Dear Everyone,
I've read it on so many letters and reports from past Project Trust Volunteers that it now seems slightly clichéd, and it feels very odd to be finally writing it myself, but:
Kaimen! Greetings from Guyana!
For those of you that don't know, I am currently on my gap year, teaching Science and Maths 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 - sorry this first update is so late in coming! I've now been in Guyana for nearly 9 weeks, but had no access to the internet until about a week ago, as Aishalton's internet service died almost the day we arrived here, and only recently got fixed - apologies to all those who have been kept waiting in the dark; it is not for want of trying!
These updates will be appearing in three places: firstly, I'll be sending them out as mass emails to all my friends & family, workmates, sponsors, and everyone and anyone else who might be remotely interested - if you're reading this in your inbox, and are feeling slightly bemused, fear not - I'll be explaining more soon. If you know anyone who might like these emails, 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 web-log at www.gappinginguyana.blogspot.com to act as a kind of journal. You can find sporadic posts from the last 12 months charting my fund-raising in preparation for Guyana, here, too.
And finally, all these updates are originally being hand-written in a free Ministry of Education exercise book, as the generator has a nasty habit of cutting out just when you type your final full stop - but the only person who'll be reading these original copies is myself.
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 around (hopefully immediately after this one) on my first month's experiences; you may already have guessed from the subject line that this contains very little real news. And with that painfully long introduction out of the way:
Sometime in mid-2005, one of Project Trust (PT)'s representatives came to my school and convinced me to apply for a gap year before university (when I get back, I'll be going to Dundee University to study medicine). After attending a 4-day selection course on the remote Isle of Coll (where PT are based) in August '05, I got a letter in the post letting me know I'd be going somewhere in Guyana, and so I kick-started (albeit lurchingly, although it soon picked up surprising speed) my fund-raising: since then, with the massive generosity of a vast number of people, I've raised over £4000 for Project Trust - who are a registered charity - in order to cover the cost of volunteering overseas for 12 months. The progress of that daunting task is all recorded on my blog, but for now, I will have to say a simple but HUGE thank you to all of you that helped!
Then, with that behind me, from 24th to 28th July '06, I returned to Coll, this time for an equally intensive four days of training, alternating between learning how to teach and learning about Guyana - while the 26 of us who were actually going all go to know each other, and, in particular, our partners who we would be paired with on our respective projects for the next 12 months.
Three very quick weeks later, A-level results came around, and the following day my parents drove me and all my kit up to Manchester (passing a goodbye tornado near Birmingham), where, early on the morning of Saturday 19th August, we bade our farewells and looked our last on Britain for the next year (except for a lunch at the British High Commissioners' in Guyana - technically British soil).
Who are Project Trust?
PT are a small but experienced gap year organisation who have sent over 4000 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 £3,950 (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 26 of us in Guyana, we are spread over 13 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, here in Guyana we are all 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 am. This means we are being employed by the Ministry of Education, and thus are being paid a basic wage (although we've been warned not to expect our first payment for a couple of months!) and - at least where I am - we're being lodged in the school's boys dormitory, although we have to cook for ourselves.
And Guyana itself: well, here's what PT told me about it, before training ( - 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 our volunteers teach Science and Maths in government secondary schools, which have a serious lack of qualified teachers. Most of our volunteers teach in the interior of the country in villages and small regional towns, which are inaccessible, except by small plane or river.
Life in Guyana
Although Guyana is a former British colony and the only English-speaking country in South America, very few people are aware of this fascinating and diverse country. Guyana means 'Land of Many Waters' in Amerindian, and it justifies its name with over 965 miles of navigable river. The tropical coastal strip is rich with coconut palms, sugar and banana plantations, and has a vibrant Caribbean atmosphere.
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. 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, indeed it is hard to find any up-to-date guidebooks.
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 you will also find 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.
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
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 boy's dormitory at present. They have a room each, shared washing facilities and a kitchen where they cook for themselves. You will therefore need to be able to cook from basic ingredients. The school is building a new house for the PT volunteers, but it is not ready yet.
And until training, that was essentially everything I knew. Immediately after A-level exams finished, I hopped over to the other side of the fence and some of my long-suffering teachers kindly let me observe how they teach. At the same time, many people very kindly offered various tips and advice on everything from travelling to teaching, especially one of my aunts (Megan), who was an infinite resource of all things educational.
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 25kg (which, it turned out, in the end could have been as much as 32kg, for all those thinking of doing something similar); I might put my kit list up on the website at some point, for any entertainment value it may harbour.
And so at last the waiting ended, and from 5a.m. (GMT) on Saturday 19th August until midnight Guyanese time (5a.m. Sunday in Britain) we travelled and travelled and lugged our baggage and travelled some more until we finally arrived at the house of PT's representative in Guyana, the indomitable Kala, and crashed onto some mattresses she had kindly laid out all over her floor.
Since then, nearly a month has passed [two, now!], and an update on all that's happened is long overdue - sorry! Hopefully, however, this email has been helpful in bringing some of you up to speed with what I've been doing, and for those of you who have stuck with reading this to the end, thank you, and I'm sorry there's not really anything new!
Right now [as I hand-wrote this a few weeks ago, at the end of the rainy season] it is pouring down with rain (so much for the 'dry' savannah) on a Saturday morning, so I had better get on with some lesson plans or marking, but I will begin on the next, much-hyped and much-delayed update later today, I hope, and, once the internet is working again (it's been down for nearly two weeks now), I'll try and send them out back-to-back.
I hope life's treating all of you well - for all the gappers out gapping at the moment, I hope you're having as amazing a time as I am; for all the university freshers, let me know what I've got coming next year; and for everyone else, please feel free to let me know any of your news - these emails will be very much centred around what I'm doing, and it would be nice to know the world continues to spin elsewhere!
Take care,
-- Benedict/Ben/Bean/beanie/Bene/Bondonct/Bba... (and now 'Sir Ben'!)
Gapping in Guyana
Labels: Gapping In Guyana
