Henry in Guyana

I write this from Barbados where I am a stranded tourist waiting for a flight home. In fact now UK airspace is open but the backlog of flights means I don't have a confirmed booking until 1st of May despite having a flight booked for 20th of April. Oh well, Virgin is covering my accommodation and food so I can't complain too much about a free holiday in Barbados, and in fact I have nothing pressing to get home to. The Virgin Atlantic office has been quite hectic here, with apparently one woman getting a bit too stressed and throwing things around. There is now a security guard in the office to keep everyone under control. With a bit of luck I might get a seat on an earlier flight but we will have to see. In the mean time I will just relax and catch up on a bit of admin (like this blog!) whilst occasionally fending off locals a number of whom seem to think that I want to buy drugs or girls. Everyone else seems to be families or older tourists so I suppose I look like a perfect buyer. This never happened to me in Guyana, perhaps a seedy side effect of being an obviously much more affluent country.

So it became time to say goodbye to Guyana and my little room in Hadfield Street. It was certainly a great experience, at times exciting, sometimes boring and everything in between. The reason I wanted to come for 6 months was to live in the country and experience the place, and I certainly did. From working in a new environment, dealing with not having a boss or a specific mission, finding new work and generally settling in I learnt a great deal. I also got to experience the country, from the rumshops and clubs of Georgetown to riding horses in the Savannah and fending for myself in the Jungle.

As has been said many times, if you drink creek water or eat Laba you will return to Guyana - I have done both a number of times, so I'm sure I will return some day. In fact some people have asked if I would stay on, and whilst the fun side of it is great, to want to stay I'd need a proper day job with a proper task, and preferably to get paid too! Nevertheless, for 6 months it was certainly a great experience, and I'd recommend anyone who doesn't know what to do next to do something like my project.

Until next time, Guyana.

Just before I visited Mercy Wings I was presented with an unexpectedly large farewell ceremony at Saints. It looked like the whole school was there, and there was a printed program which said on the front "In Appreciation of Mr. Henry Chin" complete with mugshot. I was sung to, read poems to and given two speeches of appreciation which was a little overwhelming. I was also presented with a very fancy plaque from the Toronto Alumni association and another small gift from the school itself. Naturally I responded by giving a short acceptance speech. It was a very nice end to my stint at Saints - if a little grander than I had expected! At the end one of the girls who had written a poem for me handed it to me and said she wanted me to keep it, and I was handed another poem from an English volunteer teacher at the school:

My time has Saints has certainly been very interesting - after being given rather low expectations from people I had spoken to about it, after a little while it appeared that things were not so. Of course the school has its problems mainly rooted in heavy underspending in the education system by the government, but at the same time it has probably the best IT facilities of any government school (if not any school) in the country, and is a lively place full of intelligent people. I hope that things continue to progress, particularly in the IT department.

The final week or so in Guyana has been quite busy, what with wrapping things up and saying goodbye to people. I taught my last two classes at Mercy Wings; sadly one was hampered by blackout but the final session was a practical assignment so both classes merged on the final day to finish everything off. The beginner's class had to type a letter in a certain font, properly formatted and with a bit of bold and italics thrown in. This took them quite a while but fortunately everyone just about finished and I managed to get one of the printers working so they all had a tangible outcome. The intermediate class had to produce a PowerPoint presentation including clip-art and a graph they had created in Excel which included a formula. Not everyone managed to use a formula but all the presentations were done and printed in handout form.

Later in the week I was invited back to Mercy Wings where a little ceremony was held for me and I was presented with a mug, pen and card and most importantly was given some food - pholouri and cake which was perfect given I was just getting hungry. A number of the staff said a few words thanking me and I presented certificates to those who completed the course. I only hope that they continue to use the IT facilities, and if I can I will try and get another volunteer sent to them to spend more time and really move on the IT work at Mercy Wings and Sophia in general.