Update before Tobago

Well hello everyone... it’s been a long time since my last instalment and I’m accepting NONE of the blame!!! Haha, only joking, of course it’s my fault. So sorry for that. I know that those of you who kindly sponsored me will have been waiting to see how your investment is getting on in his home away from home-----> Life here in Aishalton has showered Dave and I with so many extremes over the past month and a half. It really has been a surreal time, that has neither dropped in pace nor shown any signs of slowing down.... We have burnt the candle at both ends (at school and during our weekends), and I am absolutely shattered!

I hate marking!!

 Even so, Dave and I both agree that: in all that we’ve accomplished and experienced the fatigue we are suffering from right now is worth it, and that we know without any doubts.


School Life During the past 7 weeks

During the past few weeks Aishalton Secondary School; commonly and rather amusingly abbreviated as A.S.S.; has been hampered by further staff shortages.

A.S.S.

Cheers Sam A (PTV and Region 8 Swimming Coach)
for the pic from Nationals

Miss. Bonita (the Maths teacher for years 9 and 10) offered her services to look after the athletes heading off to inter-schools sport at Arawanaw Village for a week. Then she offered to look after the athletes (who won their events at Arawanaw) at inter-branch held at Moco-Moco near Lethem for the following week, which was kind of her. Finally to top of her generosity, Miss. Bonita volunteered to escort the athletes who won at Moco-Moco to Georgetown, to compete at the Nationals for two more weeks! Personally I attribute her munificence to the fact that she is resigning at the end of this term and maybe wanted a month of not having to teach any lessons. Inter-Schools is an athletic competition, for schools/villages in The Deep South of Region 9, there were 6 villages competing: Aishalton, Crowda, Murinaw, Arowinow ..... Interbranch is a competition amoungst the different districts of region 9: The Deep South, South Central, Central (Lethem area) and North Rupununi.

Students saying After-noon prayers before home-time.

Sir Del got offered a place at the University of Georgetown and after being told not to leave due to A.S.S. being short staffed, he resigned that same day and went to Georgetown saying that he would pay for the university fees him-self. With Sir Ardrian (the old Headmaster) having retired, our permanent staff number at the school is 9. However on days it has been as low as 3 teachers. On those days running a school of 250 students - where each teacher has to look after 3 classes each lesson - can get a little tough. Prefects at the school are pretty decent and proactive to be honest and usually help out a fair amount when we are more short-staffed than normal.

Me covering Brother Edwin's 2B Allied Arts class outside

As the term has progressed my teaching has progressed as-well. When I give instructions I don’t rush through my speech, I am clearer and I am more precise. I believe the latter two have mainly improved as my diction and vocabulary has become more in tune with the locals as time has gone on, meaning I can explain the points I am teaching better (you may noticed some Creole English in my more recent blogs). .. Someone in Year 7 wrote in their daily dairy for their English Teacher:

Week 2: ‘I really enjoyed Sir Sam’s science lesson today, but I could not understand what he was saying’

Week 4 ‘....now Sir Sam has started speaking English’.

It hasn’t just been my speech that has improved: I am starting to use the Chalkboard better: writing straighter and neater, writing key words in the corner of the board so they can be left up the whole lesson, using colour better and so on. Composing lesson plans and notes is starting to take less time and is definitely my least favourite but one of the most important parts of teaching. Back in England my view of a lesson was: turning up to class, doing the work, and then handing it to the teacher to mark. That feels distant and simple to me... now that I’m on the other side of the fence.

Challenges facing tourism in Barbados, had to get a pic... it took long enough to write up!!

Last month I started up an extra maths class once a week for anyone in school or out of school sitting CXC this year, which has been going well. I have been going over Consumer Arithmetic which is basically, percentages applied to real life situations, for example: Calculating income tax or hire purchase. Turn-out has been good and I think that the students are relishing the fact that I’m fairly meticulous and methodical in my approach to teaching, even though some of the brighter ones say I’m going though the material too slowly for their liking.

My Form 2A with me at our end of term Class Party

When Miss Bonita was away at inter-branch, I was asked if I could take her maths classes for that week. Feeling ambitious and ready for a challenge I accepted. For that week I took all of my classes and all of Miss Bonita’s classes. Every day before and after school I held lessons in order to fit in all the extra classes I was taking. I feel proud to say that I planned, taught and marked all of my lessons, all of her lessons and all of the extra lessons I do outside of school hours; totalling up to 27 double periods that week. When I was informed at the end of the week that Miss Bonita would be away at Nationals for two more weeks I told them I would not be able to do the same for the following weeks, but I ended up teaching maths lessons whenever I had a moment to spare.

Cha Cha Slide... 'Hands on your knees'

MC Dave!!!

Above is roughly what’s gone on at school recently. It’s been extremely busy and gratifying but also energy sapping (I currently have a high fever). I really did miss not having a half term to rest in. Tobago is 1 week away now, can’t wait. This last week entails the Schools X mas concert, and doing evaluations of the progress of each students in my Form Class. For the concert I’m doing the cha cha slide with my class. No-one’s really great dancers, I tried teaching the hump square to do, but the timings not quite there yet.

This week has been pretty crazy, all the exams have been written! Now the students just need to do them. And I tell you writing up thirty multiple choice questions with a, b, c and d sections realllllllly hurts your arms! Dave has been at school until midnight on Monday, eleven on Tuesday and nine o’clock on Wednesday night respectively! He has been typing exams, printing then and everything. Dealing with the school printer is pretty annoying as the exams are printed on annoying legal size paper. But ALL the printing is now down fortunately! Which is a relief, now just the mind-numbing boredom of sitting in the exams while the kids write them! Me - I’ve just been marking my exams and writing termly schemes of work for next term as Dave is much better on computers. I was pretty happy with my CXC Geography class who got, 58%, 77%, and 81%. As it was their first me doing CXC style questions in exam conditions.

Out Side of School

Burning Hills are the collection of buildings in the centre
of the picture

Even though Aishalton is a small village with a population of only about a thousand, we are still meeting new people. I feel comfortable living here. When Dave and I go up to Burning Hills (about a 7 minute walk from home) to buy food we will usually be there for an hour, caught chatting to people. Even though when you are in a rush it can be a bit annoying, I usually enjoy sitting down and talking to the locals, sharing different views and ideas or just joking around about funny things that have happened. I noticed early on that only by talking to people and asking around do the opportunities to explore and experience new things seem to arise. Dave and I have done many things in our time off. The last 6 weekends have been filled with parties, fundraisers, days at the creeks, cooking lessons, a manour or two and some proper cowboy style horse riding (I’ll explain later).

Some of the students dancing Faha at the class party

I’ve been to a few parties now and have kinda picked up the Brazilian Faha dancing that they do at parties down here. I find it pretty hard as the people here are about half the size of me, so I am never really in sync with the girl I’m dancing with. I had a funny photo of me dancing the Faha on my knees with someone at a birthday party near the Toashos house but I don’t know where is has gone. Going to parties here can be a pretty spur of the moment thing, as news is only passed round by word of mouth. No facebook groups or formal invitations like back home. I was up having a few drinks up at Burning Hills a few weeks ago on a Friday and one of my mates Tubes rode in on his bike and asking if I wanted to go to a Big Party that was celebrating the end of interschool sports in another village called Arrowenow which is about 15-20 miles from Aishalton. Feeling ambitious to have a good time off I went. The bike ride in was crazy fun, speeding for an hour or so along bike cut tracks through the savannah, passing through waist deep creeks darting between paths to avoid potholes and puddles alike. I danced all night long when I got to Arrowenow and managed to negotiate with one of the other teachers from the village to let me stay at his house as otherwise I would be sleeping with one of: Grassila, Sandra or Rocksanne (as one of the locals phased it) . In the morning I caught a lift back in a truck with the all athletes who had been competing from Aishalton in Arrowenow. All 62 of us managed to squeeze into one Bedford... not the most comfortable 2 and a half hours of my life!!

A truck like the one I took, but smaller and with less people on it
Thanks James

I love going to the creeks on the weekend. All the creeks around us our nice, but my favourite one is Cashon which is 15 mins North of our house. When Kristen’s Mum and Brother (Kristen is the Peace Corp. Vol) came to visit from America about a month ago about 16 of us went each bringing different foods which we either roasted or heated up. Like usual we lay on the sun-heated rocks, chatting, eating and listening to music in the shade, bathing in the creek every so often to cool off. We spent all afternoon there. There is a particular rock at one of the creeks, that when the water level is the right height, makes a perfect natural shower. It is truly the best way to wash as Dave is demonstrating.

Along with relaxing at the creeks and going to parties, a major chunk my weekends has been occupied with helping/ organising fundraising events. I guess the fact Dave and I had to raise 5 thousand pounds before coming to Aishalton, is the reason why the locals have asked our help with fundraising. Over the past 8 Fridays, 5 of them have been taken up by fundraising. We’ve had 1 to raise money for the Interbranch Athletes who had to travel and stay near Lethem for a week; 2 events to try and raise funds to keep the Internet Satellite afloat and 2 fundraisers to raise money to buy more books at the school.

The best way to wash in the morning!!

Most fundraisers Dave and I will fry up some pancakes, and other people in the village will contribute some dishes to sell; yet most of the money comes from selling alcohol. On one of the Internet Fundraisers, Sir Anthony; the person who I normally organise the fundraising events with; had gone off to Georgetown leaving me to organise the whole event with the help of Dave! Anyway it was a good experience to have done as I’ll feel more comfortable doing something like that again and we managed to raise $35,000 guyanese dollars, which is only about £100, but in Aishalton you could live off that sum for 2-3 months.

Manours: As I explained before: a manour is a Wapishan word literally meaning: Self-Help. Extract from previous blog:’ A Village Manoor is a kind of self help scheme with a twist: like back home, all work is voluntary and the work can be of any type, this is decided by the person who holds the Manoor, the Bossman. The twist is that your payment for your service is in the form of ParaKari (Kari), a local drink made from fermented Cassava.This is served by the women to the working men. If you accept the donation, it is your way of saying you will carry on working for a bit longer’. There are normally one or two manors each weekend, and some during the week, but I only go onto the ones on the week-end because of school during the week. The manors I’ve attended have varied from, digging 6ft deep rubbish pits, Cart making and Cassava grating. We even had a manoor to strain some Kari for another Manoor but we ended up drinking all the Kari we had strained. Sir Chips; the headmaster of a school in the next nearest village, karaudar (pronounced crawdar); has been building a Wapishan house in Aishalton over the past month/ month and a half, near the rock carvings. This has meant that he’s been hosting manours most weekends. I took a truck up to one of his manors a few weeks back, with Dave, Billy, Earl, a few others and a very strong brew of Kari. This particular manoor was to collect the leaves for the roofing of the house. The leaves had been chopped down in the Savannah 2 weeks before, at a another manour, and the leaves had been bundled like hay, tied using something like reed leaf and been left out to dry. Earl and I moved the 80 or so bundles to the truck while, Dave and Billy loaded the truck, with the others, re-tying the bundles that had come loose. The Kari was lethal and after a couple of shots each, the banter started flowing and everyone started enjoying themselves. Earl and I started seeing who could lift the heaviest bundles, as he’s a student I couldn’t back down, but I tell you what, the next day my neck was sore sore sore. I wish I’d taken my camera to help explain what we did, as I found the whole process of what we did fascinating. After driving back to Sir Chip’s house on the top of the truck we unloaded the leaves and then spent the rest of the evening chatting whilst working our way through a pail or two of fly (Potato wine which makes you ‘fly’) sitting on the roof beams of the house, which had been built during a previous Manoor earlier in the day.

Me on Rum, Dave's Horse

Over the past two months we’ve been doing a lot of horse riding which I’ve enjoyed a lot. My horse is called Falaina. When I first rode her she was pretty wild as she’d only been riden a few times and so kept trying to buck me off but now she’s pretty tame. Dave and I were taken out to round up cattle with Billy in the Savannah. One Saturday afternoon we rode out for about 8 hours and slept out on the floor buy some persons house in the middle of nowhere, we brought some tasso (salted beef left out to dry in the sun for a few days), my speakers and some drink. These combined with some good company provided for an entertaining evening. Early next morning we split up into two groups to go to try and find the herd of cattle that were grazing in the savannah somewhere. My group couldn’t find the herd but we did come across a Giant Anteater which was cool. Just before midday we met up with the Verquicos (Cowboys) who had rounded up the cattle to our direction. For the rest of the day we herded the cattle all the way home. I loved herding the cattle... whenever the cows tried to disperse, I would have to gallop alongside the herd, flanking them to channel them in the right direction. To get the herd to move faster you would have to gallop a straight at the herd making as much noise as possible to scare the cow’s onward.

once again, thanks James.... much better than my pics!!

In the afternoon we bathed the horses at some small waterfall and ate some farine and beef. We managed to get all the cattle home just before sun down which was lucky as it was a new moon meaning pitch black nights. Getting off the horse after 2 days hard riding was nice but my feet were blistered from my bare feet digging into the sturips and my legs were like jelly. Definitely something I’ll be looking to do again soon.

On the Wednesday after the Savannah trip I just mentioned, we went by Billy’s house to help him lasso one of the cows and then slaughter it. I still have a funny image of when we had got the rope round the cow’s neck and only me and Dave had the rope. The cow was mad and started running at our direction. Thinking the cow would be frightened of us like when we were on horses, we stood our ground. Billy then realising we weren’t moving shouted at us to run towards a tree that was lurking nearby. Pretty scared by the anxiety in Billy’s voice, we pegged it, getting chased by a bull with foot long horns. By feeding the rope through a branch in the tree we ran to, we managed to trap the bull. Whilst the bull was trapped, Billy drove a knife into the back of the bull’s neck, killing it pretty quickly. Skinning the bull was a bit sick, but Dave had a pretty good stab at it. I, still in my pj’s decided to give skinning a miss that morning. Whenever we had beef that week it tasted extra good, as I knew I was involved.

Needs to be finished