Back to School
Well the last six weeks have involved plenty of travel and holidaying but now I'm back in town for the foreseeable future and back to work. I mentioned in a previous post that I was interested to see what would happen at Saints if I disappear for two weeks - and fortunately it went without mishap. I had made an effort to leave some documentation and check that the technician I work with had everything in hand and it all worked out. A dry run, if you like, for when I leave in April; I am trying to avoid coming in to set something up that will only fall apart when I leave.
In fact the work at Saints is going well and we have a good platform for building up the facilities and ultimately their education benefit, so I will soldier on. I also saw another side of Saints on Friday - one of the teachers put on a Spanish afternoon - Cafe Caribe, which involved small tables being set out in the forum and a number of performances on stage. There were several Spanish presentations and poems, and a number of dance acts which were all very impressive. Two couples wowed the crowd with some quite enthusiastic dancing and there was one group act of about 12 people which was quite outstanding. Apparently they had only spent two weeks preparing but it came off very professionally. Some of the people I associate with are a bit skeptical of what goes on at Saints and it is easy for that to rub off - but it is a vibrant and lively place with some very talented and intelligent students - which showed at Cafe Caribe. They also gave me some cake, and free food always improves my opinion. As well as the dancers a group of about 15 boys from the 4th or 5th form (I think) sang a couple of songs - including "La Cucaracha" which was very funny to see. There were some good costumes too - unfortunately I wasn't armed with my camera (myself and the technician were forcibly escorted form the IT lab to our table by two chicas) but I did manage to get hold of some photos.
On Wednesday I took another trip to Mercy Wings school, where they are hoping to install a network and increase the usage of their (fairly decent) IT lab which is only used for a few hours a week currently. I have said I will help with this, and I also hope to do some work to encourage/guide the use of the facilities to help with teaching. A while ago I wrote about a trip to Mocha where I was planning to help with some community IT project; the problem there is that I would not have time to set something up from scratch that could be sustainable, particularly given that I have never done anything like that before. Mercy Wings has good facilities already so all it would really need my enthusiasm which I hope to lend over the coming months.
Last night I was invited to a lime (read drinking session) with my landlady who lives upstairs which was quite fun, and her daughter who had just returned from the UK presented some Wine Gums and Jelly Babies for the snacks bowl - both things you can't get here so I had plenty with the ensuing sugar low.
Not many photos this time unfortunately, I shall have to do some more scenic activities for the next post. Also my mum (who is British) arrives in town on Wednesday for her first trip to Guyana in 25 years so it will be interesting to see what she thinks of it after all this time...