On the whole, given the remoteness of my project (Aishalton) and the lack of regular transport, e-mail is by far the best way to contact me: anyone, please feel free to drop me a message at: sgrw@cranprep.org
However, for those insistent on the good old ways of Snail Mail (or if you happened to feel like sending me anything a bit more substantial - Marmite or any resources for teaching e.g. pencils, chalk, felt pens etc these will always be appreciated.)
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| The largest single drop waterfall in the world! |
My postal address is:
Sam Wilson
C/O Project Trust Volunteers
St Ignatius School
Lethem
Region 9
GUYANA
You will note from the address that it is not possible to write to me direct at my school in Aishalton, as post does not come this far south! (However, there is a daily flight carrying post to Lethem from Georgetown, the capital). Aishalton is 6 – 9 hours by truck further south than Lethem depending on whether it is the dry or rainy season! The PT volunteers in Lethem will give my post to any vehicle bound for Aishalton. These tend to be trucks delivering food supplies to our village. The last year's volunteers informed me that post took '14 days to never' to reach Aishalton, and whilst there is an internet service in Aishalton, I have been informed that it is not always reliable and if it breaks it can take up to a couple of months to get fixed! So, apologies in advance if it takes me a little while to respond to anything you send me. But, nonetheless, contact will always be gratefully appreciated! There is also no mobile phone signal in my village so this is a non starter. If some of you are beginning to wonder what happens if I get ill etc with this lack of contact, rest assured, there is a radio-telephone in the village to Lethem and a plane can be dispatched to land on the grass strip if necessary.
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To you all Kaimen! Greetings from Guyana!
For those of you that don't know, I am about to start my Gap Year, teaching Science, Maths & Geography in Guyana with Project Trust (www.projecttrust.org.uk), and this is the first of (hopefully) many updates I will be sending out over the course of this year.
These updates will be appearing in three places: firstly, I'll be sending them out to my family and to the people who sponsored me. If you know anyone who might like these e-mails, please feel free to forward it on to them, and if you don't want to hear any more, let me know and I'll take you off the list! Secondly, I'll be posting a copy of each of these emails on my blog at www.samwilsonguyana.blogspot.com to act as a kind of journal. And finally, I will most likely be handwriting these in a Journal as electricity will be intermittent in Aishalton! Electricity has only recently arrived and I gather from the present PT volunteers that it seems to be off more than it is on. The generator is supposed to work from 6 – 9 pm.
So - Guyana! (That's on the West coast of Africa, isn't it?... To set the record straight one last time, this is Guyana, not Ghana). What am I doing here? Since I will be sending these updates to such a large number of people, some of whom I have had little or no chance to jabber away to over the past year, and who therefore may still be a little in the dark about all this, some background information on Project Trust and Guyana might be in order. For the rest of you, to save you time and let you cut straight to the good stuff (and also to prevent this email/post getting ridiculously long), this update will be a purely background information one, so that everyone will be starting from the same place when the next update comes.
I first got the idea of doing a GAP year with Project Trust from my mother. A number of people in our family have spent a year away with Project Trust, including my Aunt, Nicola Fewings as well as some of my mother’s cousins Anthony Cornish and Elinor Cummings. I spoke to Nicola, my mother and Grandmother and they all spoke very highly about it so I decided to do some research for myself on the internet to see if this was something that interested me. I decided it definitely was so I applied to the selection week based in the Isle of Coll in Scotland. I was delighted to be offered a place and was told that there was a very strong likelihood of me going to Guyana. I began my fundraising in earnest with a scary total of £4,850 to find. I decided that I would run with two friends; Dan and Jamie; the Portsmouth Half Marathon in February 2009 and hoped that I would raise quite a bit of the funds by running in this event. It was hard work training for this but managed to complete this in a time of 1 hour 42 minutes which was the fastest U21 runner on the day! I then organised a number of smaller fund raising events including two Krispy Crème Dough-nuts sales. I also worked manning the Leader Board at St Andrews for the Open Golf, did a fair amount of babysitting, painting, gardening etc in order to raise the remainder of the money. It is a huge relief that I only have about £120 to raise with a month to go so this should be fine.
In early July 2010 I returned to Coll, this time for an equally intensive four days of training, alternating between learning how to teach and learning about Guyana – There are 16 of us who will be in Guyana in eight different projects. I met my fellow PT volunteer, David Ross, and we chatted and exchanged information about what we knew about our project in Aishalton. What I discovered when I was in Coll that we were actually leaving a week later than I had previously been told so I am now going to join my family in our house in France for a few days before departing to Guyana.
The final weeks in July have flown by. After the training I went to St Andrews for a week with Cranleigh to ‘man the leader board’ for the Golf at St Andrews. This was followed by a just under a week in Polzeath, Cornwall with some Cranleigh friends. The rest of the month has been spent working and getting ready. It is amazing how long it takes. All the injections are now behind me and I have tried Larium, the dreaded Malaria pill, for three weeks to make sure that I don’t have any strange side effects. Luckily I seem to be fine!
Who are Project Trust?
PT is a small but experienced gap year organisation who has sent thousands of volunteers overseas over the past 30 years. They are unique in that they send you abroad for a whole 12 months, so that you can properly appreciate and integrate into a different community from your own, by seeing it through an entire cycle of the seasons. In order to do this, PT ask every volunteer to fund-raise at least £4,750 (itself a useful experience), and this covers the cost of comprehensive selection and training courses (on Coll), getting us to our Projects and back, and our insurance (you can find a more in depth break-down on their website). PT sends one pair of volunteers to each of its projects, so while there are 16 of us in Guyana, we are spread over 8 different projects. Projects are vetted to ensure that they do not take away jobs from the local population, and while the projects vary from country to country, in Guyana we will all be involved in teaching Science and Maths to secondary school level, as there is a serious shortage of qualified teachers, particularly in the interior, where I will be. We will be employed by the Ministry of Education, and thus will be paid a basic wage (although we've been warned not to expect our first payment for about three months!). David and I will have a little house to ourselves very close to the school and we will have to cook for ourselves and wash our clothes in the local creek.
And Guyana itself: well, here's what PT told me about it, before training and what I have read up about ( - I'll be adding my own impressions in future posts):
The Project and the Work
Guyana is a country of a similar size to England, but has a population of less than one million, of which about 90% live in a narrow coastal strip, while the remainder live in the interior of the country. All of the PT volunteers teach Science and Maths in government secondary schools, which have a serious lack of qualified teachers. Most of the PT volunteers teach in the interior of the country in villages and small regional towns, which are inaccessible, except by small plane or river.
History of Guyana
Guyana was first discovered by European explorers at the very end of the 16th century by the Dutch. Over the next few centuries, Guyana’s history was punctuated by battles between the Spanish, French, Dutch and British to gain control of the land. In 1803 Guyana became a British colony and its largest settlement was renamed Georgetown. Guyana remained a British colony until it finally gained its independence in 1966. It remains South America’s only English speaking country.
Guyana
The interior feels like a completely different country, largely uninhabited and consisting of virgin rainforest, mountain ranges, and dry open savannah. It is far more South American in atmosphere, and is largely populated by native Amerindians who migrated to South America from the Caribbean.
It is challenging to live in these small, isolated communities, but is a rare experience, as globally such communities are dwindling. One of the exciting things about Guyana is that there is little or no tourism. Guyana is South America’s little-known curiosity that lies far off the well-trodden tourist path. It is bordered by Venezuela, Brazil, Suriname and the Atlantic Ocean. The main road running North-South through Guyana remains unpaved.
Despite having many natural resources, Guyana is still very under-developed, with a poor infrastructure and high unemployment. The AIDS rate is the highest in the Caribbean and in recent years it has suffered some ethnic unrest. The majority of the population are either of East Indian or Afro Caribbean descent, but there are also Portuguese, Chinese and other mixed races. This diversity of ethnicity makes for a rich cultural experience for anyone lucky enough to be spending a year here. It is a beautiful country full of friendly people.
The country has a range of ecosystems and landscapes that include vast areas of tropical rainforest that cover three quarters of the country, miles of rivers, more than one hundred waterfalls (the most notable being Guyana’s iconic Kaieteur Falls, the highest single-drop waterfall in the world). It also has eighteen lakes, four mountain ranges and sprawling savannahs which is the part of Guyana where I will be based. It is home to more than eight hundred species of birds, over two hundred varieties of mammals and more than eight hundred and fifty species of reptiles and amphibians and over six thousand species of plants. It has many resources including diamonds, gold and bauxite and it is famous for Demerara sugar.
Sport
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| Guyanese and West Indian star, Chanderpaul |
Climate
The climate is equatorial which means it is hot all year-round. In the area where I will be based the temperatures ranges from 18 – 40 degrees centigrade with a wet season from May to September and a period of short rains in December called the Cashew rains.
The Rupununi
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| The main road down to Aishalton from the capital (Georgetown)... |
This is the area in Guyana where I will be based. Guyana is renowned for the pristine, dense claustrophobia-inducing rainforests that cover much of the country. In the jungle, the sun is rarely seen and the world is restricted to your immediate surroundings of twisted greens and browns and a host of unlimited creatures all fighting for the limited space. In the Rupununi Guyana’s forest ends abruptly. One moment you are driving through a sea of green that stretches into eternity, and the next moment it stops and spits you out into vast savannah lands that resemble east Africa without the big game.
The Rupununi is one of the most untouched areas in the world and is also one of the world’s largest open range of savannah lands. The rainy season is good for bird watching (high water levels mean you can boat right up to nests); see reptiles such as snakes and frogs, as well as seeing many orchid species and butterflies. In the dry season you are more likely to see caiman (alligators), otters, capybara, jaguars, anteaters and porcupines. I will be based in the Southern part of the Rupununi.
And closer to the date of departure, once all the projects had been confirmed, PT sent me this regarding my particular project:
Aishalton Secondary School, South Rupununi
Aishalton is an Amerindian community located in the southern savannahs of the Rupununi area of Guyana, close to the Brazilian border. It is about 110 miles South of Lethem, which is the main town of the region, and can only be reached by 4-wheel drive vehicle or truck. In dry weather the journey takes about 5 hours, while in the wet season the road is often almost impassable!
The school serves a wide area and has about 8 teachers and 180 pupils, the vast majority of whom are Amerindians. There is no transport system in the region, and the students from outlying villages board in a hostel on the school compound during term time. You will teach Science and/or Maths, up to GCSE (Standard Grade) level, and will be the only teachers of these subjects in the school. There will be scope to organise extracurricular activities and become involved in the wider community. Aishalton is a regional centre and has a small hospital, a police station, and some shops.
The volunteers live in the newly constructed teachers’ quarters. They have a room each, shared washing facilities and a kitchen where they cook for themselves. Electricity has just arrived, but is sporadic, and most washing is done in the local creek.
The village of Aishalton is home to some 1000 people. The houses are dispersed over a wide area and with their palm-thatched roofs and earth-coloured walls, they seem to grow organically out of the landscape. Between the houses mango trees grow in splendour, giving shade, and in season, sweet bounty. Everywhere, there is a sense of the savannah forcing itself up from below; burn the ground black, and the tall green grasses will grow back in a fortnight. Cattle and horses roam freely, the village an extension of the ranch (you must be careful about hanging your clothes out to dry, lest they become bovine breakfast!) The people go into the savannah to farm – cattle for beef, cassava for farine (flour) and cassava bread – to fish and to hunt for wild meat – venison and hog which is treated as a special delicacy. On occasions, the wild hogs stray into the village, a mistake they have little time to regret become becoming the main ingredient in a spicy dish pepperpot.
As Aishalton is very remote it has few facilities and little obvious contact with the outside world – no newspapers, and no Guyana radio, however, the Brazilian border isn’t too far away and I have been told that a couple of places in the village have a TV and can get CNN and BBC TV via satellite, but this obviously is only possible if the electricity is working.
Training came around, and on it we learnt a great deal about teaching (over the four days we had to prepare and teach two lessons, one 10 minutes long and one 20 minutes long), culture shock, health, staff room politics, Guyanese politics, and pretty much anything and everything they could cram into us. Armed with this knowledge, I spent the next three weeks packing and repacking, trying to fit my life's possessions for the next year into the recommended 23kg! I know that the next few weeks will fly by and before I know it, I will be on the plane to Guyana and the start of a once in a life time experience.
As a rough guide I have been told that my term dates will be:
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| A typical style of house in Aishalton |
1st Term: 1st September – 17th December
2nd Term: 5th January – 2nd April
3rd Term: 19th April – 2nd July
So if any of you are planning to come out to see me or are travelling in South America you can roughly work out when I will be on holiday and game on to travel.
Take care Sam Wilson
PS I have made this 1st Blog long with lots of information just in case you don’t hear from me in a while. You can rest assured I will be thinking of you but just may not be able to get on the web to send anything else for a while.
