Henry in Guyana

Just a couple of short bits:

I'm planning a final trip into the interior for Lethem Rodeo, which is Easter weekend. This is apparently great fun, and includes the greasy pig competition, where a pig is "greased up" and a load of children sent to catch it. Whoever catches it gets to keep it! I suppose to eat... I'm also planning another trip to Saddle Mountain Ranch during the week leading up to Rodeo which will be great fun - it was great last time and I definitely want to go again.

I had my first Sunday night on the sea wall this weekend - on a Sunday evening it gets very busy and is a recognised event. Earlier on it is quite family oriented with children running around and food on sale, and as it gets later it turns more into a load of people having a drink on the sea wall. Anyway I had a good time and met some new people - my accent is quite a novelty here, as is my translation of Guyanese English. On this occasion my flip-flop had a bit of material hanging off it. I was asked "Your slipper burst?" to which I had to think for a bit, and then replied "Oh, you mean is my flip flop broken?" to many chuckles from the Guyanese I was with.


Until next time...

As I come towards my last 5 weeks in Guyana I thought I'd record a few thoughts about my experience so far. There's no doubt that this was worth doing - for me at least. I've had a whole load of experiences and challenges that I would never have otherwise had, and had a lot of good times. As time goes on however I often feel like the work I do is a little unorganised and not as effective as it could be. I came here essentially without a boss or a remit - a mercenary volunteer if you like, which is actually quite challenging. If I want to do some work, I have to create it, and this leaves me open a little to the risk of doing work for the sake of doing it, rather than if there is a real need. One of my aims in coming out here is identifying a possible placement for a future volunteer, but as yet I am not sure how this will materialise. There is certainly plenty of need in Guyana, but there does need to be a good structure to justify sending someone thousands of miles to do something. My own case was not so bad as firstly I did encounter some help at the start, and secondly I have personal reasons for being here. I think if I'd just turned up without much to do and no particular link to the country it would have been a lot harder.

The fun side - traveling, going to parties, and so on has been great. I will definitely miss the Guyanese evenings out on someone's balcony (sadly I don't have one) and the fun times I've had with other volunteer/development types here. The reason I sometimes feel disillusioned is that the thing I came here to do - work in IT (too broad a remit really) is entirely contingent on what I do, and so can be quite unsatisfying if I don't get much done. Party time is great, but only if there's good work to justify it. A significant amount of this is my responsibility - I'm responsible for making sure I get things done during the day, and finding things to do in the first place, but that doesn't mean it's easy. Nevertheless, facing such challenges will have been a great experience and hopefully will serve me well in the future.

In these final weeks I have now set up three four-part IT courses which I will be delivering to teachers at Mercy Wings (Beginner's IT, Intermediate IT and Using IT for teaching - do I know anything about this? I'd better learn quickly!) and I will be making sure everything at Saints is robust and well documented so it can continue to run well in the future.

One of the thing about Guyana's multicultural society is that there are plenty of public holidays - last week we had Phagwah, which I think mainly involves running around and covering each other with colourful powder, unfortunately my cultural awareness hasn't grown enough to know what it's all about, although I'm sure Wikipedia will tell me. I went with a group to someone's house a little out of town, where we had a meal (eaten out of a big leaf, I've never done that before but it certainly saves on washing up) and then proceeded to get very messy indeed. Water, glitter and powder filled the air as everyone enjoyed themselves. After this we headed to a bigger place in Georgetown which had a stage and live music - and was full of people throwing/rubbing powder at each other. Photos taken with a flash came out with an interesting effect because of the amount of dust in the air, and everyone's face changed colour multiple times.

The following day at work was interesting as there were a number of (students mostly) who had green faces and hands - some of the colour doesn't come off too easily, I had a slightly red forehead and blue neck, and even now my fingernails are still a bit pink. Still the whole thing was good fun and unlike Mash alcohol was not a key factor.


Last Saturday I went to a cricket match - I've only ever been to one before at the London Oval and my memory is that it was a long way away and quite boring. This time we headed out to the National Stadium and had good seats under cover. The West Indies were playing Zimbabwe and after what seemed like a strong last innings (based on my limited knowledge of cricket) and won. There was quite a good atmosphere as every time anyone scored any runs people started jumping up and down waving whatever they happened to be holding. I wondered if I would get bored but actually it was a really fun day out. We only went for a half day this time so maybe I'll get a full day in before I leave.