Henry in Guyana

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.

Rodeo was everything I expected - a fairly relaxed schedule of events followed by a big party. As I was staying at the Bushmasters house, we had a couple of vehicles whose roofs were perfect viewing points for the Rodeo ground which was a few minutes' drive out of Lethem. There were a number of events, including bull riding, saddleback bronco, bareback bronco, horseracing, melon eating, cassava eating, and tug of war. The eating competitions were particularly funny with some entertaining commentary (at one point the commentator decided to name one of the larger female competitors as "big, strong and voluptuous" and referred to her as that for the rest of the event). The tug of war was visitors vs home which was an entertaining way of watching a lot of white people get beaten by the Rupununi contingent. I was sadly on the men's visitors team which lost.


The bull riding got quite exciting, as a couple of times once the rider fell the bull decided to go for the crowd. Given that the fences were less than sturdy a couple got broken but fortunately no bulls actually made it into the packed crowd of sweaty people.


Naturally the evening activities were quite raucous, I think some people didn't even make it to bed for a few days. On the Friday night before Rodeo there was a pageant at the Takatu hotel in Lethem where I competed in the karaoke competition with a rendition of Elvis' Can't Help Falling in Love but sadly was not the victor, or even in the top three. The following two nights were at the Rodeo ground and with such a mix of people from abroad, the coast and the Rupununi was a particularly lively affair.

There was also food everywhere - a whole section of stalls selling meat on a stick - beef, chicken and pork, as well as paçoc which is farine (like cous-cous, made from from cassava) mixed with dried meat and onions - very tasty. Having said that, it's a bit like eating raw cous-cous, so if you eat too much and then drink a lot of water (or worse) you end up feeling extremely full.


Once good times were had by all, it was time to head home. Despite losing my ticket, and not having enough money to buy another one, we managed to get on a bus (as I still had a booking) and head back to Georgetown. The bus left at around 11 but the fun wasn't quite over as the bumps on the road meant a number of things fell on me from the luggage racks above, including a torch and deodorant can to the face and a constant shower of cassava bread crumbs from whichever person decided to stow those things up there. As well as this, we were travelling in convoy with another bus, which had some problem and broke down. Apparently we were legally obliged to stay together, so at one stop had to wait 3 hours for a part to arrive. Nevertheless, some travellers decided to buy some vodka and invite me in so we passed the time with some entertainment.

The road to Lethem isn't a very good one; only very hardy vehicles can make it and at one point apparently it is 8 hours between petrol stations. If you get stuck in the bush, you're really stuck; I don't think the AA will rescue you. Needless to say, we made it back home for 3am the following morning and had had a great final week experiencing Guyana's interior.

Probably the nicest place I have been to in Guyana is Saddle Mountain ranch in the South Rupununi. I went just before Christmas and had a great time, so as Rodeo was coming up just down the road in Lethem, a friend and I decided to go for 4 nights to the ranch before Rodeo. Both of us are leaving in the next couple of weeks so it was a good final holiday.

We began by getting on the Intraserv bus from Jerry's bar at around 9pm, for around a 13 hour trip overnight to Lethem. In fact it seemed to be a popular bus as I met 8 different people that I already knew travelling at the same time! A constant reminder of the small size of Guyana's population. The road to Linden, maybe an hour or two from Georgetown, is paved, followed by red dirt road which is maintained to some degree but pretty bumpy. Anyway on the road to Linden the windscreen broke and had a massive hole in it. It was already breezy in the bus but things really got going. I was wondering how the journey might turn out (could they really drive all that way with half a windscreen?) when we stopped alongside a bus coming back to Georgetown and swapped.

Suprisingly, everything went well, all our bags ended up in the right bus, and as far as I can gather all the people too. I felt a bit sorry for those who had probably been on a good working bus for 12 hours then having to change over, delay their journey, get in an extremely blowy bus and were very nearly home. As a little extra entertainment, the bus broke down at the final immigration point so we had to get a taxi into Lethem proper.


Onto the ranch; as with last time the house was fantastic, and it was quite refreshing not to have proper power or internet, but we had enough of the basics (beds, proper bathroom) to be comfortable. This time I had a horse called Thunder, who really loved to run fast. This was a little frightening for me as I never quite graduated beyond holding on for dear life but it was great fun. One afternoon we went off to round up cattle which was good, I did this last time but I got left behind so never managed to do much rounding up. This time however, with Thunder taking me around, it was really fun. There's something about herding cattle, particularly racing off after one that decided to break loose.

Later that day we had a go at calf roping - apparently an event at rodeo where a man and a woman team up, the man has to rope a calf and hold it still enough for the woman to take a ribbon off its tail. Whilst my lasso-ing wasn't so hot, I think we could have held our own, maybe. Fortunately the event didn't take place at Rodeo so I wasn't tested.

Three pigs (I believe) had given birth to 24 piglets in the past few days which were very cute. Despite not being a fan of cuteness sites I have gone so far as to post a video of some piglets nibbling my foot:



They were quite funny with their little oinks and ran away whenever they were chased. However if their mum was around they calmed down a bit which is why they got so close to me.

As always the food was excellent with three big meals a day which are absolutely what is needed when out riding and enjoying a little rum in the evening. I hope I will return someday.

As mentioned in my last post, over the past two weeks I have been running classes at Mercy Wings in the IT lab. Mondays sees the Introductory class, Tuesday the Intermediate class and Thursday the Using IT for Teaching class. As of this weekend there will be a 2 week break for the Easter holiday (when I disappear back into the interior again!) followed by two more weeks.

I also did a one-off session on how to install a computer from scratch-right from wiping the hard drive up to installing drivers and service packs. The idea is that every computer comes out the same, and crucially if a virus or some other problem affects it, there are people in place (with instructions and CDs) who can easily wipe it and restore it to a good level. My personal opinion is that a lot of the time, if a computer is playing up (running slowly, mysterious behaviour) the best solution is to do a fresh install.

Anyway, the classes have been going OK. The introductory course is the most popular with about 8 attendees and has so far involved turning on, using the mouse, and saving documents. It's an interesting experience to have to go right back to basics; things many would take for granted, such as double-clicking, are naturally quite alien to those not computer-literate. A problem I have found is that after moving the mouse, someone will then take their hand off and click. This has the slightly frustrating effect of moving the cursor ever so slightly, such that something else is clicked on. Bring in a double click and things get even more fun as the mouse scoots around, and the clicks are far enough apart that the computer thinks you just clicked on two different things.

It also makes you appreciate how a user interface is designed - and its flaws. Using a fresh copy of Windows XP SP3 and Office 2007, to those in the know things are pretty simple. To a complete novice however, things are quite tricky. For one, it is tricky to come up with rules for when to single click and when to double click. Of course we double-click something on the desktop to open it, but those handy links that appear in folders that shortcut you to My Documents only require a single click. Double-clicking on these has unpredictable results as something different may register on the second click. Especially if you missed in the first place.

Often these situations have led me to hop over and quietly fix the situation using what probably looks like black magic with multiple mouse buttons and key combinations to the newcomer, but I simply understand what buttons do what.

We have been saving things in My Documents. This is handy as it is the default save area and easy to get to. Having said this, there are multiple routes to My Documents. You can get there through the Start menu (single click), open My Computer and click a link to it (single click) or navigate through C drive (double clicks). Things get interesting again when you are saving, as Office's save dialog makes My Documents look quite different to how it looks after navigating through the Desktop (and is navigated by double clicks, or selecting and clicking Open...I could go on).

The long and short of it is, for people who grew up in or became accustomed to using computers, these multiple routes are tolerable and even handy. Teaching it to newcomers is a bit more of a challenge.

A simple solution is to always do things in exactly the same way. This is an approach I have tried and my lessons are mainly based around sets of numbered instructions on how to complete a task. So we might open a document and write "Hello, everyone." (complete with the correct capitalisation, commas and full stops please) with step one being "Double Click on Microsoft Word on the Desktop" and the final step covering where to find the full stop.

This is a handy way of doing things as you can then take away these handouts and practice yourself. Until...Microsoft's handy new ribbon interface in Office 2007 (which I think works quite well) can be hidden, if it gets in the way, by clicking a small button which if you know what it does will minimise the ribbon. However, if you're a novice, and you arrive at a computer without its ribbon showing, you have no idea what to do. There are a lot of little standards like this in normal IT use which I take for granted, but if you've never met them, you would have no idea.