Focus on a Project: PT Recruitment Brochure

A few days ago, just as I was preparing my things to return home after my first semester at university, I received an email from Lavinia, one of the Directors of Project Trust. She asked if I could write a brief (approximately 300 words) update on my project for the next Recruitment Brochure, under similar headings to the End of Year Summary. Of course, being slightly on the verbose side, 500 words was a short as I could get it, but as a reasonable over-all view of the year, I thought I would post it here. Be warned that it is largely lifted from the End of Year Summary, so there is nothing particularly new in it.

It may be particularly useful to someone who has just stumbled upon this site and knows nothing of what this is all about!

Focus on a Project:
Aishalton Secondary School, Guyana

The Location

Aishalton is an Amerindian village in the Rupununi
Savannah of Guyana, South America. Guyana as a country
is obscure enough (most people assume it's in Africa);
its interior is truly remote. While 90% of the
population are concentrated on the Caribbean coast,
where the capital, Georgetown, is found, the Rupununi
Savannah is home to the indigenous tribes of the
country, and is a world apart, of vaqueros and
jaguars, bush and savannah, endless grass-lands
criss-crossed by creeks and dotted by vast
outcroppings of rock covered in rainforest.

The Community

The village is almost entirely Amerindians of the
Wapishana tribe, which is fighting to preserve its
threatened language and culture - Amerindians make up
only 5% of Guyana's roughly one million citizens. The
vast majority of the villagers are subsistence
farmers, who largely rely on the cassava crops grown
in the nearby rainforest; many also maintain herds of
cattle roaming loose in the savannah. There is great
pride in the Wapishana culture and the villagers are
almost universally welcoming to anyone who has made
the effort to get to Aishalton.

The Work

I worked as a Maths teacher in the massively
under-staffed Secondary School, teaching the upper
forms up to CXC (GCSE/Standard Grade) level; I also
taught optional Biology and Physic, and was involved
plenty of sports. I lived in the school dormitories,
which provided endless entertainment and distraction
in the wonderfully good-natured dorms children.

The Fun

The friendships and time spent with friends in
Aishalton will always be my happiest memories from my
year, as well as getting to know my pupils. In the
final term, I took my Form 3 class on a trip to a
nearby mountain, and the sense of belonging among them
was amazing - I realised I really had a place there,
accepted as a natural part of the community. Watching
my students develop, at the same time as developing
myself as a teacher, was very rewarding.

Travelling around the Rupununi was also great fun. I
visited every village in the Deep South (and cycled to
most of them, on my Brazilian 'Monark' bicycle); there
was always someone we knew or who was a friend of a
friend who would let us sling our hammocks. I also
made the journey to the remotest village of them all,
Gunns - right in the heart of the rainforest, reached
by a week on a tiny boat, camping on the banks of the
Essequibo.

The Experience

The world of the Rupununi is an addictive one - once
it gets in your blood, you'll never get it out of your
system. The lifestyle, attitudes, and culture are so
completely different to Britain's that it made me at
once value my home more than ever, recognising for the
first time many things we take for granted in a
developed country and at the same time giving me a
glimpse into an alternative existence which doesn't
require any of the trappings of 'development'.