Forrò at the bus-stop

22-Dec-2007
Lethem

I travelled alone to Guyana, but in Guyana, whereever I go, I am never alone. One million can sound an impressively large number, but when that's the entire population of a country, it suddenly shrinks; and when your friends are part of a very close-knit subset of that millions - the Amerindians, the 'buck-people' of the savannah and bush - there is in every town or village, on eevery bus, someone who knows or is related to a friend.

Georgetown has nearly a quarter of Guyana's population, and I was bound to know someone there, despite having spent the vast majority of my year in the country far removed from it, in Aishalton. Still, the chances of bumping into them by accident seemed remote, and the only people I knew for sure in 'Town were the Thomas's - Janelle's family, with whom I would be staying. But the buck people stick together, and in the course of a few days I had met Clea, Benson, Shane and Shawn (all old pupils of mine), and Janelle's cousin Pamela, who all lived in Grove, the same part of 'Town as the Thomas's - a veritable mini-Aishalton. When Tubes came out of the bush, we met up with him, and Moses too, also from Aishalton. And when it was time to post a number of them off to Lethem on the Intraserv bus, a whole crew appeared at the Brazilian bar by the bus-stop to see them off. In the midst of 'Town's overwhelming, crowded, aggressive streets, such pockets of friendship were a comforting reminder of Rupununi life.

Tubes, Micky (his sister), Clea, and Father Amah all left on the Tuesday night bus; Moses had already beat out in one of the cheaper, but more cramped, minibuses on Monday. I stayed on in 'Town to act as Santa Claus for Manley's school in Grove, but by Thursday it was my turn to hit the 300 mile long trail through Guyana's rainforest interior to the border town of Lethem. And I was ready to go - although it had been fun seeing friends in 'Town, especially those who wouldn't make it South for Christmas, I was not a fan of the capital. The racial hassle - for being white - was far more aggressive, close to abusive, than in Aishalton, where there was an air of innocent curiosity; and, aside from that, Janelle and I had witnessed a money-changer being held up at gun-point outside the KFC where we were eating lunch only that morning. After having been caught in a shoot-out in a mini-bus on my last visit to 'Town, I felt I had had enough of guns.

I had thought most of our friends had left by now, but when we reached the bus-stop - three hours before the bus left, to give time for a proper send-off - the crew was bigger than ever. Manley and Janelle came; their cousin, Michael, who was hoping for a lift down on Joyce's truck; Shane, likewise heading South but unsure when or how/ Then, already at the bar, a number of Manley's ex-classmates - Maylene, Shelly, and Polly, heading home for the holidays from dental school, on the same bus as me.

Intraserv - the only reliable form of public transport traversing the Trail from Georgetown to Lethem (short of flying) - is a Brazilian-run company, linking directly with Amatur on the other side of the Takatu River at Lethem, to carry the many Brazilian passengers straight to Boa Vista. So it is that the Intraserv bus-stop on Oronoque Street, in 'Town, consists of two open-fronted rooms on the street-corner: one for checking in, and the other with the Brazilian bar. Outside are plastic tables and chairs, and a barbeque roasting pork and beef, served with farrine in the Brazilian style - ground into a fine powder.

Although nominally for the passengers, many nearby residents treat the bar as their local, including Bernard's boss, Kevin - a brash and loud white from Manchester, who I had encountered before on the Tuesday night shouting at Bernard, but, after gaffing over a few beers this time, I discovered to be more amiable than first impressions suggested.

In many ways, the people of the Rupununi share more with their Brazilian neighbours than with the Caribbean coast-people. So when, to our great delight, we find a shop selling 'catuaba' - a Brazilian drink - the shop-keeper for once assumes I am from South, instead of the inevitable 'American?'. At the bus-stop, then, we crack open the catuaba ('wab'), order ice and some beef and farrine, and lend the lady behind the bar my 'Pepe Moreno' CD - the anthem for the Rupununi. Soon, with the drink flowing (catuaba, running out, being replaced by El Dorado rum & Banks beer) and spirits high, the tables are pushed back and an impromtu dance-floor opens, the Amerindians adept at the forrò music playing, to the Brazilians' surprise. We dance in couples, swapping partners between songs or even during songs, the legs and hips moving impossibly independently from each other (something I never mastered). Even Kevin joins in, and again, in the heart of the capital, a little bit of Aishalton is conjured up.

Even when the bus starts up, and the driver blasts his horn, the dancing continues - there is a queue to board, and until it's down to the last man, we don't stop. Eventually, from our seats on the bus, those of us travelling lean out the windows to say our farewells to those staying back - and to be passed a final beer to enjoy on the trip.

A real Rupununi send-off, but with true Rupununi lack of fore-sight - I now have a 15-hour journey ahead of me, and as the bus rumbles and sways, my stomach is not happy.

* * *

Still, I reached Lethem in one piece, a little the worse for wear. Maylene and her friends got off at the hospital, where her parents are living, and I stayed on until the airstrip and Shirley's shop. Shirley was in, and with her usual hospitality immediately offered the use of her shower and, on asking where I intended to stay, her landing to sling my hammock. Once again I found I was among friends, and although I must frustratingly stay in Lethem for the weekend, until the bank opens on Monday, 'liming' on the wall outside the shop isn't so bad when you're not alone.

But, despite the fun, despite the friends - unchanged since I left four months ago - each stop on the way to Aishalton has felt like I am reliving memories - as though I am playing my final departure from Guyana, last August, in reverse in my head. It doesn't feel like I am really here, amongst the gaffing and the drinking and the dancing around me. Perhaps my heart is not in it, or perhaps it is because I know that I am only passing through - as before, but even more briefly. But I understand, once again, that these, my friends, truly belong here - and I do not.

Sea Wall Gaff

17-Dec-2007
Georgetown

Tubers, last night: 'Don't think about tomorrow, don't think about yesterday, think about today!'. I might have written the words for him.

We went to the sea wall. All the old crew are in 'Town: Moses, just finished the Christmas term of his last year at GTI, returning to the Rupununi on the Tuesday night bus; Bernard (Tubers) and his partner (Nathan?), fresh out of the bush working for a private mining company; Benson and Clea, looking for work now that they've finished their CXCs (as my fifth form) last summer, staying with their aunt in Grove, near Janelle; and Janelle (my Amerindian sister) and myself.

We drank Banks beer and ate hot-dogs (one of which nearly made me sick) and gaffed. Moses and Janelle talk of Mr Frankie, the owner of the store they both used to work at, before Janelle left to become a teacher and Moses returned to college. Mr Frankie is not quite what he seems: his surprising wealth comes not from the store but from drugs, and if he wants something, he is not easily denied it. 'It's not like Aishalton,' says Janelle, as she describes how he will threaten a whole family.

Tubes and his friend are lively: they're making good money in the bush - $500,000 a month, ten times as much as I earnt as a volunteer teacher - and are living like kings in Georgetown, staying in the Regent Guest House ('my house', as Bernard grandly calls it). They haven't slept since arriving yesterday, spending all of last night in the Red Dragon (taking Moses with them), where more than just drink is sold - as I had learnt from tales of a past volunteer's drunken birthday escapades, which he may be living to regret right now. But they're drinking their food money for now - tomorrow is pay-day, and others know this too. While we walk, Aunty Doro, in Georgetown frantically shopping to fill the shop back at Burning Hills in Aishalton for Christmas, phones Tubers asking to borrow $100,000.

Aunty Doro seems to have a bad habit of borrowing money from friends - perhaps she should try a bank instead, or maybe they're not quite flexible enough for her. Aunty Jenny and Uncle Manley - Janelle's parents, with whom I am staying, downstairs in Joyce's house - each tell me on separate occasions the story of how Dorothy approached them some time ago, asking for a similar sum. The Thomas's (Manley and Jenny) are not a rich family, and they only happened to have the money in compensation from the Minister of Amerindian Affairs after their home - and all its contents - was destroyed in an arson attack. They lent her the money, asking her to pay them back in the form of zinc sheets for the roof of their new house they planned to build - until a series of scandals - overblown and exaggerated, and not a little thanks to Dorothy herself - caused the whole family to move to their current lodgings in Town. The zinc still hasn't materialised.

But as we gaff, and yet another round of Banks Beer is forced into our hands, all worries are forgotten. According to Bernard, yesterday has gone, and I may be dead tomorrow - live for today. But I'm not sure he's right.

Contemplation in the Back Yard

16-Dec-2007
Georgetown

Sitting on a wooden bench in the back yard of Joyce and Lawrence's house - although it is Janelle's family I am staying with, in the three, small rooms that they rent out downstairs. For the first time, it is sunny without a hint of rain - a breeze, but not the door-slamming kind that heralds a shower.

There is noise, but it is peaceful in its way. Where I sit, the yard is concrete, its uneven surface swept clean by the bundle of 'pointers' like we used back in the school in Aishalton. Further back, by the corrugated-iron fence, the concrete yields to soil, littered with unruly weeds, a few plants, and some palms, eternally damp from the dripping taps in the outside sink, where Janelle stands, washing her wares. Beside her, on solid concrete platforms, one above the other, are three huge black tanks, filled with a tiny portion of the rainfall that is causing so much disruption further into 'Town - and which, right now, must be in such short supply South, in the interior - in Aishalton.

The sink is attached to the wall of the shower and toilet block - three concrete walls defining each, a wooden door across the front of the toilet, but for the shower, just a sheet of metal propped up to waist height, the whole covered with a zinc roof. A tap is running in the shower, filling the bucket from which we bathe - there is never enough pressure for the overhead tap to work.

The rest of the yard is home to an assortment of tools, engine parts, jerry cans and buckets of oil or paint. Beneath some more sheets of zinc, held up on four wooden posts, is a large round oven of brick and clay, and a bench, a motor on top, attached to a cassava grater by a fat elastic strap. The words 'Success come through hard working' are painted on its side.

This is the house of not one, but two (or more, with all the various relatives and friends who stay from time to time) families, and it is, indeed, one built 'through hard working'.

Colours

No, this isn't going to be an in-depth analysis of Guyana's racial mix; it's just that I appear to have broken the colour scheme on this website. Oops. Oh well, hopefully it's the words that are the important thing...

Return to Guyana - Christmas holidays, 2007

15-Dec-2007
Georgetown

Well, I made it back, three - four? - months after I left. Right up until I was sitting on that plane, between a bendy-bus driver from Barbados and a dental student from Trinidad, I still didn't quite believe I would do it.

And I'm still not sure I should have. But, I'm here, so...

Delayed by an hour, sitting on the tarmac at Heathrow while a mysterious 'part' is searched for - I checked out of my window to make sure it wasn't a wing they had forgotten. Not that I don't have complete, rational trust in the airlines - recall our first welcome lecture of semester one, four months ago, when they compared the safety record of the airline industry to that of the health services. Not really a fair comparison, given the clientèle of each, but it made its point, in its way.

But it did reveal that I'm not, in the end, a good flyer. Mind over matter, I know, and usually I would be the first to follow the statistics and put my life at relative risk 36000 feet up rather than face MRSA - so I have to come up with some hack explanation to myself to excuse frantically crossing my fingers at take-off and landing. I tell myself it's because everything has its chances, everything its risks, but there are those situations in which you can tip the balance and those in which you can't. So although the chances of coming to grief on a Honda BROS are far higher than in seat 27 of a Boeing 747, at least in the former those chances are skewed by the boy-racers and drunk-drivers (and, in the Rupununi, the lack of brakes) and by being neither you can shift it to the other end. In a plane, as a passenger, there is a brutal equality to the statistics.

But there's more to it than that: it's more than statistics. What the odds are only have meaning when taken with a state of mind, and I believe it is that which has changed for me. A few months ago, anything so remote and far from my control would have held no interest for me, regardless of the consequences. And that, there, is a buck-man attitude: what happens, happens - no need to worry what tomorrow will bring, because it's not here yet. One term back in the UK, and I'm back to plans, schedules, concerns, worries - hopes.

It's easy to mock one, or the other, point of view - either. But the truth is, being what I am, I don't think I can get away without caring - I've tried that, and I'm not particularly proud of my actions (not least, falling out of contact with many of those closest to me back home). Sure, it was fun - wild, free, liberating - as open-minded as the savannah-sky, but at the same time as self-centred as Simon. Perhaps a lot of the troubles in Aishalton come from that attitude.

And troubles Aishalton has in plenty - only two days I've been back in the country, and already I hear " 'nuff gaff" - Manley, slammed in the lock-up on the rumour-spreading of a fourth-form student, as though some had been reading 'The Crucible' a bit too closely; Celine, beating out to 'Town with baby Ikirz on discovering Kid's affair with Deonny; Meshana's father - a troubled man, I knew - hanging himself; Manley Jr.'s half-spoken story of going AWOL. Underneath the reckless, break-neck freedom here, underneath the beauty of this country, I don't believe there is happiness. There is humanity, in all its shades, but at its darkest, consuming itself in a blind frenzy.

And it's not a comfortable position to be an outsider, an observer - a tourist. Perhaps because I know this place, these people, too well - well enough to get beneath the surface, but no further. I watch, and I learn, but am I helping - or making things worse?

* * *

Yes, I am back - I've returned to Guyana, this time strictly as a tourist, for the four weeks of my university Christmas holidays. Right now, I'm still in Georgetown; on Thursday, I will be getting the bus down to Lethem, and from there, the first 'transpie' to Aishalton...

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'.

End of Year Summary

And I returned - with few enough updates to the outside world, and no 'Gapping in Guyana's since January! - Apologies. As may have been apparent, being a new-comer to the community rapidly turned into an observer and then into a member (at least, as I would have I liked to think), and the Rupununi and the world of the savannah, endless as its horizons may be, closed in around me and swallowed me whole.

My sister, Miranda, came out for the final two months, bringing me back a bit to one reality I had left behind. Among our many adventures, one highlight was a two week trip, by vehicle, foot, bullock-cart, boat, and bicycle to the remotest village of them all - Gunns (or Maseekinara). One of our stopping points along the way was the village of Parabara; a piece I wrote there has been posted below. I have, in fact, written one further 'Gapping in Guyana', which I submitted to Project Trust as my 'Community Report'. For reasons that will become apparent, I don't have access to it right now, but I will post it up here as soon as I do.

I landed in Gatwick airport (after an impromptu stay in Barbados, courtesy of Liat - a Caribbean airline - abandoning us on the sunny island) on 19th August, 2007, almost exactly a year, to the day, after I had left Britain.

Soon after we returned, we had a de-briefing course back on the Isle of Coll with Project Trust, and we were asked to write an end-of-year summary, under a series of given headings. For what its worth, and the closure it may give, I am posting it here:

End of Year Summary

Your Project

1. What were your main responsibilities during the year?

I was employed as a secondary school teacher, teaching Maths, Human & Social Biology, and Physics to Forms 3, 4, and 5 (i.e. years 9, 10, and 11 in Britain) up to CXC (GCSE/Standard Grade) level.

I was also the Form Master for Form 3, the assistant sports organizer, and the teacher in charge of Prefects.

2. What do you think that you contributed to your project? What did the project gain from having you?

Aishalton Secondary School has a massive staff-shortage, and it is undeniable that without Project Trust Volunteers it would not be able to function properly; other than ourselves, there were two trained teachers and two unqualified teachers who held CXCs, for a school of 210 students.

In particular, Maths is a very weak subject across the region, and the students hopefully benefited from having a teacher who had at least A level Maths. As a volunteer, I was also able to give many extra lessons, outside of school hours, especially to the CXC class.

Because of the small size of the school (and the community), there was a close relationship between all the students and the teachers, and I believe that the students will have gained from having that exposure to people from a different culture.

The running of the school required far more than just teaching, and because of the staff shortage, we had to take up much of the slack. Therefore, we contributed to almost every aspect of life in the school: we led much of the athletics training and supervised sports trips to other villages; we organized cultural activities, for example the Mashramani celebrations and rallies; we organized the Graduation ceremony (in the absence of the Head Master); and we continually battled against the never-ending administrative workload. Especially after the typist/clerk resigned early in the first term, my speed at typing and familiarity with computers was frequently called upon for any documents or letters that needed to be prepared.

3. What secondary projects/extra work in your primary project did you do? How did you set it up?

From early on, I was a member of the Aishalton Internet Committee, which was in charge of running (and raising funds for) the internet service nominally owned by the District Toshao's Council. We (the committee members) would each run the service for one night a week, booking users in and taking money.

Since this service was still fledgling, and computer literacy in the village is still low, it rarely broke even from users fees alone, and so I was often involved in organizing fund-raising activities like fairs. Also, like all technical equipment in the Rupununi, the computers were constantly breaking down, and so what knowledge I could offer was often called upon. We also decided to put the whole of Form 4 through 6 one-hour computer lessons to increase computer literacy amongst the students, and I helped plan and teach these lessons.

I was also a member of the Aishalton 'Kokoi' (Eagles) Sports Club, and on its executive committee. The club had been dormant for about a year, and so we attempted to revive it by challenging the nearby villages and organizing trips to them. We managed a few matches before the rainy season put an end to travel.

However, most of my free time was taken up at my primary project (the school), teaching extra lessons most afternoons and some nights every week, and, in the run up to the CXC exam, every day. There was also extra work at the end of each term, when exams were held, which we had to set ourselves, and write mark-schemes and tables of specification for, and then subsequently mark them. We would also be preparing schemes of work for the next term at the same time. There was always more work to be done!

Yourself

1. What did you enjoy most during your year?

The friendships and time spent with friends in Aishalton will always be my happiest memories from my year there. However, the relationship I built up with my students was particularly special, as I got to know them as friends as well as 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.

Of course, travelling around the Rupununi was also one of the most enjoyable aspects of the year. 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 (or relative, as everyone is related there) who would let us sling our hammocks and would 'show us the heights'. The network of friends we built up across the savannah was another great part of the year, and on my final trip out back to Georgetown to fly home, I realised how extensive it was, as I had farewells as I passed through Dadanawa, Shulinab, Lethem, and finally Town.

2. What was your greatest challenge?

Teaching was no doubt the greatest ongoing challenge, as Maths was at such a low standard in the school that it often seemed an impossible task to do all the teaching necessary before the CXC exam in May. There was also much work to be done outside the class-room, especially lesson plans, which were a constant burden (although part of a very rewarding job).

Politics, within the school and the village, also provided some entertaining challenges, as however hard you worked it seemed you would always get on the wrong side of someone. However, the best way to overcome such challenges, I learnt, was to approach them with unfailing good humour, and even when the Deputy Toshao decided to drag my name through the dirt, enough of my friends on the village council backed me up to make it reflect worse on her than on me. However, that episode was the more shocking for me as, having really settled into the project and community, I was, with very little effort on the part of one person, suddenly made again to feel very 'white' and very alien. Overcoming that distance, and finding a sense of belonging in a community where you can never wholly belong, was probably one of the greatest challenges.

Of course, there were always smaller, individual challenges that cropped up, like reaching Gunns in our final holidays and realising we didn't have enough gas for the return journey - so having to sweet-talk all the important people in the village, who at first denied having any gas and then produced 15 gallons for us. Or cycling from Parabara to Aishalton (42 miles through savannah and bush) in 12 hours, towing another person on the front of the bike, bare-foot because my slipper had burst. Or organizing the Graduation ceremony almost single-handedly, the Head Master being away from the village.

Living, working, and always being associated with my partner was also a challenge, and one I could have done without.

3. What do you feel you gained from the year?

Another home.

The most important thing I have gained has to be the friendships, which I would love to maintain from Britain, although no doubt it will not be easy. However, I have also gained a much greater sense of self-reliance, knowing now that I can enter a community where I know no one, and very soon find a home in that place. My confidence in holding positions of responsibility and authority (i.e. as a teacher) has also increased – I think I will be more willing to take on such roles in the future, and not shy away from responsibility (not that I did before, but it is nice to have been in that position, and to know that I can cope).

I have also gained an understanding of how life is lived in the Rupununi savannah, where the majority of people live an essentially subsistence lifestyle, vastly different to life in Britain. It has shown me how there are other ways of living than the school-university-job sausage machine that dominates life here, and that neither one is necessarily superior.

I’ve also gained a lot more respect for my teachers, and have learnt how to take apart just about every last bit of a bicycle, but putting it back together still needs some practice.

4. How has your outlook on the world changed since you went overseas?

I believe I am more aware of completely different lifestyles and cultures from what I am used to in Britain, and that I have learnt that neither is necessarily better, but that a lot of what we view of as essential or important in Britain really has very little value outside of that context.

I think my outlook on the world has not changed dramatically, except that perhaps I am less didactic about what I believe is a right or wrong way of doing something.

I don’t know if the world seems a smaller or a bigger place to me now; in some ways, both.

I think I value my home, and Britain, more than before, although I can’t wait to get away again. I think there are some things here, in Britain, that I took too much for granted before; I never before appreciated how developed this country is, and how much has gone into making it like that. On the other hand, there is another way of life that doesn’t require any of the trappings of ‘development’, and that is exactly what life in the Rupununi is…

5. In what ways do you feel that you have developed personally?

I am more confident and self-reliant, both when put in a position of responsibility or authority and when put in a situation, formal or informal, with people I have never met before and may not share much (if any) common ground. I am probably more patient than before, less neurotic and mellower. When things do not go to plan, I think I am more unruffled (good word) than before. I think I am still as a driven as before, but a little more aware of where I’m driving.

I am certainly a better teacher, and although I don’t have plans to become a school-teacher in the future, the skills from that are transferable, especially to the career I intend to follow after university, in medicine.

6. In what ways has your experience overseas affected your short and long term future?

Other than travel-plans in university holidays, my short- and long-term future plans remain more or less unchanged; however, I think I will always carry memories from Aishalton with me, and that things I have learnt there will always shape future decisions. I certainly will try and travel as much as possible, to Guyana and elsewhere, but that was something that I wished to do before the year out. If I had not already chosen medicine as a career path, I am sure teaching would appeal much more now, after my experience of it.

* * *

And that was it - the end to an amazing, utterly different, and eye-opening year. Now, university and the rest of life lies ahead of me, but much of it will be inevitably shaped by my experiences in the Rupununi - and I hope, in some small way, at least a few lives have been changed in some small way by my presence there.

Thank you so, so much to all of you that have made this year possible.