Blackout

Saturday, September 19, 2009

While it feels like I have been here quite some time, I am still constantly discovering new secret realities in unexpected places. These past few weeks, one of those places has been the walls of our house. The four Project Trust girls who lived in my house last year were young, fresh out of secondary school, and had written on the walls in ink, chalk, and paint. We found a few of the girls’ possessions scattered here and there throughout the house and yard: a framed picture of a middle-aged woman, a Karl Marx pin, a calendar with reminders like “Mum’s birthday”, a chest x-ray with the age listed as 19. The school did what they could to scrub away the markings, but some traces of them remain, permanent. Occasionally, as I am doing something about the house, sunlight will strike the wall at an angle I had not seen yet, and reveal new words written there in chalk.

A couple of weeks ago I first discovered words were hidden in our yellow paint. I was in the shower when it happened: scrubbing my face with a washcloth, I looked up and saw the words “Don’t forget to wash behind your ears!!” emerge in faint blue chalk from the wall beside the door. In spite of myself, I began to do as they said; I felt a bit like the woman from The Yellow Wallpaper.

The word “help” is scrawled on the sea foam-green kitchen wall beside the window overlooking the front gate. Too magenta to be blood, too tidy to be written in fear, the letters are splattered and drip marks reach all the way to the floor. Upon arriving in this strange place, I was disturbed at the sight of the word, taking it to be a possible bad omen. This afternoon I was doing dishes when I noticed there are more words a bit above and to the left of it, but they are difficult to decipher. I can only clearly make out “love you.” In light those and of the other words I have noticed, I have become as indifferent to the “help” as one is to an old freckle.

Last night we experienced the longest blackout since we arrived in the country. It began at around 5:30 PM and ended some time after 1:00 AM. Being a Friday night, we had over a couple of guests, one young Guyanese teacher and one VSO volunteer, whom we had met in Georgetown. Sitting around our small coffee table drinking warm Banks Beer, we played Texas Hold ’Em by the light of a candle stuck in a guava jam jar. The VSO was telling us about his day-to-day activities, he’s here for two years to try to put some sort of special education program in place. Currently, there is little being done for children with learning disabilities here in Berbice. He was saying he was in awe of the teachers around here: many are young, fresh out of secondary school, underpaid and untrained. They do their best to make it up as they go along—it must be frustrating to do something as difficult as teach without proper experience.

His words rang true for more people than I think he knew. Our Guyanese friend shifted uneasily, subconsciously taking on a defensive posture. I thought of the Project Trust girls. I thought of myself. Even with my small amount of experience living on my own, I still feel lost most of the time. How could these girls be expected to cope with the stress? I thought of the word “help” on the wall of the kitchen. Help. Was it simply a joke, or did it mean something more? An outlet for frustration? A small act of retribution?

Laundry

“But the Christmas vacation was very far away: but one time it would come because the earth moved round the sun always.”

I’ve begun to read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce and this line struck a particular chord with me.

As of when I am writing this, the 13^th of September, it has been a month to the day since I arrived in Guyana. I can’t exactly say that time has flown, but it is hard for me to believe I’ve made it this far. The days here are very long; the sun rises early. I usually wake up at sunup, 6 AM, and must look for ways to fill my time until I can go to bed again. As a result, I have begun to take pleasure in performing what used to be time-consuming, mundane household tasks: cooking, cleaning the kitchen, sweeping the living room, etc. With my formerly busy schedule, I used to think of these responsibilities as a burden. Now, I am thankful for them.

Today I spent the afternoon doing laundry. Around here, not many people have washing machines, so they do their laundry in tubs in their yard. This is exactly how I do mine. Sitting on an overturned bucket by the spigot in my front yard, I scrub my laundry on a washboard, rinse it, wring it, and then hang it on the line. Because of the water shortage in Berbice, we only have running water at designated times during the day. I must race to get my laundry rinsed before the water is turned off again. As happens from time to time, long strips of ash from the leaves burned off the sugarcane floated over from the fields and came down like black snow as I worked. They landed in the washtub and clung to clothes on the line. By the time I finished today, I could barely lift my arms, but I enjoy being absorbed in the quiet comfort of manual labor.

As I washed clothes today, I reflected on what Caroline, Moses, and I did last night. We were supposed to meet a Peace Corps volunteer and her friends at a bar called Sher’s. The volunteer did not show up, but I did meet a few other people and learned a bit more about the local culture. In Trench Town Rock, Bob Marley croons, “One good thing about music is when it hits you, you feel no pain.” This is not the case in Guyanese bars—the music is played so loudly, it makes your ears ring and changes the rhythm of your heartbeat. I did not enjoy the bar atmosphere, but it was good for me to get out of the house. As much as I enjoy being domestic, I need to start making the rest of this town my home. It’s hard, but I need to remind myself that I’m going to be here a long time.
These are a couple of pictures of my shower. We deal with the water shortage by always keeping a few buckets filled and we deal with the constantly leaking shower by using the drips to fill the bucket. Pretty clever, eh?

I'm Magically Adapting

As a result of being a former British colony, Guyanese schools follow the British system. The students have a different schedule every day, which keeps life exciting for me. Until they get the timetable straightened out for the year, I won’t know for sure what I’m going to be teaching the next day.

Speaking of things being unpredictable, Caroline is a bit upset today. After almost two weeks of teaching at New Amsterdam Multilateral Secondary (NAMS), she was informed last night that since Berbice High School (BHS) had originally requested her, she is obligated to teach there. BHS decided this a day or so ago while making payroll arrangements for me. NAMS has already made a timetable for her in which she was scheduled for 36 out of the 40 weekly periods. Instead, she spent the day today in the BHS staffroom doing basically nothing. On the upside, I now have company and moral support at BHS. Another happy thing: I found out that I am going to get paid more than I had originally been told, about the equivalent of $300 US versus $225. Hooray! I need groceries.

I am beginning to understand how the Guyanese school system works overall, though I have to admit the only way I’ve been able to keep things straight is by drawing parallels to Harry Potter. Like Hogwart’s, Berbice High School is a secondary school, meaning the students begin at level seven and are called first-formers. The oldest students are in level 12 and are in the sixth form. The students wear uniforms and belong to houses with funny names; I have been assigned to Pugsley House. Also, like in Harry Potter, the houses compete against each other in sports. I don’t really know what else the houses are for, though, since the students don’t matriculate. The lab reminds me of the potions lab because in the stockroom there are many irregularly-shaped bottles filled with mystery liquids and in a nearby room are several jars with preserved animal specimens in them. One jar contains a human fetus and ovary from an aborted ectopic pregnancy. Unfortunately, unlike in Harry Potter, the students do not wear robes, cast magic spells, or fight evil wizards.

I finally learned my address:

New Amsterdam Multilateral Secondary School Compound
Cummingsville, New Amsterdam
Berbice, Guyana
South America

Apparently, it is very important that you specify South America, because there have been instances where things have been shipped to Ghana by mistake.

Greetings from Guyana!

For those of you who don’t know, I came here through the Harvard-based NGO WorldTeach. I will be here until July 2010 teaching biology and chemistry at Berbice High School in Region 6. I live in a house on the compound of New Amsterdam Multilateral Secondary School with two roommates: Moses and Caroline. They are from the Dominican Republic and Canada, respectively. There are six other WT volunteers placed in various locations throughout Guyana, all of whom were recruited to teach math and science at Guyanese secondary schools.

The reason we, and volunteers from many other organizations such as the Peace Corps, VSO, and Project Trust, are here is because of a severe teacher shortage in Guyana caused by teachers being lured away to other countries by higher wages.

I have been here approximately 24 days so far, but it feels like much longer. I am quickly finding out that this trip is not the idealized majestic and beautiful journey most would imagine. Instead, I am finding the stress of living abroad, which I knew was inevitable but thought I could easily handle, in fact, is very real. Despite the fact that I am able to keep in contact with home through readily available internet access at the internet café across the street, a luxury not enjoyed by many volunteers, I find I am missing family and friends much more than I expected. Luckily, whenever I begin to feel down, I am able to disappear into a book. So far, I have read Green City in the Sun, Notes from Underground, and am halfway through A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. By the end of the year I should be very well-read.

While the school year began on Tuesday and I have taught a few biology classes, I don’t have a set teaching schedule yet. Even though I am supposed to be the teacher, I find I am learning more than I expected—about myself. Up until this point, I was the student, which makes it difficult to switch suddenly to being in the position of authority. The chorus of “Good morning, Miss,” I am greeted with daily by the students makes me uncomfortable, as I am unaccustomed to so much formality. An additional challenge is the unexpected language barrier. Being of African, East Indian, Dutch, Portuguese, and Amerindian descent, the English of the students is colored by a unique accent I have never before encountered and often struggle with.

There are some bright spots. Walking down the street, I enjoy watching cows graze in ditches filled with pink water lilies the size of two outstretched hands. Though people have yelled “white girl” at me more than once, in general people have been very friendly and supportive. They are happy I am here to teach and consider it a great personal sacrifice.

Getting to learn my way around the market has been interesting. Moses, Caroline, and I explored it yesterday morning. There is ample fresh produce, which we have used to make some delicious dishes. I tried my hand at fried plantains last night and have decided they should be a regular part of my diet. Also, yesterday afternoon I bought a bicycle for $13,000 GD (about $70 US) to serve as my primary mode of transportation. It is a beautiful thing. When it comes time for me to leave, I look forward to giving it away.

I am something of a spectacle when I ride it. In addition to me being a small white girl in a black neighborhood, not many other people can afford such a nice bike. As I was riding it home for the first time, a woman yelled at me "Ride that bike, white girl!"