Parties, Practicum, Elections OH MY!

Tuesday, May 5- house party. 

I wasn’t allowed to help cook or clean, but I was eventually aloud to help serve the food. My task was to go to the children and give them the pre-made plates of food. You may guess what happened… or you may not because I personally was shocked.

Every child that I went to wouldn’t take the food from me or just looked at my white skin with such confusion. I mean the kids truly don’t know and were confused beyond belief, but I was too! I never in my life have even been unable to connect with a child, it was rather depressing…until another PCT’s, (Peace Corps Trainee) Allee’s host brother came up to play “catch me catch me” which is virtually tag. Then all the kids came flocking! They must have realized how fun we’d be! We played every game, danced and laughed. Kids are definitely way better than adults. Not gonna lie though, there were some attractive young male gentlemen guests at this shin-dig. But in getting back to the kids… a 14 month old and his mom came up to Allee and I and he was loving Allee, waving to her, fist pounding, they were pretty tight. Then little Emmanuel came up to me and did the same thing, but he continued to lift his hand to my face and caress it. He literally was so taken aback by my skin that he just had to touch it. It was quite a precious moment and continued to happen later on in the night with another little boy maybe about 4 years old. Oh I can’t forget about the paparazzi girl (she was probably 8) who was following Allee and I around taking photos because she was seeing white people. Then there’s my boy who was 11 wearing a Texas jersey who knew about the whole in the ozone layer and that that’s why the weather has been changing. Texas was born in Guyana, lives in Guyana, but his mother (who has cancer) lives in Buffalo, New York. This means that Texas goes to the states every summer and sometimes for holidays too. He was a really cool cat, oh and he’s moving to Buffalo after school gets out this year! 

Anyway the party was a hit, and so were the white girls! Did I mention that the music was on point? Well it was! Alcohol or not (in this case not) these Guyanese know how to throw a party!

Wednesday, May 6-practicum

Today was my first day going to school!

I’m going to attempt to write quickly about how the school system is set up in Guyana just so you have a general understanding!

Nursery School -3yrs 2mths-5yrs 9mths -non-compulsory

Primary School -grades 1-6 -mandatory

Secondary School/Primary tops -4-6 years -mandatory up to age 14.5yrs

Tertiary -University of Guyana (Georgetown or Berbice) OR Cyril Potter College of Edu. 

3 terms:

1. Christmas- Sept-Dec 2 weeks vacation
2. Easter- Jan-Apr 2-3 weeks vacation
3. August- April-July 6-7 weeks vacation

Okay so what all of this means is that you graduate high school by the age of 16 and then you get a job. Often people become teachers right away as you don’t need a degree to teach. Often teachers receive some sort of training and eventually get a degree whether it be 2 year or 4 year, students have 2 choices for furthering their education.  

Anyway, my practicum is at Diamond Primary School and I’m in a grade 1 classroom (equivalent to our kindergarten classroom). I get to go in a total of 8 times, I get to help out, teach a lesson or two and get to know what the dynamics of a classroom are in Guyana. The kids were adorable, there are some I already know I want to work with one on one because they are struggling to write and keep up with the class. Just like your typical classroom, students are all over the spectrum. There are some that are a little ahead and get a little crazy because they’re bored.. I’ll talk more about the students later and hopefully snap some photos too!

So far I’ve noticed that it is extremely loud. This is because there are no wall dividers between classes. So the teachers have to create their own with shelves and posters and chalk boards. There also seems to be a serious lack of resources. A student in the class broke his pencil and couldn’t participate the rest of the day because he didn’t have a sharpener. I think the student may have chose to not ask to borrow a friends, it wasn't the teacher telling the student he wasn't aloud to participate. Some other volunteers talked about how some of their partner teachers were teaching two different classes. So they would go from one side of the board to the other, no matter how awesome the teacher was (which they were apparently pretty awesome) it could be seen as wasting time as the students had to wait for the teacher to come back to continue the lesson. If a teacher is absent, the class is split and sent to another class which is learning totally different material. There is normally one class of each grade in each school. Often schools don’t have running water or sometimes electricity. The principal /head master or head mistress normally has their own class to teach as well. Both schools in America and Guyana need advocates. They need teachers who fight for their students and they need resources to teach their students, this is the bottom line for me. This is just a quick overview, just some observations and I’m sure I’ll have much more knowledge on the topic soon enough. I also am not trying to bash Guyanese schools in any way, these teachers work hard and so do the students, I just wish the resources were a little better so both the teacher could do an even better job facilitating and the student could do a better job learning.

Thursday & Friday, May 7 & 8

Election gaf?!

First I want to start out with what a typical day looks like which is why I won’t be posting daily. 

5:00 wake up and do yoga or go for a run sometimes both

shower & get ready

eat breakfast

head to training

8:00-5:00 training

5:30 home

6:30 dinner

9:00 everyone’s in bed

11:00 the hour I normally fall asleep- I need to work on making this earlier because I get so tired during the day.

Mainly the day is filled with training, but I normally get quality time with the fam. when I get home! One of these nights we gaffed about the upcoming elections:

I won’t speak much on certain things within this topic, but I do feel as though I should fill you in on a few things and you can look up the rest if you’re so inclined. 

So this upcoming Monday, May 11, are the elections for a new president for Guyana. Similar to the US, elections fall every 4 years, and there are normally 2 big parties that the elections come down to. You can start voting at age 18 oh and a big difference is that it is done via paper ballot, and your finger gets dunked in ink so you can't try to vote a second time, and you only find out the results a day to a few days later.

From what I understand, originally the 2 parties were mainly separated by race, but now that is seemingly not so much the case. There is though a more liberal party and a more conservative party. 

For my host family’s sake, I won’t talk about which affiliation I believe they have. Peace Corps asked us not to talk about politics and so I just had my host family explain the system and the 2 parties and not much beyond that.

The reason why I’m bringing this up is because it is believed to be a year of change for Guyana. The current party in control is the PPP the People’s Progressive Party. The PPP has been in control for the past 23 years I believe. But this year it is believed that the APNU+AFC may win the election. A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change. There have been threats that if APNU+AFC wins that they will jail current political leaders. Regardless of the outcome, there is bound to be disagreement. I say this just so my family knows that there is indeed an election and things may not go smoothly even though I hope and believe all will.

SO…PC is taking extraordinary measures to keep the volunteers and trainees safe. So no worries fam, know that we have an evacuation plan, and that we have the day off and must stay in our homes in case anything were to ensue. Also, to help ease your minds, we aren’t in Georgetown (if anything were to happen it'd happen here) so all will be fine!

Saturday, May 9 

Today I slept in, and relaxed. I woke up early of course, but forced myself back to sleep until 8. I had to get up though because I was sweating so much. My host family keeps generously offering me the fan every night, but I need to get used to this heat because it isn’t going anywhere! Anyway I read a book on my kindle, relaxed, had a good bit of alone time, it was nice. I’m not going to lie though, some PCs were walking past the house and apparently some got together and I was a little sad not to have been included. It would have been nice to get out of the house while I can. But whatever, it is what it is, I enjoyed a good book and finally had time to reflect a little bit about what the hell is happening. I still feel like I don’t know, and maybe I never will. 

**side note: it's ok for me to spend time alone, I need to get used to this feeling we all know I'm not so good at it, but I'm working on it and it helps not always having your closest friends and family always around.

Sunday, May 10

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!!

Today I again was able to sleep in although again I woke up before 6 and finished my book before falling back to sleep. I was awake for good by 8, due to the heat, but I started working on my Mother’s day card for my sister-in-law. Haha it’s kind of silly referring to my host family this way, but I kind of love it! Anyway I bought a Mother’s day card for my host mom when I was in America when I didn’t know I needed 2 cards.. so today I made another one! The house is quiet in the morning as my host mom and sister went to church. I’m not sure what the plans are for the rest of the day, but I’m sure they’ll be low key.. it’s also been a bit rainy so I doubt we’ll go anywhere. I am excited to FaceTime my mama though! She doesn’t know, but there is a Mother’s day surprise waiting for her! Remember back in one of the first blogs when I said I was excited about something, but that you’d find out about it later… this is it! I actually hid cards and a picture in my desk drawer before I left since I knew the first Mother’s Day without me would be tough. So mama, I love ya and I hope you enjoyed the little surprise, I was so excited about it I’m glad I don’t have to wait any longer! Happy Mama’s Day to all of the wonderful mothers out there!!!

I think this post went long enough, I’ll post again soon!

Any requests for what to write about next?!

-please let me know, thanks!

Lots of love,

Fran xoxo