are the types of things that being here and living this experience makes me think about, so why would it not be a part of what I tell you about my life here? I suppose it’s due to the fact that I feel like this shouldn’t be about me, it should be about the community and the students, but, like everyone has told me and I knew myself, I am going to leave here with having learned more from this place and the people that inhabit it then I could ever teach…So here is some of what I feel like I have learned, some of what I feel they have shown me, not told me, is important in living life.
Journal entry 4/20/07:
Why do we let ourselves become so busy that we don’t have time for our close friends and family? What is it that we are all so busy doing? Buying a car that will rarely take us to our brother’s house? Buying a new house that will rarely feel the presence of people enjoying each others company because there just isn’t enough time? Without intending to sound preachy, why are we here? Was my soul put in this body to work like a slave for things I have been made to feel, somewhere along the way, that I need? Was I born into this world to build a paper cutter house, buy a brand new car made to break down, to buy clothes designed by Madonna, J-Lo, and Mary-Kate and Ashley, to buy stocks and bonds and build a massive bank account so when I get to the gates of heaven, or some kind of equivalent, I can tell So and So when So and So asks me what I thought of life that…Well, I don’t know. Maybe that’s what so many of us will realize once we reach those pearly gates of heaven, is that we don’t know.
“I have a big bank account, a nice car, I built a massive house. I was rich.”
“Ah,” says So and So, “but I asked you what you thought of life.
“I just told you.”
So and So replies,” That is not life my friend, those are things. When you tickled your car, how did it react? When you called your car just because you wanted to say hello, what did it say? When your house took its first step, how did it make you feel? When you celebrated another year of life with your stocks did they blow out all the candles in one shot?”
“But, So and So, I had the money to do things. I had money to eat, I had money so my kids got to wear nice clothes and have good things. My wife got to have her nails painted every weekend and her hair highlighted at the best salons.”
“Okay then, let me ask you this,” says So and So. “How did your kids look in those clothes? Did those things make them into caring and understanding people? Did you ever take notice of your wife’s nails and hair and wonder whom she was trying to attract with her beauty? Life is not a collection of inanimate objects. Life is experience, a collection of memories. Life is family and friends. It’s sharing, not hording. It’s understanding, not outcasting. It’s good, not evil. It’s sharing lunch with a friend over friendly conversation, not getting it to-go (in a polluting Styrofoam container) to get back to your desk to read Financial Times. It’s reading a good book, not straining your eyes at a computer for 14 straight hours to collect overtime to pay for that new living room furniture you couldn’t really afford. Life is experiencing moments and sharing those moments and remembering those moments with family and friends. Without these moments I just don’t see how life is lived.”
He looks down, quite unsure of what to say to So and So, and he realizes that he didn’t call his best friend for two months when he heard that he had passed. He acknowledged he didn’t know his wife anymore and even worse, how old his children were, and even more importantly, who they were. He hadn’t seen his family in over a year, and before that, sparsely. However, the ultimate sin he felt he had committed as he stood in the presence of So and So was that he didn’t know himself. No matter how busy he had ever gotten, his heart, his mind, his soul had always walked around with him. Essentially, it was really the only thing in life he shouldn’t have been able to escape; yet somehow he had. But since he was always so preoccupied with other things he never took the chance to sit down and listen to those 3 components that made him up, so therefore, he never knew what they were trying to tell him all this time.
“I will not judge you or send you to the gates of hell for such a sin, but I cannot let you enter now, my friend, because you have gained no insight since you last left. Instead you will be reborn, an infant, your soul placed in the womb of your mother filling a body that waits the journey of this world. Live this life over, try again. LIVE this life over, and I will meet you again.”
And so it was.
What if we had that chance? Maybe we do, who knows? What would we do differently? Would we change anything about ourselves if we fully understood that life in these bodies is mortal, that no matter how hard we try to drink from a synthetic fountain of youth that is being created for us by all these pharmaceutical companies, by Dr. 90210, we are all going to die? What would you change if you could do it all over again? We should each make a list, look at it, and then hopefully realize that we are not dead yet.
Alright, I have either thrilled you or bored you, or maybe you found a happy balance. In any way, I hope that all is well, and I hope that everyone is starting to enjoy the daffodils and tulips spring has brought you. Take care of each other. Until next time…
April Newsletter
April 2007 Newsletter
Howdy Everyone! Happy spring to you!! I am sure everyone at this point everyone has just about had it with Father Winter and are ready to see life come alive again, creating more life in the process. I would love to see the daffodils bloom, then the tulips (and I would show it to my dog, who just so happens to be named Tulip, so she could know the beautiful spring flower she is named after), and feel the morning chill turn warm as the sky clears and allows the sun to peak out, warming up the afternoon. The wet season is starting to appear here, and I am really excited to see how the savannahs flood so much that they connect to the rivers, which means there will be life in those waters that I have not seen before. It’s like a tropical spring.
On the Road…Easter Break
So I last left you with Jess and I headed off to Nappi, which was to be the beginning of our 2 and 1/2 week South American extravaganza…Unfortunately the only thing that materialized of the trip to Nappi was the talk of it, and not due a lack of our own ambition, but instead a typical situation trying to get somewhere in the Rupununi, which is not annoying, just not a huge surprise. It was nobody’s fault except our own ignorance that led us to believe that it would only cost GUY$4,000 (US$20) to get into the village, and another $4,000 to get out. The original plan was to go out with the students on Wednesday morning; however, the back of the truck was brimming with students and baggage while more students were waiting outside of the truck to find a seat. In seeing this we decided that to could take the bus to Lethem and then hire a vehicle in…Delphina (the student I mentioned in the last newsletter) was the one who gave me the “estimate” of the hired vehicle. I waved my farewell and with excitement told them I would see them there…Jess and I made the trek to Lethem only to find out, much to our disappointment, that to get to Nappi it costs GUY$15,000, which is about US$75. And this was only one way, so needless to say, we could not go…So we rolled with the punches, drank plenty of Polars, which is one of the worst beers ever brewed, and tried to make up for our loss by planning the next adventure to a different village, which, once again, did not transpire. So, after realizing the only trip we were taking out of Lethem was the one back to Annai, we hopped on the bus and went home.
On Saturday the 31st we had a wedding to go to. Two of the teachers at the school, Sir Sean and Miss Edna (now Mistress Edna), got married in Annai and held their reception at the Annai benab. It was really nice, although I felt bad for Edna because she was so hot in her wedding gown that she didn’t seem like she was enjoying the ceremony much. They are a very nice couple and I wish them all the best.
To continue on with our plans, we headed back to Lethem on Sunday. I was supposed to go to Datanowa Ranch with some other World Teach volunteers, but recognizing transportation there probably was not possible we decided to head to Venezuela instead…Little did we know that the week before Easter is Holy Week and everyone from all over Venezuela comes down to “La Gran Sabana” for the week. We thought we were going to have trouble finding a place for 6 of us to sleep, but things worked out, as they always seem to do…we did have to switch hotels all 3 nights, but that was fine as long as we had a place to stay. We took a tour in La Gran Sabana with a man named Louis. Louis did not speak much English, but man, was he a good time. He would lie in the waterfalls and slide down them like a little kid. It was funny…maybe someday you will get to see pictures. Our tour was a “non-traditional” tour where we would drive through the Sabana and then stop and get out hiking. We saw some amazing waterfalls and pools. We stopped at this one spot that was elevated over the rest of the Sabana and Louis relayed to us, half in Spanish and half in English, that this is where Jurassic Park was filmed. All of a sudden La Gran Sabana became filled with tyrannosauruses and vallaso raptors in my head because you could clearly see that it was true. It is this vast open space with nothing but scattered tree islands, hills, and savannah. When you yelled your echo was carried out and back to your ears…I love that.
We headed back to Lethem on Thursday for the Lethem Rodeo. Come Monday we were supposed to head off to Manaus to go on an Amazon River trip for a few days, but I ended up going back up to Venezuela with a different group to go white-water rafting. We had 3 days, so we ended up planning another trip into La Gran Sabana the day before we were to go rafting. I had already seen a lot of the trip, but we ended up getting a lot further the second time around. We slid down these natural rock slides that have been formed from the constant flow of water over time. We also saw some amazing waterfalls, which seem to be everywhere in Venezuela, at least around Santa Elena. The next day we went rafting, which was awesome, minus all the cabbora flies (in Spanish they are called pura-pura)…Cabbora flies come out in the day and are similar to black flies. They were attacking us as we paddled down the river, which led to a lot less paddling and more and more jumping in the water for relief. The rafting was not as we had expected-by standards that we are accustomed to, this was not white water rafting. It was a three-part expedition…we rafted for a little bit, but before that we walked behind this amazing waterfall. At one point we had to get down on our bellies and crawl under this rock…it was really cool to be on the behind all that rushing water and see how it had shaped caverns most people never get to see. After the rafting we went body rafting down the same route. It was really scary the first time, and whoever was the first person to do it must have been nuts. You had to jump directly in to this one part of the water if you were going to go down the correct way…Otherwise, watch out. The thing was though, is that once you started walking/sliding/slipping and falling down the path you were supposed to take you really just lost control of the whole situation and could only hope for the best. It was a rush, and once you got to the end the guide would blow the whistle and you had to swim hard out of the rapid. After we body rafted we then paddled to the village to have lunch and pack up the boat to head back into Santa Elena. This is when the mosquitoes killed us. We kept goofing off and jumping out of the boat. There was one point just before we came to the village where there were these rapids that the guide forgot about (I don’t know if many people actually paddled the hour and a half to the village). At this point I didn’t have on my helmet or my life jacket. I asked him if I needed to put them back on, and at first he said no, and then he said I should maybe put the helmet back on…Well, thank God for that. We went down the rapids with no problem, but we went backwards into them to play around and spin the boat around, and I ended up falling right into the rapids…I opened my eyes under the water, saw yellow, and realized I was underneath the boat. Luckily in my moment of panic came a wave of calmness that told me to just let the river take me instead of fighting it. It happened so fast, and before I knew it I was down river and above water, but that moment when I opened my eyes under the water and realized I was underneath the raft kept coming back to me all day, and the more I thought about it the more all the ‘what if’s’ started freaking me out. At least I had that helmet on.
So overall the break was fun and I fell in love with Venezuela. We ended up meeting so many cool people that were travelling around for a year, 6 months, 5 years, who were all in Santa Elena either having just come down from Mount Roriama or about to head up it. I was envious of these people and decided that I will just have to go back since I didn’t have enough time to hike it myself…
Back in Annai for the second half of the month…
While I was looking forward to going home I knew that the variety I had had over the past 2 weeks was going to be null and void in Annai, however, after two weeks of being away from home my own bed and space were calling my name. Upon returning home I realized that this was the home stretch, the last term, and I am left in disbelief as I begin to look back on a year that has gone by so fast and start wrapping my thoughts and feelings of this experience up.
Journal entry 4/14/2007:
So, home sweet home, no food, no food. For lunch I had 10 cloves of sautéed garlic and a cup of coffee. I am going to run to Rock View to try to get to the garden and check the post before 4…otherwise the only possibility for dinner is beans.
…It’s crazy to look at the calendar to try to make some final journeys out to some villages… flipping the calendar to June and seeing ‘last week of new material, review and revision, exams…’It’s nuts how little time is actually left. I was anxious to get back and start this term to finish out this year. While I am enjoying it, and in the end I will have enjoyed it all, I am getting ready to get back to a less privative life style, although I do not see myself fully re-adapting back to the excessiveness of Western ways. Here though, I have definitely learned to appreciate certain ones, like selections of food, refrigerators, things to do, internet access…Guyana has been great up to this point and I am so glad that I came to do this- I have learned so much about myself and have experienced such a different sort of life than anything I am used to, and I have been given the opportunity to be able to see diversity, both culturally and environmentally.
Journal entry 4/17/2007
“Back to school today. It’s strange that I feel much the same as I did at the beginning of last term after I had come back to Annai from Chicago, wishing time away, anxious to get home. I keep telling myself that in 2 months I will probably be wishing for more time here, and I will most definitely be about to miss this place and be sad this experience has come to an end. I know July 7th is going to be unbelievable in so many ways. But I am getting bored here at the same time…I can never venture out very far, and even less on my own. I am starting to need a bit more variety and will appreciate it so much when I get home. Variety of so many things…people, food, attractions, things to do…I just feel like every day is too much of the same. However, I know these 2 months will go fast, and I also know that soon after I return to Chicago I will be wishing for savannah and mountain views, this lifestyle that is so simple yet challenging in so many ways. I will be longing to be curled up in my hammock reading a good book and taking in the breeze…
…The thing I will miss the most here are the nice people. The locals are so nice and understanding, so patient with each other sometimes in ways I cannot understand, and they are giving. They might not be the most academically educated people, but when you weigh the qualities and characteristics you would most desire in people, I think they tip the balance in the positive direction with all their attributes you wouldn’t find so abundantly in other places…
…One thing I have realized in my travels in the past few weeks is that people don’t really like Americans. I have known about U.S. sentiments, however, I don’t know if I have really realized it. People generalize Americans based on how our politicians run our country (how we let our politicians run our country). I do not like this and do not like how I am type-casted based on where I come from. There were times over the past few weeks where I would just assume to tell someone I was Canadian as opposed to an American in order to delete the stereotyping. I think so many of the negative connotations come out of this long war that we are in, and the true nature of the beast that seems to be more and more evident as time goes on. I would hate that someone would assume that because I am an American I would put a price tag on a person’s life, that I would choose the almighty dollar over the spilling of red blood, and I am sure that most Americans would not want to be dressed in the same ugly stereotypes.
Making farine in Surama
The last weekend of April we went to Surama to make farine with a woman named Paulette Allicock. It was such a great experience that was an eye-opening experience about how life exists out here.
Farine is made out of cassava, and it is a 2 day process to make it. We arrived at Paulette’s house at about 8 a.m., and after some bread, bananas, and coffee we headed out to the farm to get the cassava (Paulette and her family are lucky-last year’s rains just about wiped out most people’s cassava plant, so farine and all other cassava foods are in limited supply this year). Her farm is huge. It was planted using a slash-and-burn method, and if I remember correctly it had just been done 2 years prior. We went to the back of the farm to find the mature cassava crop, and then we started hacking away with our cutlasses. You cut down the stem part of the tree and then pull the tubers out of the ground. Once they were up, someone else cut a bit at then to see if they were good to use. After gathering a bunch, we packed the cassava into these things called warshees that you carry on your back. They are made out of plant fibers, and resemble a backpack. They have a head strap and 2 arm straps. The one I carried up didn’t have working arm straps though, so I tried just using my arms and my head to carry it back up to the house. I left the farm in an upright position, however, when reached the house I was fully bent over using my back muscles to carry up that heavy load. Halfway through the trip I thought I was going to have to pass the load off, but I was bound and determined to do it by myself. By the time we got back to the house, which was about a 15 minute walk, I felt as though I had already accomplished such a hard task, and this was only the beginning. My arms already felt like Jell-O. In the end this was the hardest part.
The next step is to peel the cassava. This part got to be a little meticulous at the end because only the small little tubers that were a pain in the ass to peel were left. Once the peeling was done, it was time to wash them in the bucket, and grate them. They have contrived this novel craft to assist in the grating. Most people grate on a grating board into a bucket…the Allicock’s however (and I think most people in Surama), have made a bike that you petal to spin this metal cylinder that grates the cassava. One person sits on the bike and petals, which isn’t that easy at times, and the other people push the cassava through the grater…watch your fingers though! It spins so fast and it is really sharp, and with one wrong movement your fingers could be getting grated. I think Paulette was getting really nervous watching us push it through, but don’t worry, we all still have 5 full fingers on each hand.
Once it was grated it gets put into this box where it sits over night. Paulette had some cassava soaking for a few days that we added as a source of yeast. This is the difference between Brazilian farinha and Guyanese farine. Guyanese farine is better…it’s not as fine as the Brazilian and it tastes better. So we left that to sit until the next morning. While we were working she was making us lunch. We had picked a pumpkin while we were down on the farm and she cooked that up as a stew, and she also curried some fish that her husband Daniel had caught that morning. It was so good and all 5 of us sat that and ate our little hearts out. Firsts, seconds, thirds…I don’t know, maybe some of us even had fourths, and it was all so good.
The next morning we arrived at about the same time, but started much slower than the day before. By the time we had got there Paulette had already strained the juice out of the grated cassava…it is poison. Once it was strained it was in blocks that had to be sifted. This part was nice. It made your hands so soft, and for some reason it was one of those tasks that seems like it should be a chore, but you actually find some satisfying pleasure in it. Before we sifted it though, we had to go back down to the farm and gather some fire wood. I think they were laughing at the quantity we managed to scrounge up, but nonetheless the fire was started. Finally it was roasting time. The farine gets added slowly to this giant metal plate that sits on a framework of bricks and has a hot, hot fire underneath. When the farine gets added it has to be stirred constantly. The more you add the harder the stirring gets because it is so heavy. It needs to be stirred constantly for two hours…so while the farine is getting roasted, well, so are you. The fire gets hot and if you are not careful the smoke coming from the fire below will burn your eyes. As time went on and the water vaporized out of the cassava, it became lighter and easier to stir, and it became edible farine. When we were all done and all the farine was in one large bucket, we got together as a group and took a picture with such a sense of accomplishment. Making farine is very hard work, and it was cool to be able to experience something that has been such an integral part of their society’s subsistence for all this time. Paulette was nice enough to let us take home 2 giant bags, which was a nice treat considering that it is hard to come by, as I mentioned earlier.
Form 5 Exams
Well, this is it for Form 5…They start taking their exams in the first week of May. I marked their SBA books and sent the results into the Ministry the day I got back from break…and I was very happy to do so, thinking that the SBA madness was all over. However, I realized that the same madness is going to be taking place with form 4 until the end of this term, especially now that I have an extra 6 periods to prepare for them…I want to make sure that they are not in the same position as 5th form was this year when they get to 5th form. When I started working with the current 5th formers they only had 6 chapters out of 24 in the book covered (and not very well), and they had not a single SBA done. I will feel a sense of accomplishment here when I am done with the fourth formers though, because when I leave they will have 12 out of the 24 SBA’s done and marked, and at least 8 chapters of the book covered extensively. I thought that 5th formers that are writing their CXC’s (the final exams to leave school that determine what kind of jobs they can get) was going to be my big achievement that I could be proud of when I left, but I realized that they are not ready, despite how hard we worked, and sadly enough I just don’t think that they will do that great on the exam. I accept this, and I understand that there just wasn’t enough time-all I can do is wish them the best at this point. What I can do though, is I can get the fourth formers in a good position so they will not have to go through the same thing that this year’s 5th formers did, and they can be at a pace that is not as stressful and can actually take the time to really learn the material.
Well, this is all for April…Oh, one more thing I didn’t mention…I am now a non-smoker. I quit when I came back from break, and I was also hypnotized by Grace’s mom, who is a doctor, to help me. And Mrs. Lindsay, I just wanted to let you know that I still haven’t smoked (and between you and me it is the middle of May, but shhh…I don’t want to ruin the story for the rest, so just casually act like April just ended). She told me when we started the process that I should just consider myself a non-smoker from this point on, and gave me ways to help in the process. And it worked! I was ready, and with that experience to help me, quitting has actually been kind of easy. There were a few moments that weren’t but for the most part having the mentality right away that I was a non-smoker helped a lot. Woo-hoo for my lungs!! (That’s another thing she said…every time I want a cigarette imagine what my lungs must look like, and then when I don’t smoke, imagine that a piece of black lung tissue has healed itself and is now renewed as the pink tissue it is supposed to be. Calm, control, confidence!
Hope all is well and that sunshine is warming your cold winter blues…Until next time…take care!
Howdy Everyone! Happy spring to you!! I am sure everyone at this point everyone has just about had it with Father Winter and are ready to see life come alive again, creating more life in the process. I would love to see the daffodils bloom, then the tulips (and I would show it to my dog, who just so happens to be named Tulip, so she could know the beautiful spring flower she is named after), and feel the morning chill turn warm as the sky clears and allows the sun to peak out, warming up the afternoon. The wet season is starting to appear here, and I am really excited to see how the savannahs flood so much that they connect to the rivers, which means there will be life in those waters that I have not seen before. It’s like a tropical spring.
On the Road…Easter Break
So I last left you with Jess and I headed off to Nappi, which was to be the beginning of our 2 and 1/2 week South American extravaganza…Unfortunately the only thing that materialized of the trip to Nappi was the talk of it, and not due a lack of our own ambition, but instead a typical situation trying to get somewhere in the Rupununi, which is not annoying, just not a huge surprise. It was nobody’s fault except our own ignorance that led us to believe that it would only cost GUY$4,000 (US$20) to get into the village, and another $4,000 to get out. The original plan was to go out with the students on Wednesday morning; however, the back of the truck was brimming with students and baggage while more students were waiting outside of the truck to find a seat. In seeing this we decided that to could take the bus to Lethem and then hire a vehicle in…Delphina (the student I mentioned in the last newsletter) was the one who gave me the “estimate” of the hired vehicle. I waved my farewell and with excitement told them I would see them there…Jess and I made the trek to Lethem only to find out, much to our disappointment, that to get to Nappi it costs GUY$15,000, which is about US$75. And this was only one way, so needless to say, we could not go…So we rolled with the punches, drank plenty of Polars, which is one of the worst beers ever brewed, and tried to make up for our loss by planning the next adventure to a different village, which, once again, did not transpire. So, after realizing the only trip we were taking out of Lethem was the one back to Annai, we hopped on the bus and went home.
On Saturday the 31st we had a wedding to go to. Two of the teachers at the school, Sir Sean and Miss Edna (now Mistress Edna), got married in Annai and held their reception at the Annai benab. It was really nice, although I felt bad for Edna because she was so hot in her wedding gown that she didn’t seem like she was enjoying the ceremony much. They are a very nice couple and I wish them all the best.
To continue on with our plans, we headed back to Lethem on Sunday. I was supposed to go to Datanowa Ranch with some other World Teach volunteers, but recognizing transportation there probably was not possible we decided to head to Venezuela instead…Little did we know that the week before Easter is Holy Week and everyone from all over Venezuela comes down to “La Gran Sabana” for the week. We thought we were going to have trouble finding a place for 6 of us to sleep, but things worked out, as they always seem to do…we did have to switch hotels all 3 nights, but that was fine as long as we had a place to stay. We took a tour in La Gran Sabana with a man named Louis. Louis did not speak much English, but man, was he a good time. He would lie in the waterfalls and slide down them like a little kid. It was funny…maybe someday you will get to see pictures. Our tour was a “non-traditional” tour where we would drive through the Sabana and then stop and get out hiking. We saw some amazing waterfalls and pools. We stopped at this one spot that was elevated over the rest of the Sabana and Louis relayed to us, half in Spanish and half in English, that this is where Jurassic Park was filmed. All of a sudden La Gran Sabana became filled with tyrannosauruses and vallaso raptors in my head because you could clearly see that it was true. It is this vast open space with nothing but scattered tree islands, hills, and savannah. When you yelled your echo was carried out and back to your ears…I love that.
We headed back to Lethem on Thursday for the Lethem Rodeo. Come Monday we were supposed to head off to Manaus to go on an Amazon River trip for a few days, but I ended up going back up to Venezuela with a different group to go white-water rafting. We had 3 days, so we ended up planning another trip into La Gran Sabana the day before we were to go rafting. I had already seen a lot of the trip, but we ended up getting a lot further the second time around. We slid down these natural rock slides that have been formed from the constant flow of water over time. We also saw some amazing waterfalls, which seem to be everywhere in Venezuela, at least around Santa Elena. The next day we went rafting, which was awesome, minus all the cabbora flies (in Spanish they are called pura-pura)…Cabbora flies come out in the day and are similar to black flies. They were attacking us as we paddled down the river, which led to a lot less paddling and more and more jumping in the water for relief. The rafting was not as we had expected-by standards that we are accustomed to, this was not white water rafting. It was a three-part expedition…we rafted for a little bit, but before that we walked behind this amazing waterfall. At one point we had to get down on our bellies and crawl under this rock…it was really cool to be on the behind all that rushing water and see how it had shaped caverns most people never get to see. After the rafting we went body rafting down the same route. It was really scary the first time, and whoever was the first person to do it must have been nuts. You had to jump directly in to this one part of the water if you were going to go down the correct way…Otherwise, watch out. The thing was though, is that once you started walking/sliding/slipping and falling down the path you were supposed to take you really just lost control of the whole situation and could only hope for the best. It was a rush, and once you got to the end the guide would blow the whistle and you had to swim hard out of the rapid. After we body rafted we then paddled to the village to have lunch and pack up the boat to head back into Santa Elena. This is when the mosquitoes killed us. We kept goofing off and jumping out of the boat. There was one point just before we came to the village where there were these rapids that the guide forgot about (I don’t know if many people actually paddled the hour and a half to the village). At this point I didn’t have on my helmet or my life jacket. I asked him if I needed to put them back on, and at first he said no, and then he said I should maybe put the helmet back on…Well, thank God for that. We went down the rapids with no problem, but we went backwards into them to play around and spin the boat around, and I ended up falling right into the rapids…I opened my eyes under the water, saw yellow, and realized I was underneath the boat. Luckily in my moment of panic came a wave of calmness that told me to just let the river take me instead of fighting it. It happened so fast, and before I knew it I was down river and above water, but that moment when I opened my eyes under the water and realized I was underneath the raft kept coming back to me all day, and the more I thought about it the more all the ‘what if’s’ started freaking me out. At least I had that helmet on.
So overall the break was fun and I fell in love with Venezuela. We ended up meeting so many cool people that were travelling around for a year, 6 months, 5 years, who were all in Santa Elena either having just come down from Mount Roriama or about to head up it. I was envious of these people and decided that I will just have to go back since I didn’t have enough time to hike it myself…
Back in Annai for the second half of the month…
While I was looking forward to going home I knew that the variety I had had over the past 2 weeks was going to be null and void in Annai, however, after two weeks of being away from home my own bed and space were calling my name. Upon returning home I realized that this was the home stretch, the last term, and I am left in disbelief as I begin to look back on a year that has gone by so fast and start wrapping my thoughts and feelings of this experience up.
Journal entry 4/14/2007:
So, home sweet home, no food, no food. For lunch I had 10 cloves of sautéed garlic and a cup of coffee. I am going to run to Rock View to try to get to the garden and check the post before 4…otherwise the only possibility for dinner is beans.
…It’s crazy to look at the calendar to try to make some final journeys out to some villages… flipping the calendar to June and seeing ‘last week of new material, review and revision, exams…’It’s nuts how little time is actually left. I was anxious to get back and start this term to finish out this year. While I am enjoying it, and in the end I will have enjoyed it all, I am getting ready to get back to a less privative life style, although I do not see myself fully re-adapting back to the excessiveness of Western ways. Here though, I have definitely learned to appreciate certain ones, like selections of food, refrigerators, things to do, internet access…Guyana has been great up to this point and I am so glad that I came to do this- I have learned so much about myself and have experienced such a different sort of life than anything I am used to, and I have been given the opportunity to be able to see diversity, both culturally and environmentally.
Journal entry 4/17/2007
“Back to school today. It’s strange that I feel much the same as I did at the beginning of last term after I had come back to Annai from Chicago, wishing time away, anxious to get home. I keep telling myself that in 2 months I will probably be wishing for more time here, and I will most definitely be about to miss this place and be sad this experience has come to an end. I know July 7th is going to be unbelievable in so many ways. But I am getting bored here at the same time…I can never venture out very far, and even less on my own. I am starting to need a bit more variety and will appreciate it so much when I get home. Variety of so many things…people, food, attractions, things to do…I just feel like every day is too much of the same. However, I know these 2 months will go fast, and I also know that soon after I return to Chicago I will be wishing for savannah and mountain views, this lifestyle that is so simple yet challenging in so many ways. I will be longing to be curled up in my hammock reading a good book and taking in the breeze…
…The thing I will miss the most here are the nice people. The locals are so nice and understanding, so patient with each other sometimes in ways I cannot understand, and they are giving. They might not be the most academically educated people, but when you weigh the qualities and characteristics you would most desire in people, I think they tip the balance in the positive direction with all their attributes you wouldn’t find so abundantly in other places…
…One thing I have realized in my travels in the past few weeks is that people don’t really like Americans. I have known about U.S. sentiments, however, I don’t know if I have really realized it. People generalize Americans based on how our politicians run our country (how we let our politicians run our country). I do not like this and do not like how I am type-casted based on where I come from. There were times over the past few weeks where I would just assume to tell someone I was Canadian as opposed to an American in order to delete the stereotyping. I think so many of the negative connotations come out of this long war that we are in, and the true nature of the beast that seems to be more and more evident as time goes on. I would hate that someone would assume that because I am an American I would put a price tag on a person’s life, that I would choose the almighty dollar over the spilling of red blood, and I am sure that most Americans would not want to be dressed in the same ugly stereotypes.
Making farine in Surama
The last weekend of April we went to Surama to make farine with a woman named Paulette Allicock. It was such a great experience that was an eye-opening experience about how life exists out here.
Farine is made out of cassava, and it is a 2 day process to make it. We arrived at Paulette’s house at about 8 a.m., and after some bread, bananas, and coffee we headed out to the farm to get the cassava (Paulette and her family are lucky-last year’s rains just about wiped out most people’s cassava plant, so farine and all other cassava foods are in limited supply this year). Her farm is huge. It was planted using a slash-and-burn method, and if I remember correctly it had just been done 2 years prior. We went to the back of the farm to find the mature cassava crop, and then we started hacking away with our cutlasses. You cut down the stem part of the tree and then pull the tubers out of the ground. Once they were up, someone else cut a bit at then to see if they were good to use. After gathering a bunch, we packed the cassava into these things called warshees that you carry on your back. They are made out of plant fibers, and resemble a backpack. They have a head strap and 2 arm straps. The one I carried up didn’t have working arm straps though, so I tried just using my arms and my head to carry it back up to the house. I left the farm in an upright position, however, when reached the house I was fully bent over using my back muscles to carry up that heavy load. Halfway through the trip I thought I was going to have to pass the load off, but I was bound and determined to do it by myself. By the time we got back to the house, which was about a 15 minute walk, I felt as though I had already accomplished such a hard task, and this was only the beginning. My arms already felt like Jell-O. In the end this was the hardest part.
The next step is to peel the cassava. This part got to be a little meticulous at the end because only the small little tubers that were a pain in the ass to peel were left. Once the peeling was done, it was time to wash them in the bucket, and grate them. They have contrived this novel craft to assist in the grating. Most people grate on a grating board into a bucket…the Allicock’s however (and I think most people in Surama), have made a bike that you petal to spin this metal cylinder that grates the cassava. One person sits on the bike and petals, which isn’t that easy at times, and the other people push the cassava through the grater…watch your fingers though! It spins so fast and it is really sharp, and with one wrong movement your fingers could be getting grated. I think Paulette was getting really nervous watching us push it through, but don’t worry, we all still have 5 full fingers on each hand.
Once it was grated it gets put into this box where it sits over night. Paulette had some cassava soaking for a few days that we added as a source of yeast. This is the difference between Brazilian farinha and Guyanese farine. Guyanese farine is better…it’s not as fine as the Brazilian and it tastes better. So we left that to sit until the next morning. While we were working she was making us lunch. We had picked a pumpkin while we were down on the farm and she cooked that up as a stew, and she also curried some fish that her husband Daniel had caught that morning. It was so good and all 5 of us sat that and ate our little hearts out. Firsts, seconds, thirds…I don’t know, maybe some of us even had fourths, and it was all so good.
The next morning we arrived at about the same time, but started much slower than the day before. By the time we had got there Paulette had already strained the juice out of the grated cassava…it is poison. Once it was strained it was in blocks that had to be sifted. This part was nice. It made your hands so soft, and for some reason it was one of those tasks that seems like it should be a chore, but you actually find some satisfying pleasure in it. Before we sifted it though, we had to go back down to the farm and gather some fire wood. I think they were laughing at the quantity we managed to scrounge up, but nonetheless the fire was started. Finally it was roasting time. The farine gets added slowly to this giant metal plate that sits on a framework of bricks and has a hot, hot fire underneath. When the farine gets added it has to be stirred constantly. The more you add the harder the stirring gets because it is so heavy. It needs to be stirred constantly for two hours…so while the farine is getting roasted, well, so are you. The fire gets hot and if you are not careful the smoke coming from the fire below will burn your eyes. As time went on and the water vaporized out of the cassava, it became lighter and easier to stir, and it became edible farine. When we were all done and all the farine was in one large bucket, we got together as a group and took a picture with such a sense of accomplishment. Making farine is very hard work, and it was cool to be able to experience something that has been such an integral part of their society’s subsistence for all this time. Paulette was nice enough to let us take home 2 giant bags, which was a nice treat considering that it is hard to come by, as I mentioned earlier.
Form 5 Exams
Well, this is it for Form 5…They start taking their exams in the first week of May. I marked their SBA books and sent the results into the Ministry the day I got back from break…and I was very happy to do so, thinking that the SBA madness was all over. However, I realized that the same madness is going to be taking place with form 4 until the end of this term, especially now that I have an extra 6 periods to prepare for them…I want to make sure that they are not in the same position as 5th form was this year when they get to 5th form. When I started working with the current 5th formers they only had 6 chapters out of 24 in the book covered (and not very well), and they had not a single SBA done. I will feel a sense of accomplishment here when I am done with the fourth formers though, because when I leave they will have 12 out of the 24 SBA’s done and marked, and at least 8 chapters of the book covered extensively. I thought that 5th formers that are writing their CXC’s (the final exams to leave school that determine what kind of jobs they can get) was going to be my big achievement that I could be proud of when I left, but I realized that they are not ready, despite how hard we worked, and sadly enough I just don’t think that they will do that great on the exam. I accept this, and I understand that there just wasn’t enough time-all I can do is wish them the best at this point. What I can do though, is I can get the fourth formers in a good position so they will not have to go through the same thing that this year’s 5th formers did, and they can be at a pace that is not as stressful and can actually take the time to really learn the material.
Well, this is all for April…Oh, one more thing I didn’t mention…I am now a non-smoker. I quit when I came back from break, and I was also hypnotized by Grace’s mom, who is a doctor, to help me. And Mrs. Lindsay, I just wanted to let you know that I still haven’t smoked (and between you and me it is the middle of May, but shhh…I don’t want to ruin the story for the rest, so just casually act like April just ended). She told me when we started the process that I should just consider myself a non-smoker from this point on, and gave me ways to help in the process. And it worked! I was ready, and with that experience to help me, quitting has actually been kind of easy. There were a few moments that weren’t but for the most part having the mentality right away that I was a non-smoker helped a lot. Woo-hoo for my lungs!! (That’s another thing she said…every time I want a cigarette imagine what my lungs must look like, and then when I don’t smoke, imagine that a piece of black lung tissue has healed itself and is now renewed as the pink tissue it is supposed to be. Calm, control, confidence!
Hope all is well and that sunshine is warming your cold winter blues…Until next time…take care!
Friday, April 27, 2007
March Newsletter
March 2007 Newsletter
Well, you have already received some March news, the “Look up at the sky” segment that included the incredible story of the plane ride and the Lunar Eclipse. Those were two events that occurred in the beginning of the month to fill a newsletter or two…I figure since you know some of the events that have already occurred in March I will share with you some journal entries, take you through a week in my life here in Annai, North Rupununi, in Region #9 of Guyana, and share my thoughts and feelings, those crazy emotions which I have yet been able to fully grasp the meaning of.
Before the depiction of my days in Annai I will first give you some detail of what is going on here. School is coming to a close for the term, which is insane in terms of time flying by- I never realized how fast 13-14 weeks could fly by. They have a week of review and revision (3/12-3/16), a week of exams (3/19-3/23), and a week of marking exams for teachers and the beginning of a venture home for students (3/26-3/30). I will be leaving to go with some of the students back to their village, Nappi, on Wednesday during the week of marking. I am really excited for this trip since I don’t ever really have a chance to see the far out villages that my students come from. This will by far be one of the biggest experiences I feel I will have missed out on when I leave Guyana, but in terms of time and money it just isn’t feasible to get around...Some villages take days to get to, and we only have our weekends. In Nappi, Delphina, one of my favorite third form students, is going to take us hiking to the falls and maybe even cook us pepper pot, which is a local dish I have never tried…I will let you know how it is. All I really know about it is that one of the World Teach Volunteers last year had to shave the legs of the cow they were making it out of…
So….
A week in my life….
Most of us believe that a week begins on Monday, but if the week is to begin in a nice and calm manner that doesn’t start with hurrying off to work, then I would prefer to start it on Sunday as the calendar tells me I should.
Sunday’s in Annai are by far my favorite days because they consist mostly of lounging in a hammock or bed and reading, doing wash, journal writing, spacing out somewhere in my head, reading again, this time maybe a magazine, a textbook, or back to whatever fiction story has me captivated at the moment…Sunday’s for me here are days that I can wander around not doing much of anything, while at the same time feeling completely satisfied at the end of the day.
Journal Entry 3/18/07
“I just make some bread, I beat the crap out of the dough, and now I will let it sit in the sun so the yeast can make it fluffy with carbon dioxide as it undergoes fermentation. I light a cigarette (no, I haven’t quit…yet) and walk out the back to grab a seat in my hammock. It’s squeaking-the brackets need some Soya oil. My clean, well, kind of clean wash is blowing on the line, I need it to dry quick since I have more waiting in the bucket to be rinsed and it looks as though some showers are moving in from the distance. Sunday morning. Another great day to get lost in this world and go wherever my mind takes me.
I lean my head back in the hammock and close my eyes. It’s about 11 a.m., roughly, and I’m already ready for an afternoon siesta. Kirsty has “knicked” my I-Pod again; I can hear Rusted Root playing from their kitchen.
It lightly starts to sprinkle as I stare at my wash, I’m praying it doesn’t pour, otherwise the drying will not move along as rapidly as I would like it to. I get up and start rinsing the second half. Shit-I shouldn’t have added more soap. Now it’s going to take a second rinse. I hate when that happens. I have found that the trick is to add just enough soap where you can legitimately imagine your clothes are actually getting cleaned but more instead of just wet so they can shrink back into shape.
Not only did I have a heaping mound of filth to wash, but also Tulip rolled around in donkey dung, or an equivalent, and I had to wash her too. Ah, my dirty, nasty bitch. Maybe she was trying to eat it (she has been caught on more than one occasion eating different varieties of turds) and ended up so drunk with pleasure that she fell over into it.”
Monday through Friday are just about the same thing. I wake up at about 5:30-6 a.m. with the sunrise and crawl out from underneath my bug net. Bleary-eyed I turn on the pot of water to make some coffee-Nescafe instant coffee and powdered milk…is there a better way to start the day? Sometimes I take a morning walk with my best friend I-Pod and my dog Tulip, other times I read or write in my journal, or maybe pull together some last minute details on a lesson-it depends on the morning.
The school bell rings (a hand held bell, not the type you are thinking of from your school days…I guess depending on your age ) for assembly at 8:15, and first period starts at 8:30. Every day my schedule is different. Monday’s and Friday’s are my busiest in terms of having classes and Tuesday is my least, with only 3 periods to teach. The other 5 periods of Tuesday are spent lesson planning and probably writing out notes for fifth form. We have one break at 10:15 until 10:30. Then we have another break, a lunch break, at 12:15 until 1:05. The last bell rings at 2:15, we reconvene again for assembly, and the students are dismissed at roughly 2:30.
Depending on what day it is, I get home between 2:31-4 p.m. Sometimes we run up to Rock View in order to check the post by 4 p.m. to retrieve letters that have been sent to Singapore before reaching Guyana, or else we read for the afternoon in our hammocks. Dinner talk/preparations begin at about 5, and by 6 we are normally eating or making some sort of concoction out of things we manage to scrounge up as a group. Beans, rice, chapattis (flour and water), roti (flour, water, sugar, salt, baking powder), beans again, and hopefully some sort of vegetable, mostly being okra, bora, or green cabbage, or if we are really lucky, a pumpkin to make pumpkin curry with…mmm…Did I mention beans? Hopefully the lights come on while we are cooking, but more often than not they do not get turned on until 7 p.m., which is after we have cooked and the sun has gone down.
Once the lights go on we normally go back to reading or do whatever it is that we might need to do for school. Kirsty and I decided the other night to pretend we were rock stars shooting a video and found that banging two lids to pots together make a fun yet deafeningly annoying instrument we called the symbols. We started in the kitchen and eventually found a dance floor/stage outside on the steps of the canteen. We danced to Salt-n-Pepa’s “None of your business” and “Shoop”, as well as a little Black Eyed Peas…Needless to say, I think we drove everyone within earshot of our clanging lids crazy, and I think Jess and Grace were more than happy to make their way over to the school to photocopy their exams. It was fun though; we released some stored up energy.
Things I think of between here and there….
For those that know me well, you will understand how good this is for me…for those of you that don’t know me that well, well, you’re about to…
Journal entry 3/25/07
“It is Sunday and I am barricaded within the cement walls of my house all by myself and I love it. I was supposed to go to Aranaputa with the girls, but I didn’t want to. I felt like I just needed the place to myself today, I needed a bit of quiet alone time. I have been reading back over my journal from March and there are so many entries where I mention something about going home, and to be honest with myself, it’s exactly what I am thinking of right now. I don’t want to go home today, or even tomorrow for that matter, but I am getting anxious to get home. I think coming here to Guyana to do this has been a very positive experience for me, and I am excited to go home and apply to the Western life of mine all the things I feel I have learnt here this year.
So what exactly have I learned? Well, I have definitely learned that I love spending time by myself just doing random things, whatever it is my mind feels like doing in a moment. If there is anything that I think is the most important quality I have realized about myself, it is this. I have always been such a social butterfly, unable to sit for more than one second by myself without hearing voices through a phone, a TV (even if I am not watching it), or able to even sit, I was always on the run. I am not running anymore, and I am rather happy with that. When I do get home I want to be less of the screwball I was before I left…
…I can’t wait to have my own apartment again, and not let myself be so busy that every single day I have something to do, somewhere to go. I want to stay at my apartment and lose myself in it, much in the way that I do on the weekends here.
I want to start saving my money instead of squandering it away on things I shouldn’t and save for things and experiences I really want…A foreign adventure with my mother, trips around my own astoundingly beautiful country, a farewell to my debt, money in the bank to head off to graduate school with…
These are things that make me anxious to get home (although I left some of the more personal thoughts out…). I want to become a better cook and have gatherings with my family and friends, I want to watch good quality films that make me think, as well as read books of the same. I want to learn about so many things in the world around me, about people and cultures, about government and religion, about Earth and space, the biology to the physics. And I want to write it all down. Everything I see and do I want to write down and keep track of the experience and my corresponding thoughts. I want be more in tune with my body, and I want to take better care of it seeing as I only get one in this life, and I like this life.
Probably having so much time to sit and think about these things is what makes me keep saying I want to go home-it’s because I am excited to see myself and how I respond to life back in the U.S. and the rest of the developed world after this experience. Plus, it seems like I see so many people able to move from here to there, and it makes me feel stuck on Bina Hill, unable to trek too far away into a place that has so much life to discover. Even though life here seems pretty easy, which I can’t say that it isn’t, it’s the monotony of it all that can drive me into a frenzy.
Sometimes I feel like I spend my days with students that don’t really care about the world around them, or what even can feel like themselves for that matter (why I let these ones stand out to me I don’t know why because there are many students that are gifted and very hardworking). (In the next few paragraphs when I say “they” I am only referring to those students that I see as being this neglectful of their future…In no way do I mean all the students or their parents or the whole of Guyanese people.) Maybe these students just scare me because I fear for what will happen to Guyana, especially the Rupununi, in the next 5-10 years if they don’t pull it together…the youth that is. They seem so lazy sometimes, like they can’t and don’t even want to care for themselves. They don’t want to do anything for themselves-not even make food. They just expect everyone else to do things for them. Seeing this makes me realize that maybe this area is too dependent on volunteers, which has been mentioned to me but I did not see it as so at the time. Each volunteer probably comes in with some form of pity or another towards the people, the students, and then we end up feeling bad and the students have figured it all out…and therefore they play the “poor me” and end up getting too many things handed to them with minimal effort on their part. And now they have become a product of their environment. The nurturing aspect has led them to take things for granted.
So what would happen if all 6 of the volunteers at this school left at the end of this year no more were to return? I ask them this sometimes. “Who will teach you?” I say. They have to take responsibility for their own people, for their land, for their futures. They cannot expect somebody else to do it without being exploited and having their land raped. They have to learn about certain things for their own subsistence, they have to learn so they don’t get outsmarted by the CEO of the next lumbering company that wants to do business here. “We will pave the road for you, and you can pay us with your trees.”
To someone who doesn’t know or is unable to think about what he really means because they haven’t been taught or haven’t learned how to think, this might sound like a fantastic idea, but who benefits? Don’t you think a paved road would make it easier for the CEO’s trucks to come and collect the lumber and haul it out with all it’s biomass over a smooth and freshly laid road? However, the person who has been taught to think, and is able to do it critically, might stop and weigh the pros and cons and would be able to ask the villain just the right questions to show (s)he is not a foo and that (s)he is educated and able to make wise decisions since (s)he has learned to assess a situation and is able to predict some of the results.
It’s even harder to see the students, especially the male students, which have strong personalities and are in a real position to make decisions for this land and the people that occupy it, but instead are pissing time away being cool and lazy. They are seemingly oblivious to what their future holds as I watch their emulation of characters like Eminem and 50 Cent, which worries me that these potential leaders are going to make some serious mistakes that will result in the loss of the land and suppression/oppression of the people. All because they didn’t understand the power available to the encroaching world to exert its force because they were too busy doing nothing for themselves except taking it all for granted. And believe me, I know I am not above this way of thinking, or unthinking I should say, because I myself was one of these time pissers. I just hope they can it together before the damage has been done. And then I stop and wonder if it’s not already too late. Damage may be already done that has not yet materialized; however, I would never want to let myself think that it was too late. Sometimes damage can be reversed, and if it can’t then it can at least be slowed or halted. I fell that the present generation of students at this school, and all the schools in this country for that matter, are going to be largely responsible for positive progress in Guyana for Guyanese people, especially preservation of each unique Amerindian culture in the nation…
All I can hope when I leave here is that I have taught some of them enough to understand the great responsibility that lies before them in their future, whether they use this knowledge now or if they retain it until they realize what I was trying to say in my ranting and raving about standing up for themselves, about preserving their environment, about learning the language and customs of their ancestors.
Biblical Rain
The rainy season has started, or so I think. I am told that this is just the beginning, but man, does it RAIN here. Hard. And for extended periods. One day Jess and I came home to a flooded house where one would wonder if we even had a roof or louvres in our windows. All my papers were wet, my bed was wet, my books were wet, and just about every inch of our floor throughout the whole house was wet. The front of our house gets flooded out with about 5+ inches of water, so in order to get just over to Grace and Kirsty’s house we got a board and made a makeshift bridge to carry us from one front stoop to the other. Unless I remember to bring in my hammock when it rains my days of hammocking are just about over it seems. Our solution to this is that we are going to get hammock hooks and hang them in the house, even though I prefer the bed since the flies, along with the ants, are starting to take over the world. Grace and Kirsty went to the Cricket World Cup in Georgetown at the end of the month. They brought back a blow up boat, which is normally used in pool settings, however, in our case will be used to explore the vast and flooded savannahs surrounding us soon enough. We are going to reinforce the bottom of the boat with duct tape just to err on the side of caution.
I hear a plane…hopefully that means that the package my mom sent a month and a half ago will be arriving, although I doubt it. Everyday that I go to check my hopes are shattered when Josephine tells my packages have not yet arrived.
Our break started early, 3 days early I think due to the World Cup. Why school had to be shut down, especially all the way out here, is beyond me. This is one of the problems with the ministry of Education here. To compensate for this week an extra week has been added on to the August term, however, our plane tickets are booked for our return trip home already and cannot be changed without a fee, so we are going to miss the last week of school. This next term is the shortest being only 12 weeks, and 3 of those weeks are not even teaching weeks as I explained in the beginning of this newsletter. How time flies…
We have Easter break from March 30th - April 15th.
I will tell you all about it in the next newsletter. Until then-Peace out.
Well, you have already received some March news, the “Look up at the sky” segment that included the incredible story of the plane ride and the Lunar Eclipse. Those were two events that occurred in the beginning of the month to fill a newsletter or two…I figure since you know some of the events that have already occurred in March I will share with you some journal entries, take you through a week in my life here in Annai, North Rupununi, in Region #9 of Guyana, and share my thoughts and feelings, those crazy emotions which I have yet been able to fully grasp the meaning of.
Before the depiction of my days in Annai I will first give you some detail of what is going on here. School is coming to a close for the term, which is insane in terms of time flying by- I never realized how fast 13-14 weeks could fly by. They have a week of review and revision (3/12-3/16), a week of exams (3/19-3/23), and a week of marking exams for teachers and the beginning of a venture home for students (3/26-3/30). I will be leaving to go with some of the students back to their village, Nappi, on Wednesday during the week of marking. I am really excited for this trip since I don’t ever really have a chance to see the far out villages that my students come from. This will by far be one of the biggest experiences I feel I will have missed out on when I leave Guyana, but in terms of time and money it just isn’t feasible to get around...Some villages take days to get to, and we only have our weekends. In Nappi, Delphina, one of my favorite third form students, is going to take us hiking to the falls and maybe even cook us pepper pot, which is a local dish I have never tried…I will let you know how it is. All I really know about it is that one of the World Teach Volunteers last year had to shave the legs of the cow they were making it out of…
So….
A week in my life….
Most of us believe that a week begins on Monday, but if the week is to begin in a nice and calm manner that doesn’t start with hurrying off to work, then I would prefer to start it on Sunday as the calendar tells me I should.
Sunday’s in Annai are by far my favorite days because they consist mostly of lounging in a hammock or bed and reading, doing wash, journal writing, spacing out somewhere in my head, reading again, this time maybe a magazine, a textbook, or back to whatever fiction story has me captivated at the moment…Sunday’s for me here are days that I can wander around not doing much of anything, while at the same time feeling completely satisfied at the end of the day.
Journal Entry 3/18/07
“I just make some bread, I beat the crap out of the dough, and now I will let it sit in the sun so the yeast can make it fluffy with carbon dioxide as it undergoes fermentation. I light a cigarette (no, I haven’t quit…yet) and walk out the back to grab a seat in my hammock. It’s squeaking-the brackets need some Soya oil. My clean, well, kind of clean wash is blowing on the line, I need it to dry quick since I have more waiting in the bucket to be rinsed and it looks as though some showers are moving in from the distance. Sunday morning. Another great day to get lost in this world and go wherever my mind takes me.
I lean my head back in the hammock and close my eyes. It’s about 11 a.m., roughly, and I’m already ready for an afternoon siesta. Kirsty has “knicked” my I-Pod again; I can hear Rusted Root playing from their kitchen.
It lightly starts to sprinkle as I stare at my wash, I’m praying it doesn’t pour, otherwise the drying will not move along as rapidly as I would like it to. I get up and start rinsing the second half. Shit-I shouldn’t have added more soap. Now it’s going to take a second rinse. I hate when that happens. I have found that the trick is to add just enough soap where you can legitimately imagine your clothes are actually getting cleaned but more instead of just wet so they can shrink back into shape.
Not only did I have a heaping mound of filth to wash, but also Tulip rolled around in donkey dung, or an equivalent, and I had to wash her too. Ah, my dirty, nasty bitch. Maybe she was trying to eat it (she has been caught on more than one occasion eating different varieties of turds) and ended up so drunk with pleasure that she fell over into it.”
Monday through Friday are just about the same thing. I wake up at about 5:30-6 a.m. with the sunrise and crawl out from underneath my bug net. Bleary-eyed I turn on the pot of water to make some coffee-Nescafe instant coffee and powdered milk…is there a better way to start the day? Sometimes I take a morning walk with my best friend I-Pod and my dog Tulip, other times I read or write in my journal, or maybe pull together some last minute details on a lesson-it depends on the morning.
The school bell rings (a hand held bell, not the type you are thinking of from your school days…I guess depending on your age ) for assembly at 8:15, and first period starts at 8:30. Every day my schedule is different. Monday’s and Friday’s are my busiest in terms of having classes and Tuesday is my least, with only 3 periods to teach. The other 5 periods of Tuesday are spent lesson planning and probably writing out notes for fifth form. We have one break at 10:15 until 10:30. Then we have another break, a lunch break, at 12:15 until 1:05. The last bell rings at 2:15, we reconvene again for assembly, and the students are dismissed at roughly 2:30.
Depending on what day it is, I get home between 2:31-4 p.m. Sometimes we run up to Rock View in order to check the post by 4 p.m. to retrieve letters that have been sent to Singapore before reaching Guyana, or else we read for the afternoon in our hammocks. Dinner talk/preparations begin at about 5, and by 6 we are normally eating or making some sort of concoction out of things we manage to scrounge up as a group. Beans, rice, chapattis (flour and water), roti (flour, water, sugar, salt, baking powder), beans again, and hopefully some sort of vegetable, mostly being okra, bora, or green cabbage, or if we are really lucky, a pumpkin to make pumpkin curry with…mmm…Did I mention beans? Hopefully the lights come on while we are cooking, but more often than not they do not get turned on until 7 p.m., which is after we have cooked and the sun has gone down.
Once the lights go on we normally go back to reading or do whatever it is that we might need to do for school. Kirsty and I decided the other night to pretend we were rock stars shooting a video and found that banging two lids to pots together make a fun yet deafeningly annoying instrument we called the symbols. We started in the kitchen and eventually found a dance floor/stage outside on the steps of the canteen. We danced to Salt-n-Pepa’s “None of your business” and “Shoop”, as well as a little Black Eyed Peas…Needless to say, I think we drove everyone within earshot of our clanging lids crazy, and I think Jess and Grace were more than happy to make their way over to the school to photocopy their exams. It was fun though; we released some stored up energy.
Things I think of between here and there….
For those that know me well, you will understand how good this is for me…for those of you that don’t know me that well, well, you’re about to…
Journal entry 3/25/07
“It is Sunday and I am barricaded within the cement walls of my house all by myself and I love it. I was supposed to go to Aranaputa with the girls, but I didn’t want to. I felt like I just needed the place to myself today, I needed a bit of quiet alone time. I have been reading back over my journal from March and there are so many entries where I mention something about going home, and to be honest with myself, it’s exactly what I am thinking of right now. I don’t want to go home today, or even tomorrow for that matter, but I am getting anxious to get home. I think coming here to Guyana to do this has been a very positive experience for me, and I am excited to go home and apply to the Western life of mine all the things I feel I have learnt here this year.
So what exactly have I learned? Well, I have definitely learned that I love spending time by myself just doing random things, whatever it is my mind feels like doing in a moment. If there is anything that I think is the most important quality I have realized about myself, it is this. I have always been such a social butterfly, unable to sit for more than one second by myself without hearing voices through a phone, a TV (even if I am not watching it), or able to even sit, I was always on the run. I am not running anymore, and I am rather happy with that. When I do get home I want to be less of the screwball I was before I left…
…I can’t wait to have my own apartment again, and not let myself be so busy that every single day I have something to do, somewhere to go. I want to stay at my apartment and lose myself in it, much in the way that I do on the weekends here.
I want to start saving my money instead of squandering it away on things I shouldn’t and save for things and experiences I really want…A foreign adventure with my mother, trips around my own astoundingly beautiful country, a farewell to my debt, money in the bank to head off to graduate school with…
These are things that make me anxious to get home (although I left some of the more personal thoughts out…). I want to become a better cook and have gatherings with my family and friends, I want to watch good quality films that make me think, as well as read books of the same. I want to learn about so many things in the world around me, about people and cultures, about government and religion, about Earth and space, the biology to the physics. And I want to write it all down. Everything I see and do I want to write down and keep track of the experience and my corresponding thoughts. I want be more in tune with my body, and I want to take better care of it seeing as I only get one in this life, and I like this life.
Probably having so much time to sit and think about these things is what makes me keep saying I want to go home-it’s because I am excited to see myself and how I respond to life back in the U.S. and the rest of the developed world after this experience. Plus, it seems like I see so many people able to move from here to there, and it makes me feel stuck on Bina Hill, unable to trek too far away into a place that has so much life to discover. Even though life here seems pretty easy, which I can’t say that it isn’t, it’s the monotony of it all that can drive me into a frenzy.
Sometimes I feel like I spend my days with students that don’t really care about the world around them, or what even can feel like themselves for that matter (why I let these ones stand out to me I don’t know why because there are many students that are gifted and very hardworking). (In the next few paragraphs when I say “they” I am only referring to those students that I see as being this neglectful of their future…In no way do I mean all the students or their parents or the whole of Guyanese people.) Maybe these students just scare me because I fear for what will happen to Guyana, especially the Rupununi, in the next 5-10 years if they don’t pull it together…the youth that is. They seem so lazy sometimes, like they can’t and don’t even want to care for themselves. They don’t want to do anything for themselves-not even make food. They just expect everyone else to do things for them. Seeing this makes me realize that maybe this area is too dependent on volunteers, which has been mentioned to me but I did not see it as so at the time. Each volunteer probably comes in with some form of pity or another towards the people, the students, and then we end up feeling bad and the students have figured it all out…and therefore they play the “poor me” and end up getting too many things handed to them with minimal effort on their part. And now they have become a product of their environment. The nurturing aspect has led them to take things for granted.
So what would happen if all 6 of the volunteers at this school left at the end of this year no more were to return? I ask them this sometimes. “Who will teach you?” I say. They have to take responsibility for their own people, for their land, for their futures. They cannot expect somebody else to do it without being exploited and having their land raped. They have to learn about certain things for their own subsistence, they have to learn so they don’t get outsmarted by the CEO of the next lumbering company that wants to do business here. “We will pave the road for you, and you can pay us with your trees.”
To someone who doesn’t know or is unable to think about what he really means because they haven’t been taught or haven’t learned how to think, this might sound like a fantastic idea, but who benefits? Don’t you think a paved road would make it easier for the CEO’s trucks to come and collect the lumber and haul it out with all it’s biomass over a smooth and freshly laid road? However, the person who has been taught to think, and is able to do it critically, might stop and weigh the pros and cons and would be able to ask the villain just the right questions to show (s)he is not a foo and that (s)he is educated and able to make wise decisions since (s)he has learned to assess a situation and is able to predict some of the results.
It’s even harder to see the students, especially the male students, which have strong personalities and are in a real position to make decisions for this land and the people that occupy it, but instead are pissing time away being cool and lazy. They are seemingly oblivious to what their future holds as I watch their emulation of characters like Eminem and 50 Cent, which worries me that these potential leaders are going to make some serious mistakes that will result in the loss of the land and suppression/oppression of the people. All because they didn’t understand the power available to the encroaching world to exert its force because they were too busy doing nothing for themselves except taking it all for granted. And believe me, I know I am not above this way of thinking, or unthinking I should say, because I myself was one of these time pissers. I just hope they can it together before the damage has been done. And then I stop and wonder if it’s not already too late. Damage may be already done that has not yet materialized; however, I would never want to let myself think that it was too late. Sometimes damage can be reversed, and if it can’t then it can at least be slowed or halted. I fell that the present generation of students at this school, and all the schools in this country for that matter, are going to be largely responsible for positive progress in Guyana for Guyanese people, especially preservation of each unique Amerindian culture in the nation…
All I can hope when I leave here is that I have taught some of them enough to understand the great responsibility that lies before them in their future, whether they use this knowledge now or if they retain it until they realize what I was trying to say in my ranting and raving about standing up for themselves, about preserving their environment, about learning the language and customs of their ancestors.
Biblical Rain
The rainy season has started, or so I think. I am told that this is just the beginning, but man, does it RAIN here. Hard. And for extended periods. One day Jess and I came home to a flooded house where one would wonder if we even had a roof or louvres in our windows. All my papers were wet, my bed was wet, my books were wet, and just about every inch of our floor throughout the whole house was wet. The front of our house gets flooded out with about 5+ inches of water, so in order to get just over to Grace and Kirsty’s house we got a board and made a makeshift bridge to carry us from one front stoop to the other. Unless I remember to bring in my hammock when it rains my days of hammocking are just about over it seems. Our solution to this is that we are going to get hammock hooks and hang them in the house, even though I prefer the bed since the flies, along with the ants, are starting to take over the world. Grace and Kirsty went to the Cricket World Cup in Georgetown at the end of the month. They brought back a blow up boat, which is normally used in pool settings, however, in our case will be used to explore the vast and flooded savannahs surrounding us soon enough. We are going to reinforce the bottom of the boat with duct tape just to err on the side of caution.
I hear a plane…hopefully that means that the package my mom sent a month and a half ago will be arriving, although I doubt it. Everyday that I go to check my hopes are shattered when Josephine tells my packages have not yet arrived.
Our break started early, 3 days early I think due to the World Cup. Why school had to be shut down, especially all the way out here, is beyond me. This is one of the problems with the ministry of Education here. To compensate for this week an extra week has been added on to the August term, however, our plane tickets are booked for our return trip home already and cannot be changed without a fee, so we are going to miss the last week of school. This next term is the shortest being only 12 weeks, and 3 of those weeks are not even teaching weeks as I explained in the beginning of this newsletter. How time flies…
We have Easter break from March 30th - April 15th.
I will tell you all about it in the next newsletter. Until then-Peace out.
Friday, March 23, 2007
February 2007 Newsletter
February 2007 Newsletter
“Winter” in Annai….
While it is cold up for you up in the North, equatorial Annai is still sunshine and just about 100ºC every day. Each morning in a mostly clear sky the Sun rises with a breezy accompanist from behind the Macarapan mountain and over the savannahs with her rosy aura that blankets the horizon before quickly fading into hues of pink, blue, and orange. The mid-afternoon heat blazes while it drives you to your hammock where you wearily wait it out with a good book and picturesque view in which the birds dance and sing. Every night like clockwork the Sun begins her departure behind the western Pakaraima Mountains and bids us goodnight with a sky so colorfully painted you wish it were indissoluble. In her absence comes the Night Sky, its accomplice a new Moon, a quarter, half, or full Moon, and depending on his brightness the stars shine accordingly. In a new Moon the Milky Way frosts a fuzzy line, in the full the savannahs glow in the light. Sometimes as I lie in safety under my bug net from those things that creep and crawl in the night I can see the stars shimmer through the horizontal slits of my window as I doze off into a dream. J
There was a lot of excitement in February, most of it NOT school related, although we are working hard in that arena... Its Holiday season here, meaning that Brazil has its Rodeo and Carnaval, and Guyana has Mashramani week. So without further ado…
Fifth form and SBA madness….
Well, we are working hard here, and Easter term is in full swing. Fifth form and I are working hard to complete their SBA’s, which are school-based assessments that count towards their CXC score-the exams they take upon completion of secondary school. They should have started these last year at this time since there are 24 to do, and the range of topics is over 24 chapters (a glimpse into the future…we are only on chapter 15 and it is one week before the end of Easter Term, but I am happy to report that SBA #24 will be completed this Monday!). Reasoning for this situation aside we have no choice but to work as hard as possible to get them done in order to get the students to where they need to be come April 30th (this is the date they are to be submitted by me to the Ministry). Each one is an experiment in the lab, and a 1-2 of 5 skills is to be assessed for each. Sometimes I will assess observations, recording, and reporting, other times manipulation and measurement. The other skills that get tested are analysis and interpretation, planning and designing (they are given a topic and have to think of the hypothesis and then design an experiment to test the hypothesis), and drawing. Some of the criteria are kind of comical, for example-in drawing-“lines are of even thickness”…how this assesses their knowledge on a subject I don’t understand albeit, nonetheless, it must be done. I try to be sympathetic while I push them to work hard, because they really do have a massive workload. I just try to make it fun. The social studies teacher is on a month leave (all teachers get this after a certain amount of time and they can take it whenever they want…the month before exams, during exams…. doesn’t matter…. and the worst part is that the students, whether they have a teacher or not, are still expected to know a certain amount of material dictated by the Ministry) so I took over her class periods with them since I happened to be free during those times. This means that we spend 4 periods together on Thursdays. This means we have a chance to get a lot done. They are marathon Thursday’s that start with all of us in the classroom discussing our chapter notes over coffee (no food/drink in the lab!) before we move the party to the lab, where we complete 2-3 SBA’s. We all think in our heads, ‘uh, 4 periods of this…’, but I think we all have a good time, and at the end we are proud of our accomplishments that don’t really end up seeming so hard earned. We are doing what we must, and it will be my greatest achievement here to see them pull through with 24 completed SBA’s, and hopefully they will do well on their CXC’s. I am going to have to keep in touch with them in order to find out how they did since I won’t be here when they get there scores back in July…that’s kind of a sad realization.
Brazil
There were 2 weekends in a row that we spent in Brazil. The first weekend was for Rodeo, which is an actual rodeo, hence the name. While I don’t much care for the lassoing of poor animals that have their testicles cruelly tied together for the sake of human enjoyment, the party was fun. The rodeo clown was fun to watch too, clowns remind me of my great-grandpa. To get to Brazil, all you have to do is cross the river and wah-lah, you are in Bon Fim. Technically you are supposed to take the ferry across, but this guy Leroy decided otherwise (he is Leroy Brown, the baddest man in the whole damn town). Both days we crossed through the river in his truck. With drinks, it was fun…without them I the fear of God was in me that our truckful of roughly 20 passengers was going to be shot down by a weaselly Brazilian border sniper hiding in the bush. Not to mention that I was in the cab on the way there the second night and I could stick my hand pretty much straight out the window and it would be in the water. I don’t think Leroy meant to get as deep as he did. And seeing as I am here to write this, we never succumbed to the weasel in the bush.
The second weekend we went for CARNAVAL!! It was fun and we set our desired conquests up in the stars, and the stars we did get. Grace and I went on the first night, and we danced, danced, danced. It was good “foe-haw” (sp?) music and loads of fun. The second day Jess and Kirsty met up with us, and it was a slow start to the party at first with lots of yawns and low energy. Then we retired our senior citizen cards as we regained our youth and remembered the fact that we were in Boa Vista, Brazil at CARNAVAL…We decided to be on a mission to get ourselves CARNAVAL t-shirts, but the deal was that you had to get someone to give you the one they were wearing. Needless to say, we triumphed. We got split up, but when we reunited each one of us was wearing a CARNAVAL T-shirt, none of which were purchased. Kirsty and I also managed to get these colored hair/ribbon things for our hair. While we were slit up Kirsty and I decided to play truth or dare in the crowd. I had to act like a fool and dance throughout the crowd, and I made her run up to the stranger of my choice and give him a great big hug and then run away. While we felt bad afterwards due to his immense confusion over the situation, it was pretty funny. Then we just got really hyper and this is when the real fun began. When we were trying to find another shirt for Mark (another volunteer that was here for 10 weeks), we decided we should try to get up on stage…and when you set your goals high up in the stars, well ladies and gentlemen, the stars you shall receive. We not only got up on stage, where we were taught to dance by the background dancers and were each able to have a go at the bongos, but there was this huge bus moving down the road through the center of the crowd (where the actual parade was going to be) with a band and dancers on top, and apparently they liked our dancing on stage so much, especially Mark’s (this is a joke J ), that they escorted us off the stage after awhile and brought us up on the top of the bus!! It was so much fun, we were able to look down on the crowd from both points!! It was such an amazing night, and then we ended up just dancing until 4 in the morning before crashing back in our hotel!
Mashramani
Mashramani, or Mash, like all Guyanese holidays and events, takes a whole week out of school. The word is from an Amerindian language and means “a job well done,” and the holiday celebrates the independence of Guyana from the UK in 1966. There is a festival that is called Republic Day, and it is celebrated with food, music, games, and the big event, which is the parade. There were competitions in Lethem, and from there Georgetown, where the big party is really held. Annai Secondary School pulled it together with flying colors and no help from the Ministry’s regional office, and we ended up winning a lot of the categories. We had a fundraiser at the school where games and music were played, food was sold, and a cultural show and beauty pageant was put on, Unfortunately, I was sick and in bed for both days of the fundraiser, but I could hear the festivities from under my bug net (getting sick out here is no fun when you yearn for a couch and movies to keep you busy while you sweat it out). We didn’t end up raising an exorbitant amount, but we ended up with more than we started with and everyone seemed to have fun doing it.
Other Events…
Happy Birthday MOM!!! Feb. 4th
Happy Birthday big brother Jimmie!! Feb. 27th
Happy Birthday Melanie!! Leaving 27 is sad, but 28 should treat us good too!!
Happy Birthday Christy!! Feb. 22nd
Happy birthday Grace!! Grace became an adult when she turned 18! Feb. 7th!
Man, lots of Birthdays!!
I am excited to write March, it has been a good month (you already have had a dose of the first few days), and it will be more about what life is actually like here…. until then…. impeach the president. Despite what he thinks, he is no Harry Truman.
Happy Valentine ’s Day!! We went to a fundraiser at Rock View for the youth group here. It was a good dinner and then was followed by drinks and dancing.
“Winter” in Annai….
While it is cold up for you up in the North, equatorial Annai is still sunshine and just about 100ºC every day. Each morning in a mostly clear sky the Sun rises with a breezy accompanist from behind the Macarapan mountain and over the savannahs with her rosy aura that blankets the horizon before quickly fading into hues of pink, blue, and orange. The mid-afternoon heat blazes while it drives you to your hammock where you wearily wait it out with a good book and picturesque view in which the birds dance and sing. Every night like clockwork the Sun begins her departure behind the western Pakaraima Mountains and bids us goodnight with a sky so colorfully painted you wish it were indissoluble. In her absence comes the Night Sky, its accomplice a new Moon, a quarter, half, or full Moon, and depending on his brightness the stars shine accordingly. In a new Moon the Milky Way frosts a fuzzy line, in the full the savannahs glow in the light. Sometimes as I lie in safety under my bug net from those things that creep and crawl in the night I can see the stars shimmer through the horizontal slits of my window as I doze off into a dream. J
There was a lot of excitement in February, most of it NOT school related, although we are working hard in that arena... Its Holiday season here, meaning that Brazil has its Rodeo and Carnaval, and Guyana has Mashramani week. So without further ado…
Fifth form and SBA madness….
Well, we are working hard here, and Easter term is in full swing. Fifth form and I are working hard to complete their SBA’s, which are school-based assessments that count towards their CXC score-the exams they take upon completion of secondary school. They should have started these last year at this time since there are 24 to do, and the range of topics is over 24 chapters (a glimpse into the future…we are only on chapter 15 and it is one week before the end of Easter Term, but I am happy to report that SBA #24 will be completed this Monday!). Reasoning for this situation aside we have no choice but to work as hard as possible to get them done in order to get the students to where they need to be come April 30th (this is the date they are to be submitted by me to the Ministry). Each one is an experiment in the lab, and a 1-2 of 5 skills is to be assessed for each. Sometimes I will assess observations, recording, and reporting, other times manipulation and measurement. The other skills that get tested are analysis and interpretation, planning and designing (they are given a topic and have to think of the hypothesis and then design an experiment to test the hypothesis), and drawing. Some of the criteria are kind of comical, for example-in drawing-“lines are of even thickness”…how this assesses their knowledge on a subject I don’t understand albeit, nonetheless, it must be done. I try to be sympathetic while I push them to work hard, because they really do have a massive workload. I just try to make it fun. The social studies teacher is on a month leave (all teachers get this after a certain amount of time and they can take it whenever they want…the month before exams, during exams…. doesn’t matter…. and the worst part is that the students, whether they have a teacher or not, are still expected to know a certain amount of material dictated by the Ministry) so I took over her class periods with them since I happened to be free during those times. This means that we spend 4 periods together on Thursdays. This means we have a chance to get a lot done. They are marathon Thursday’s that start with all of us in the classroom discussing our chapter notes over coffee (no food/drink in the lab!) before we move the party to the lab, where we complete 2-3 SBA’s. We all think in our heads, ‘uh, 4 periods of this…’, but I think we all have a good time, and at the end we are proud of our accomplishments that don’t really end up seeming so hard earned. We are doing what we must, and it will be my greatest achievement here to see them pull through with 24 completed SBA’s, and hopefully they will do well on their CXC’s. I am going to have to keep in touch with them in order to find out how they did since I won’t be here when they get there scores back in July…that’s kind of a sad realization.
Brazil
There were 2 weekends in a row that we spent in Brazil. The first weekend was for Rodeo, which is an actual rodeo, hence the name. While I don’t much care for the lassoing of poor animals that have their testicles cruelly tied together for the sake of human enjoyment, the party was fun. The rodeo clown was fun to watch too, clowns remind me of my great-grandpa. To get to Brazil, all you have to do is cross the river and wah-lah, you are in Bon Fim. Technically you are supposed to take the ferry across, but this guy Leroy decided otherwise (he is Leroy Brown, the baddest man in the whole damn town). Both days we crossed through the river in his truck. With drinks, it was fun…without them I the fear of God was in me that our truckful of roughly 20 passengers was going to be shot down by a weaselly Brazilian border sniper hiding in the bush. Not to mention that I was in the cab on the way there the second night and I could stick my hand pretty much straight out the window and it would be in the water. I don’t think Leroy meant to get as deep as he did. And seeing as I am here to write this, we never succumbed to the weasel in the bush.
The second weekend we went for CARNAVAL!! It was fun and we set our desired conquests up in the stars, and the stars we did get. Grace and I went on the first night, and we danced, danced, danced. It was good “foe-haw” (sp?) music and loads of fun. The second day Jess and Kirsty met up with us, and it was a slow start to the party at first with lots of yawns and low energy. Then we retired our senior citizen cards as we regained our youth and remembered the fact that we were in Boa Vista, Brazil at CARNAVAL…We decided to be on a mission to get ourselves CARNAVAL t-shirts, but the deal was that you had to get someone to give you the one they were wearing. Needless to say, we triumphed. We got split up, but when we reunited each one of us was wearing a CARNAVAL T-shirt, none of which were purchased. Kirsty and I also managed to get these colored hair/ribbon things for our hair. While we were slit up Kirsty and I decided to play truth or dare in the crowd. I had to act like a fool and dance throughout the crowd, and I made her run up to the stranger of my choice and give him a great big hug and then run away. While we felt bad afterwards due to his immense confusion over the situation, it was pretty funny. Then we just got really hyper and this is when the real fun began. When we were trying to find another shirt for Mark (another volunteer that was here for 10 weeks), we decided we should try to get up on stage…and when you set your goals high up in the stars, well ladies and gentlemen, the stars you shall receive. We not only got up on stage, where we were taught to dance by the background dancers and were each able to have a go at the bongos, but there was this huge bus moving down the road through the center of the crowd (where the actual parade was going to be) with a band and dancers on top, and apparently they liked our dancing on stage so much, especially Mark’s (this is a joke J ), that they escorted us off the stage after awhile and brought us up on the top of the bus!! It was so much fun, we were able to look down on the crowd from both points!! It was such an amazing night, and then we ended up just dancing until 4 in the morning before crashing back in our hotel!
Mashramani
Mashramani, or Mash, like all Guyanese holidays and events, takes a whole week out of school. The word is from an Amerindian language and means “a job well done,” and the holiday celebrates the independence of Guyana from the UK in 1966. There is a festival that is called Republic Day, and it is celebrated with food, music, games, and the big event, which is the parade. There were competitions in Lethem, and from there Georgetown, where the big party is really held. Annai Secondary School pulled it together with flying colors and no help from the Ministry’s regional office, and we ended up winning a lot of the categories. We had a fundraiser at the school where games and music were played, food was sold, and a cultural show and beauty pageant was put on, Unfortunately, I was sick and in bed for both days of the fundraiser, but I could hear the festivities from under my bug net (getting sick out here is no fun when you yearn for a couch and movies to keep you busy while you sweat it out). We didn’t end up raising an exorbitant amount, but we ended up with more than we started with and everyone seemed to have fun doing it.
Other Events…
Happy Birthday MOM!!! Feb. 4th
Happy Birthday big brother Jimmie!! Feb. 27th
Happy Birthday Melanie!! Leaving 27 is sad, but 28 should treat us good too!!
Happy Birthday Christy!! Feb. 22nd
Happy birthday Grace!! Grace became an adult when she turned 18! Feb. 7th!
Man, lots of Birthdays!!
I am excited to write March, it has been a good month (you already have had a dose of the first few days), and it will be more about what life is actually like here…. until then…. impeach the president. Despite what he thinks, he is no Harry Truman.
Happy Valentine ’s Day!! We went to a fundraiser at Rock View for the youth group here. It was a good dinner and then was followed by drinks and dancing.
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
January 2007 Newsletter
January 2007 Newsletter
Time to head back to Annai…
Happy New Year!! 2007 already? Where does time go? Well, as I have mentioned, going home was a lot of fun. I left Chicago on the 2nd, and I got back into Annai on the 6th. I had to stay a night in Trinidad, a night in Georgetown, and a night in Lethem before finally travelling back to Annai by bus. I had to go to Lethem because the weather was bad in Annai, so we couldn’t land there. There were only 2 of us aboard this small aircraft that had a pilot that was really into what must have been a good book…He read, I nervously sat behind him watching the dials on the dashboard (is it called a dashboard?). The wonders of autopilot are wonders I prefer to be kept behind that charming door in the front of the aircraft with the small metal sign engraved with the words “Crew Only”. It was nice to be able to stop in Lethem before heading back to Annai though because I got to see the WTV’s there, so that made it the extra night worthwhile.
When I left Chicago I knew I had to come back, but a part of me didn’t want to go. However, the other part of me couldn’t wait to get back to the calm life I find in Annai where on the weekends I get to lay around reading a good book in my hammock, go on a bike ride or maybe a hike, and just relax and let the world take me where it will instead of having a mile long list of stuff I have to do because in some way I feel obligated by a world which compels to me to feel like I should be a productive and responsible citizen. I love not having errands to run; although there is always lesson plans to be completed…I do love it here though and really want to enjoy this while I can, although it has not been as easy as it sounds. I have found myself wishing time away and thinking more about home than the experience I should be living in as it is presenting itself. Maybe the predicament is so due to the fact that one day I was in Chicago, where I can get anything and everything that I pretty much need or want, the next I was in the middle of nowhere with very little.
Journal entry 1/4/07
“…This is real life for me right now and for the next 6 months I want to live in every day fully conscious o f this experience and not sitting there thinking and wondering about what the next experience holds for me. What’s the point of dreaming of all these things I want to do and be if I am constantly living in the next moment while the present moment, which is a dream come true, is passing me by.”
Journal entry 1/6/07
“…but now that I am once again in my room and under my bug net on my nasty sheets that have been pissed and shit on by bats for the past 3 weeks, I feel at home and comfortable, like I belong here and need to be here. But I definitely have to wash my sheets in the morning.”
Let the water flow…
The first thing that Jess showed me when we got up on Saturday morning was that there was a trickle of water coming out of the faucet in the kitchen sink! Whoa…gone for 3 weeks and life as I knew it had dramatically changed!! Running water, or at least a sign that made me believe that it could be possible! That only lasted about a day or two. While we were gone over Christmas break they had installed a water tank that catches the water from the roof and gutters when it rains!! When there is water in it we don’t have to go down to the well to fetch it for all the mundane little tasks that require water, like flushing the toilet. There is nothing like the feeling you have as you walk to the well to fetch water just to flush…actually we always flush with the dirty dish water (we are now huge advocates of water conservation if not by choice, then by default), but indirectly you can see what I mean. We never much minded having to run to the well, but it is nice to now only have to go for drinking water…everything in the universe likes to exist at the lowest energy level possible, right? It is therefore innate in me that I take pleasure in this new tank.
By the end of the month they had installed a water pump that pumps water from the clean well (there are 3 wells in total on the compound-1 down the hill just outside the gates, which is the only clean one that can be drunk from, and 2 behind the student dorms, which are dirty) up to the school when the generator is on. This means that the showers (well one of the showers) work!!! And I must say that even though I got to shower while I was in Chicago, it was enjoyable to be afforded the luxury of a shower here! So anyways, the saga continues. When they put the pump in they sealed off the well, since the pump was so expensive. Based on the tales you have already heard up to this point of my adventure here, do you see what the problem is on the horizon? …That’s right, our generator breaks frequently and we run out of gas for it even more frequently. The first term it seemed like if we did have gas, the generator was broke, and then in fixing the generator they used all the gas…It would be worked out, but the cycle would start again after a day or two, maybe a week if we were lucky. So they install this water pump, seal the well, and the generator breaks….uh-oh…200+ people on the school compound and no access to clean drinking water. What do we do now? Thank God for our amazing Headmistress (HM) who sat on the radio trying to call the Ministry in Georgetown for the greater part of two days, threatening to break the seal on the well if they didn’t take action, and take it QUICK. Why some high ranked official would make such a hasty decision without thinking it thoroughly through instead of being more pragmatic in the face of wanting change and “progress” and realistically assess the circumstances at hand was beyond me…It was kind of stressful, but in the end it worked out well. It was February first when they finally fixed it…
Ohhhh, back to shhcool…
I ended up missing the first week back at school since I was in transit, but I didn’t miss much. I was not the only teacher that was en route during this first week. It was disheartening to quiz my students and try to just get them to recall the terms and topics we had covered in the last term. They all looked at me with blank faces like I had just spoken to them in Yiddish. Even those that I thought were my brightest students made me wonder if they had retained any of the information I felt like we had worked hard on learning last term. It made me feel like I had completely failed, as a teacher, and I doubted that I had even taught them anything at all. There were times in the first few weeks back that I found myself feeling angry with them, like I was wasting time trying to teach to students that at times do not seem to give their future much thought, and therefore, their opportunity to get an education seems unimportant and unappreciated. Then I would try to take a second and remember my own self at this age, and I wondered if my teachers thought the same thing about me when they saw me sporting my new Christmas threads, gossiping with my friends, and completely unaware that I was in school to get an education, and only partly there to be socialized. We took about a week to review and those students that worked were able to pull their knowledge of Biology and Science out of the corners of their minds where it had been stored over break.
When I wasn’t frustrated with the lack of effort I felt I was seeing, I did realize that there were a lot of students that I really missed while I was gone, but when I would excitedly inquire about their break, especially the students who seem to not like being away from home for so long, they would say-“ah, it was okay” or just say outright that they did not enjoy their break. It was most of the students that I asked that would respond like this, and so I stopped asking, confused about what it takes to please these kids. Maybe it’s just a cultural difference and they don’t react to things the way I would expect, I don’t know, but it got to a point where I would rather imagine that they all had a satisfying few weeks at home with their families the way I had hoped they would when we were all headed home in December.
Journal entry 1/26/07“…
"...I wonder if I can really do this with a positive attitude. I know part of why I feel this way is that I am just feeling like these people JUST DON’T CARE and I wonder if I could be more useful putting my energy somewhere else, into a cause greater than this, into something that will actually make a difference. But hopefully somewhere and in someone here that is a mystery to me at this point I am making a small difference…
…some of them just give up so easily that you wonder how they are ever going to make it when it is their generation’s turn to be the people out there making decisions. It’s almost like I feel that it is inevitable that this region is going to become inundated with foreign companies coming to “develop” the area…”
Until February…
Well, that is January in a nutshell. I hope everyone is enjoying what 2007 has brought to you at this point, and that if you are in an area that has a season they call “winter” you are keeping warm. I was glad that the weather was pretty mild while I was home, but I do find myself wishing for a change of season!! It just feels like it has been one long summer!
Until next time, take care, and try to keep on the sunny side in the dead of winter!
Time to head back to Annai…
Happy New Year!! 2007 already? Where does time go? Well, as I have mentioned, going home was a lot of fun. I left Chicago on the 2nd, and I got back into Annai on the 6th. I had to stay a night in Trinidad, a night in Georgetown, and a night in Lethem before finally travelling back to Annai by bus. I had to go to Lethem because the weather was bad in Annai, so we couldn’t land there. There were only 2 of us aboard this small aircraft that had a pilot that was really into what must have been a good book…He read, I nervously sat behind him watching the dials on the dashboard (is it called a dashboard?). The wonders of autopilot are wonders I prefer to be kept behind that charming door in the front of the aircraft with the small metal sign engraved with the words “Crew Only”. It was nice to be able to stop in Lethem before heading back to Annai though because I got to see the WTV’s there, so that made it the extra night worthwhile.
When I left Chicago I knew I had to come back, but a part of me didn’t want to go. However, the other part of me couldn’t wait to get back to the calm life I find in Annai where on the weekends I get to lay around reading a good book in my hammock, go on a bike ride or maybe a hike, and just relax and let the world take me where it will instead of having a mile long list of stuff I have to do because in some way I feel obligated by a world which compels to me to feel like I should be a productive and responsible citizen. I love not having errands to run; although there is always lesson plans to be completed…I do love it here though and really want to enjoy this while I can, although it has not been as easy as it sounds. I have found myself wishing time away and thinking more about home than the experience I should be living in as it is presenting itself. Maybe the predicament is so due to the fact that one day I was in Chicago, where I can get anything and everything that I pretty much need or want, the next I was in the middle of nowhere with very little.
Journal entry 1/4/07
“…This is real life for me right now and for the next 6 months I want to live in every day fully conscious o f this experience and not sitting there thinking and wondering about what the next experience holds for me. What’s the point of dreaming of all these things I want to do and be if I am constantly living in the next moment while the present moment, which is a dream come true, is passing me by.”
Journal entry 1/6/07
“…but now that I am once again in my room and under my bug net on my nasty sheets that have been pissed and shit on by bats for the past 3 weeks, I feel at home and comfortable, like I belong here and need to be here. But I definitely have to wash my sheets in the morning.”
Let the water flow…
The first thing that Jess showed me when we got up on Saturday morning was that there was a trickle of water coming out of the faucet in the kitchen sink! Whoa…gone for 3 weeks and life as I knew it had dramatically changed!! Running water, or at least a sign that made me believe that it could be possible! That only lasted about a day or two. While we were gone over Christmas break they had installed a water tank that catches the water from the roof and gutters when it rains!! When there is water in it we don’t have to go down to the well to fetch it for all the mundane little tasks that require water, like flushing the toilet. There is nothing like the feeling you have as you walk to the well to fetch water just to flush…actually we always flush with the dirty dish water (we are now huge advocates of water conservation if not by choice, then by default), but indirectly you can see what I mean. We never much minded having to run to the well, but it is nice to now only have to go for drinking water…everything in the universe likes to exist at the lowest energy level possible, right? It is therefore innate in me that I take pleasure in this new tank.
By the end of the month they had installed a water pump that pumps water from the clean well (there are 3 wells in total on the compound-1 down the hill just outside the gates, which is the only clean one that can be drunk from, and 2 behind the student dorms, which are dirty) up to the school when the generator is on. This means that the showers (well one of the showers) work!!! And I must say that even though I got to shower while I was in Chicago, it was enjoyable to be afforded the luxury of a shower here! So anyways, the saga continues. When they put the pump in they sealed off the well, since the pump was so expensive. Based on the tales you have already heard up to this point of my adventure here, do you see what the problem is on the horizon? …That’s right, our generator breaks frequently and we run out of gas for it even more frequently. The first term it seemed like if we did have gas, the generator was broke, and then in fixing the generator they used all the gas…It would be worked out, but the cycle would start again after a day or two, maybe a week if we were lucky. So they install this water pump, seal the well, and the generator breaks….uh-oh…200+ people on the school compound and no access to clean drinking water. What do we do now? Thank God for our amazing Headmistress (HM) who sat on the radio trying to call the Ministry in Georgetown for the greater part of two days, threatening to break the seal on the well if they didn’t take action, and take it QUICK. Why some high ranked official would make such a hasty decision without thinking it thoroughly through instead of being more pragmatic in the face of wanting change and “progress” and realistically assess the circumstances at hand was beyond me…It was kind of stressful, but in the end it worked out well. It was February first when they finally fixed it…
Ohhhh, back to shhcool…
I ended up missing the first week back at school since I was in transit, but I didn’t miss much. I was not the only teacher that was en route during this first week. It was disheartening to quiz my students and try to just get them to recall the terms and topics we had covered in the last term. They all looked at me with blank faces like I had just spoken to them in Yiddish. Even those that I thought were my brightest students made me wonder if they had retained any of the information I felt like we had worked hard on learning last term. It made me feel like I had completely failed, as a teacher, and I doubted that I had even taught them anything at all. There were times in the first few weeks back that I found myself feeling angry with them, like I was wasting time trying to teach to students that at times do not seem to give their future much thought, and therefore, their opportunity to get an education seems unimportant and unappreciated. Then I would try to take a second and remember my own self at this age, and I wondered if my teachers thought the same thing about me when they saw me sporting my new Christmas threads, gossiping with my friends, and completely unaware that I was in school to get an education, and only partly there to be socialized. We took about a week to review and those students that worked were able to pull their knowledge of Biology and Science out of the corners of their minds where it had been stored over break.
When I wasn’t frustrated with the lack of effort I felt I was seeing, I did realize that there were a lot of students that I really missed while I was gone, but when I would excitedly inquire about their break, especially the students who seem to not like being away from home for so long, they would say-“ah, it was okay” or just say outright that they did not enjoy their break. It was most of the students that I asked that would respond like this, and so I stopped asking, confused about what it takes to please these kids. Maybe it’s just a cultural difference and they don’t react to things the way I would expect, I don’t know, but it got to a point where I would rather imagine that they all had a satisfying few weeks at home with their families the way I had hoped they would when we were all headed home in December.
Journal entry 1/26/07“…
"...I wonder if I can really do this with a positive attitude. I know part of why I feel this way is that I am just feeling like these people JUST DON’T CARE and I wonder if I could be more useful putting my energy somewhere else, into a cause greater than this, into something that will actually make a difference. But hopefully somewhere and in someone here that is a mystery to me at this point I am making a small difference…
…some of them just give up so easily that you wonder how they are ever going to make it when it is their generation’s turn to be the people out there making decisions. It’s almost like I feel that it is inevitable that this region is going to become inundated with foreign companies coming to “develop” the area…”
Until February…
Well, that is January in a nutshell. I hope everyone is enjoying what 2007 has brought to you at this point, and that if you are in an area that has a season they call “winter” you are keeping warm. I was glad that the weather was pretty mild while I was home, but I do find myself wishing for a change of season!! It just feels like it has been one long summer!
Until next time, take care, and try to keep on the sunny side in the dead of winter!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
