Henry in Guyana

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.