Gapping in Guyana #3: Impressions of a volunteer teacher after four months in Aishalton
‘If this is Wapishana culture, then it’s not worth fighting to preserve.’
Angry thoughts, walking alone by starlight back to my quarters in the Secondary School’s dorms. Strong words: justified? Impressions – perceptions, perspectives – change at a furious rate when this far from home; by morning, my feelings had mellowed – now, a month later, they have changed further still. But however you interpret them, whatever meaning you attach to them, the experiences remain.
A long day, beginning at half four in the morning, and running through to midnight: preparing for and then running a fund-raising fair at Aishalton’s Community Centre, in support of the beleaguered Deep South Internet Service. The crowd was slow in appearing – advertising, word-of-mouth and a quickly-scrawled poster in the shop, had been patchy at best – and, in the end, despite a few brave attempts at games stalls and a prodigious amount of cooking (pepper-pot, barbequed chicken, cook-up rice, pastries), only the bar brought out the punters – and, of course, this was expected: this was where the real fund-raising was. Nonetheless, it also brought out a side of Aishalton that seemed more at home in the heart of
Beer after beer, rice wine and more rice wine; slurring and incomprehensible men loudly revealing the secrets of the universe – ‘’Ssh a fac’, ok, ‘ssh a fac’…’, although whatever fact was being referred to was never entirely explained – or dancing alone in the empty central concrete-floor of the Community Centre (a thatched building, with brick walls up to chest height, and then a gap until the roof, through which faces, obscured and barely visible in the darkness, peered), relishing the attention of the onlookers, however disdainful or mocking… Previously friendly faces, aggressively approaching the female teacher helping out with the bar; the headmaster’s visiting friend ordering drink after drink – ‘You can charge Adrian tomorrow’ – without bothering to inform the headmaster of the account in his name. Bodies sprawled on the ground, inside and outside, sleeping off the drink wherever they fell; adults, of all standings in the village, behaving like teenagers.
And, to bring the night to a close, an explosive brawl, begun by a playful slap, rapidly expanding to give vent – as I later discovered – to family tensions that had been simmering for a long time, and ultimately resulting in another unconscious form, this time not from drink; friends, restraining friends, getting caught up and lashed with equal ferocity.
A sour note to end on, and a scene unexpected and unusual; but how unusual? Drinking is a big part of life in Aishalton – drinking to get drunk; every day will see someone leaning over the counter at the shop at ‘Burning Hills’ – a social hub of the village, and a stopping point for any passing vehicles – nurturing a Venezuelan beer (illegal imports, cheaper than Guyana’s own Banks beer), from the headmaster of Karaudarnawa’s Primary School, or the District Development Officer from Sand Creek, to Uncle Roy, the tractor driver for Burning Hills, persistently demanding another bottle of Catuaba, or others – perhaps farmers – found in the shop at any time of day.
“I hate the smell of drunk people. This place smells of a drunk man’s breath,” Janelle, the girl who works – overworks – in the shop, and who is also one of my Form 5 maths students, tells me, as she points to the overflowing dustbin filled with cans, and another inebriated man – and it is almost invariably men – finally stumbles out of the door.
Of course, it is not always so negative: a lot of the time the drinking is sociable, a part of the culture (although, when a man standing alone in the corner orders his fifth drink, it seems more of a necessity). But what is the culture? Are these scenes, of which even the smell Janelle finds disgusting, parasitic on traditional Wapishana culture (the Amerindian tribe of Aishalton), or definitive of a new culture? Within the first two months of our time in Aishalton, there had been three culture shows or ‘concerts’ at the grounds by the Community Centre; one was entirely in Wapishana. But can a ‘culture-group’ such as the Kabushaka group, dancing traditional Amerindian dances to Amerindian music, in skirts hand-made out of ïté leaves, ever truly represent the culture of the people looking on? Fewer and fewer of the children in the school can speak Wapishana; the music played every weekend at Burning Hills (at top volume) is invariably Brazilian Forró.
Culture is more than just about songs and dances and culture shows; it is also about how life is lived from day to day: it is as much about shop credit and drinking as it is about skits and leaf-skirts. One policeman, beer in hand, collared me in the shop a few weeks after my arrival in Aishalton, and in the space of half an hour had asked me five times “So, how do you like the Rupununi way of life?” – a big difference from life in
Some aspects of the culture – of every-day life and activities – have very obviously changed. One weekend in October, I went on a manoru with Simon, Anthony, Uncle Roy, and one of my Form 3 students, Margaret. A manoru is a ‘cooperative-help’ activity where friends get together to help out one person in a particular project, and are rewarded by that person or family with copious amounts of rice wine or kari (a drink made from the cassava plant); even these cooperative activities are decreasing in frequency in Aishalton, according to some (although, on the other hand, a village manoru this month, attracted over 100 people). We were to go a few miles out of the village, load up the tractor with bundles of ïté leaves that had been previously cut down and dried, and transport them back to Margaret’s house, where they were to form the thatched-roof for her brother-in-law’s new house. Though fun, it was hard work – the sharp, dry leaves scratched and cut, and there was no shade from the sun as we lifted the bundles over our heads onto the trailer; but, as Anthony pointed out, a few years ago it would have been harder still – instead of only three, a whole group would have walked out on foot and returned with the leaves on their backs. To do so now, with the tractor available to hand, for the sake of ‘culture’, would make no sense, but it is undeniable that the arrival of vehicles and generators has irreversibly changed the way of life for almost everyone in Aishalton.
To celebrate the culture as it was – to maintain it in the memory of its direct descendants – is a worthy aim; but to fight to preserve that way of life seems increasingly impossible. Wapishana culture is a culture under pressure: as contact with the world beyond the Rupununi Savannah increases in frequency and intensity, the conveniences and economy of Western life-styles encroach more and more. As Stacy, resident anthropology PhD student from
In one of my impromptu anthropology lessons, I learn that as a language changes, any culture based upon it will invariably, inevitably change too: language for a Creole culture forms its foundations, as it is the primary way of expressing that culture. Wapichan – the language – is a case in point: never having traditionally had a written form (other than, perhaps, the rock carvings found around Aishalton and elsewhere in the savannah) to lend inertia to it, it has largely been displaced by English, and, despite the attempts of Adrian – the headmaster of the Secondary School – and the Wapichan Language Project (WLP/WWA), who have created a ‘Scholar’s Dictionary’ to the language, fewer and fewer individuals speak it, and many – particularly those whose jobs take them out of Aishalton frequently – cannot even understand it. With this kind of pressure on the language, it may come as no surprise that the culture is similarly struggling.
And then, if change is inevitable, why fight it, or which aspects of the culture should be preserved? Small but fascinating glimpses of a collective, local knowledge occasionally surface – unique, because they are tied to the locality: Anthony braces himself for his 29th birthday celebrations, as they will fall on a full moon, when people become more wild and get drunk faster; Tony moves his hammock inside from the veranda for the new moon, claiming that it is often accompanied by a rainstorm – at 3a.m. that night, it pours for the first time in weeks. But how valuable is this knowledge? Is it worth obstructing ‘progress’ (if ‘Westernization’ can be equated with that) – at least economic progress – for its sake? And then, there is other, more elusive local knowledge – more precarious for its secrecy: the ‘knowledge-holders’ – piai-men – and their understanding of local medicines, unrecognized or unknown to the West. Again, there is a caveat even to this: not all these piai-men are equated with knowledge; instead, they are better known for swindling.
Evening; a conversation with Anthony: “Aishalton’s community is at a turning point”: it is on a knife-edge, delicately balanced but ready to fall in either direction. On the one hand is a self-confident and self-reliant Wapishana culture, with a clear, strong image of itself, distinct from other cultures that it comes into contact with; not asserting to be something it is not, and then changing back into the denim jeans and climbing on the Honda motorbike when the culture show has finished, but incorporating these to complement a cultural history that has not been lost.
The alternative is a bleaker picture, and perhaps the scenes at the fund-raising fair and the ‘Burning Hills’ shop are a fore-shadow of it: is it the loss of cultural reference points that have led to culture-less insecurity? Artificially, forcefully stating what the culture is – as in the ‘culture shows’ – cannot help this; the culture must be genuine. Watching the dormitory children at the weekend, unsupervised, leaping into ‘Old Lady Pond’ from trees of terrifying heights, laughing and screaming, splashing and diving, is a refreshing reminder of how it feels to be completely unconcerned with what culture is being subscribed to, and simply having fun, in its most natural state. Perhaps more relevantly, my short stay at Dadanawa Ranch revealed to me a different kind of community, smaller and more focused than that of Aishalton – as everyone living on the Ranch is there to work for the Ranch – but one in which that focus has been used to base a strong self-image around, a culture that is based around the lifestyle of the community, and not in conflict with it.
Which direction Aishalton’s community will take, however, is not simply a matter of chance. Change will happen – is happening – and a few, too few, individuals have taken it upon themselves to take responsibility for that change, attempting to direct it so that its effects serve the community, and not the other way around. Time and again, the same individuals’ names emerge as the person responsible. Anthony, full-time teacher at the Primary School, has put his heart and soul (and nearly broken both) into keeping an internet service in Aishalton, and at the same time keeps the Youth Group running and meeting to discuss new projects – currently, a poultry farm; Adrian, headmaster of Aishalton Secondary School (my workplace), and probably the man single-handedly responsible for its continued success despite its serious staff shortage, drawing students away from the far larger and much better-staffed St Ignacious’ School in Lethem, also works with the WLP/WWA, fighting to preserve the Wapishana language, helps out with the Internet Committee, and combines all this with being the chairman for the district’s branch of Guyana’s Teachers’ Union (GTU). Tony, Anthony’s father, was Toshao (chief) of Aishalton for 12 years, and eventually had to fight to step down, his brother being voted into his place, as the village and counsel felt it could not cope without him: in contrast, Tony was ready to move onto more urgent, wider issues – sitting on the steps of his house, listening to him talking village politics with Anthony and Gavin – the latter two getting worked up about issues particularly on their minds – Tony intriguingly backs out of the debate: “I can’t get involved with these village politics right now; there are much bigger issues just emerging, and there is no one else in the region who can expose them except me – and the only way I can do that is by spending the next two weeks going round the villages.”
Tony’s cause – the cause for which he has been fighting since, and during, his time as Toshao – is Amerindian rights, and in particular, Amerindian land rights to the lands their forefathers claimed as ‘their land’, and yet to which they now only have a limited claim. When Simon and I first arrived in Aishalton, Tony wasted no time in inviting us round to his house, welcoming us with our first experience of shiibii, a refreshing drink of dried farine in the bottom of a bowl of cold water, to talk to us, almost exclusively about land rights. To Tony – and he has devoted many years to this issue – this is the keystone in the dam holding back a controlled and sustainable development of the region – controlled, that is, by the peoples – the Amerindian tribes – who live there, and not by the politicians on Guyana’s very different – culturally, climactically, and racially – coast.
These, then, are the individuals with the interests of the community at heart; for the majority, however, it is enough simply to get on with life – or is it enough? At such a crucial stage in the community’s development, can such an attitude be maintained, or will external factors eventually break through? If the people of Aishalton simply wait for this to happen then perhaps it will be too late to change any trend that has developed outside their control.
Such a change that may eventually come to a head is the increasing demand for meat. Traditionally, the diet in Aishalton has been relatively high in carbohydrate and low in protein (or perhaps I am just sick of rice and farine), but an expanding population and an increasing expectation – again, fuelled perhaps by Western influences and trickle-down prosperity – for a better quality of life (which includes diet) has led to the demand for beef outstripping the supply. There is very little – if any – systematic or large-scale commercial cattle-farming (setting aside Dadanawa Ranch, 50 miles away), and many people have just a few cows for themselves which they slaughter as and when they need or want to. This system is no longer sufficient for the demand, and supplies of cattle in the Rupununi are dwindling – something which many people have observed, but which, unless arrested, will soon be very painfully felt by all.
Another late night conversation at Burning Hills over a bottle of Catuaba, this time with ‘Chips’, headmaster of the Primary School in nearby Karaudarnawa: the World Bank is funding a ‘hot meals’ programme for his school – and Aishalton’s Primary School, and others all over the region – to provide one hot meal every day to all the students at the school. The funding is there, but, again, the supplies are not. Anthony and the Youth Group have set up the poultry farm specifically to try and plug this gap (or, at the least, to take advantage of it), but with no experience in chickens and limited funds, this remains strictly experimental. Clearly, there is a need for a change in cattle-farming methods in the district, but Chips astutely raises a complication that never occurred to me: ‘Many people use their cows as a kind of bank.’ And, even as he says this, I am reminded of how another friend, Gary, recently slaughtered a cow in order to get together the funds he needed to pay for his daughter’s CXC fees (the end-of-school examinations).
If there is to be a meaningful development, therefore, it needs to be in all directions at once – although this may be asking the impossible. For larger-scale commercial cattle farming to become possible, the ‘cow bank’ needs to be replaced with a monetary bank. And, indeed, such a venture has been shown to have a wide-reaching impact: as Simon and I passed through Lethem – the nearest big town to Aishalton – on our way to our project, we visited the bank there in its first week of opening. Three months later, I returned to Lethem and found street signs appearing for the first time – a direct result of (and sponsored by) the bank. However, how far-reaching this new prosperity is may be questionable: my reason for being in Lethem that weekend was the Rupununi Expo – a display of all the crafts, products and industries of the Rupununi Savannah – and, according to all-knowing Shirley – owner of a shop and the internet café in Lethem, and another individual, like the others mentioned earlier and (on first appearances, but don't be decieved) almost a mirror image of Tony’s wife, Dorothy – who does everything and says no to nothing (even an invitation to talk to the European Parliament in Brussels at three days notice!) – this year’s Expo was a much smaller affair than usual, continuing a downward trend. As far as I could see, it was almost entirely dominated by Brazilian stalls; certainly, there was little ‘Rupununi’ representation.
Similarly, the hydro-plant near Lethem was recently put out of action by a land-slide, but there has been no effort to repair it – instead, disturbing talk of decommissioning it entirely: a definite backwards step for the region.
Back in Aishalton, Bernard – caught in the uncertain gap between the end of school and a career, or further education, or – what? Even he is unsure (in his words: “I am a youth man!”) – sits down to gaff with me at Anthony’s birthday celebration. He confides his belief that Aishalton is similarly taking a backward step: what potential there is, he fears, is being squandered, and, with surprising candidness, he admits he is probably just as responsible in squandering the potential in himself, wavering over what direction to take his future in. In a year, he plans to go to college to study agricultural technology, but in the meantime, a year is a long time, and what is he going to do usefully with it?
Bernard tells me of an experience of his at school – which I’ve certainly found, in my brief time so far teaching – that he feels is partly to blame for the aversion from responsibility found in so much of the village’s population. When he was at school, Bernard’s maths teacher appealed to the class a few weeks before the final examination: “I’ve taught you everything I can – from now on, the revision is down to you; but if you need any help with anything, please come to me.” Bernard went to him with a problem: “Sir, you’ve explained this so many times, but I just don’t get it – what does it mean?” The teacher, rather than being frustrated with Bernard’s lack of understanding, was impressed at his desire to learn – “You’re the only student who has come to me with a question.”
After four months of teaching maths, I can sympathise; as a subject across Guyana, it is very poor, and I suspect many of the problems may have their roots in the Primary Schools, but essentially, the students – the future decision-making generation of Aishalton – very rarely appear to make the kind of effort Bernard did to tackle something they do not understand. No doubt this is also due to my teaching style, which is far from perfect, but it is an experience that I have heard from other Project Trust Volunteers all over the region, if not the country – and not only PTVs: as Megan – a Peace Corps volunteer and a nurse in Lethem – puts it: “There is a culture of learning by rote, not by looking for cause-and-effect. If they don’t understand something, they don’t ask why – they just accept it as something they haven’t learnt.” In this case, she is not referring to my ailing maths classes, but to a more urgent issue – her attempts to educate various health workers in STIs and their transmissions – but her comments are equally pertinent.
It is not only fears of the Region taking a backwards step through the apathy that may be epitomized by Bernard’s (and my) disinterested students, or by the languishing hydro-plant, that worry some people: there is also a sense that development in the Region is purposefully, maliciously being held back. Obviously, Tony believes that unless the land rights the Amerindian tribes are due are granted to them, their land will be exploited even as they are powerless to do anything but look on; patents for medicinal drugs, long known to the ‘knowledge keepers’, are snatched up by multinational corporations, and gold in the neighbouring Marudi mountains is mined by Vanessa, a company based in Canada. However, others have encountered more subtle discrimination. Anthony believes the technical ability and expertise is present in Aishalton to offer computer and IT courses leading to qualifications, and, indeed, I am currently helping him out running and teaching practical basic computer classes; but every time he seeks the official recognition required to offer meaningful qualifications, Anthony has come up against further apathy and obstructiveness. He suspects that it is because the regional centre, in Lethem, does not have such facilities in place, that the authorities based there are jealously blocking any development in Aishalton until it occurs in Lethem. Whether or not this is a fair accusation, Anthony has another axe to grind: despite explicitly asking, he has received no explanation why the quarterly fee paid by the Aishalton (or ‘Deep South’) Internet Service for wireless broadband internet is more than its counter-part in Lethem pays, despite receiving exactly the same service; this problem is exacerbated by the fact that one company in Guyana has a monopoly on this market. When the internet service broke down in Aishalton (three days after our arrival), and took a month to fix, Anthony was still required to pay for the full three months, and the ensuing shortfall was the reason for the fund-raising fair, that ended so drunkenly.
It is tempting to ascribe such obstructions – and the accusation has been made by more than one individual – to racism, to a belief harboured (supposedly) by the politicians on the coast that the ‘primitive’ Amerindian communities are incapable of deciding their own future. As the above examples show, these accusations are not without grounds; but there is an equally disturbing tendency that can potentially arise out of the struggle to preserve Wapishana culture in Aishalton, and that is explicit, institutionalized, if not exactly malicious, racism to all non-Amerindians – a knee-jerk, persecution-syndrome reaction. At each ‘culture show’ was a heavy, almost oppressive emphasis on ‘our Amerindian village’, ‘our Amerindian culture’, ‘our Amerindian history’, and even saying ‘We don’t want to hear any of this Brazilian Forró music at these concerts’ (despite the very clear evidence, every weekend, that people do want to hear Forró) – this last one was the controversial Toushou, Chris, brother of Tony, who has also expressed a desire to prevent Aishalton’s ‘youth’ from wearing ‘Western’ – ‘indecent’ – clothes, such as short skirts. (Stacy, proof-reading this essay, points out another way of looking at this: does that have anything to do with his attempt to stop the influence of Westernization, or is it due to another aspect of Western culture itself?)
Nonetheless, in the desire to develop an identity for the Wapishana community and culture, it seems that a line has been crossed that should not have been – the line that separates cultural identity from racial identity. To identify or define Aishalton as both an Amerindian and Wapishana village, and assert that the culture and the race of the individual – or even the community – necessitate each other, is to exclude any members of the community – many of whom are playing an active and beneficial role – who are not of Amerindian decent; looking over at Wayne, the Afro-Guyanese husband of Jacky, Deputy Development Officer in Aishalton’s administrative headquarters, at one of the concerts, I wonder how comfortable he and others who have adopted Aishalton as theirs feel about such comments: do their children, in the same classes as all the Amerindian children I teach, not have an equal right to – and role to play in – the culture of the community in which they grow up? No doubt this is more thought than they ever gave the issue, and perhaps more than it deserves – a thick skin, whatever its colour, can make up for a lot – but, nonetheless, racism in any form, however subtle, tends to have negative effects, and cannot help in encouraging the co-operative development of a community such as Aishalton.
But, then, who is to say that Aishalton should ‘develop’ in the sense expected by Western cultures? How can one criticize the culture-less behaviour of individuals at an internet fund-raising fair, when such a fair is alien to the traditional Wapishana culture in the first place (games such as ‘Pin the tail on the donkey’ and a domino competition being a far cry from the life depicted by the culture shows), let alone the concept of the internet, a service that, despite Anthony’s best efforts to educate the community, is still only used by a minority.
And if change is inevitable, who is to say what developments would be for better or for worse? Can anyone ever tell until it has happened? Recently, I had my eyes opened to some of the harsher realities of life in the Rupununi: Janelle lives in Aishalton, where she works in the shop and goes to school, and her father also lives here, working as the dorms ‘Father’ at the Secondary School, but her home, where her mother lived until recently, was in the nearby village of Awarewaunau. A few weeks ago, as she was getting the house in order for Christmas, Janelle’s mother – ‘Aunty’ Jenny – was approached by a man in her home, who seized two kitchen knives and held them to her throat. He ordered her to stay in her room, and set about setting the thatched house on fire; miraculously, she escaped and made it to a nearby radio to call for assistance; help arrived, and the assailant was caught, but not before he had stabbed Aunty Jenny’s brother (fortunately not fatally), and too late to prevent the house from being razed to the ground. Not a thing could be saved – not a pot or pan, and certainly not any of the savings that Aunty Jenny had kept there. That’s when it really struck me – with no bank, no insurance, no safety net, they really had lost everything: fortunately, they had many friends in Aishalton, and Janelle’s father, Manley, still has his place in the dorms, from where they can begin again. But the shock of it was still very great, particularly for its suddenness, and it was painfully hammered home as Aunty Jenny repeated the terrible reality again and again – “We’ve lost everything; we have nothing.”
Could it get worse? The culprit, it turned out, had been previously convicted of raping an 8-year old girl. But before I could get too indignant, Stacy reminds me: “This is cowboy country.” This is how life is here. It is very different to Western society, but is that justification enough to change it?
Another incident I didn’t find out about until long after: the week we arrived into Aishalton, there was a murder in nearby Karaudarnawa. There is an Amerindian belief that some people can change forms, and that such people are invisible thanks to their ability to imitate animals; these individuals are known as kanaimas, and carry out revenge killings, in the form of an animal. Before we arrived in Aishalton, a kanaima had apparently killed the nephew of a man; this man, rather than waiting for his turn to come, found out who the kanaima was and, in the face of conventional beliefs, beheaded him, dragging the body through the centre of the village. ‘Cowboy country’ indeed - in the sense that Western doctrines have no real place here. The people are the law, and it is up to them to define justice.
And there are endless other aspects and issues of Wapishana culture in Aishalton, and Amerindian culture in general, that I have barely scratched the surface of – such as the vicious intrigue of village politics – and others I have not even touched upon, in particular the role of religion. Perhaps wildly inaccurate, certainly long-winded, these are only impressions, and must only be seen as such; four months is not enough time to completely assimilate or to be assimilated into a culture – I’ve got eight months to keep trying for that. Instead, take all of this with a pinch of salt: in trying to make sense of personal experiences, one can be nothing but subjective; I’ll leave the objective research to the PhD students like Stacy. Neither are these impressions a balanced perspective of the village – they are the impressions of an outsider, living in the North-West corner of the village, who spends most of his time in the Northern half of the village, where the influence of the outside world is most concentrated, around the schools, the hospital, the police station, and the administrative office; South, over the airstrip, Aishalton stretches away, containing much more of the Wapishana culture of which I have only seen a very little. Even ‘Aishalton’ as a village is counter to traditional Wapishana ways: until the schools and churches were built, and the identity of Aishalton as an administrative centre was enforced upon it from outside, the idea of the place was much looser – a series of unconnected homesteads, rather than a collective whole. And, in this light, perhaps all my attempts to grasp Aishalton as a Wapishana village are fundamentally flawed.
But, at least, as impressions, they are honest.
* * *
And, perhaps, you may have noticed that it is now well over four months that I have been in
One of these alternative perspectives – a fresh way of looking at something that I had previously accepted as authoritative – concerns the kanaimas. As it had been presented to me, these were individuals who, by maintaining an aura of secrecy and mystery, terrorised a community and seemed beyond the law (even what ‘cowboy country’ law might be implicit in that community). But as Justin –
Another fresh interpretation of an earlier anecdote: Stacy’s point that Chris (the Toshao)’s aversion to certain trends in Western culture – such as the music or the clothes – may itself stem from another, different stream of the same culture – the more conservative, reactionary side, epitomized – here, in Aishalton – in the form of the Catholic Church. If this is the case – and Chris, who also runs the ‘Ranch Shopping Centre’ (a shop like Burning Hills, but at which all the prices are $20 greater, due to it being the only shop in the village to charge VAT), and who has a television and a computer at home – is certainly one of the most Westernized members of the community – then the preservation of Wapishana culture may look even bleaker.
A third and final example opens up a whole range of contentious issues – but I promise I will end here. Another shot of rum: Justin reveals to me that the Wapishana people are actually a relatively new people in the Rupununi Savannah. The Atorad tribe were displaced by the Wapishana, who came over from
And this is where the water becomes very murky. In total, there are about 12,000 Wapishanas – about 5000 in the ‘
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