Feeding programme restarted! :-)

I’m not sure if I mentioned before about the feeding programme at one of Mark’s churches?  Well, they used to provide lunch for kids from the local school who do not get any food all day long but had to stop the programme some months before we arrived because of lack of resources and helpers. 

Well it was really causing us grief knowing that there were children who were turning up at the church each day hoping for food and being turned away so since we have arrived we have been trying to encourage the church to restart the programme.  We agreed to personally pay for the gas bottles for the cooking as long as we are in the country, as that was causing a real problem to these poor overstretched people and some local stores agreed to provide some rice and other ingredients.  So we have been praying for some volunteers to take on the responsibility of planning, cooking and serving the food.

You can imagine our delight when they told us two weeks ago that they have finally restarted the feeding programme – they can cope with three days a week which is certainly better than nothing.  This means now that on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, up to 25 children who would otherwise have gone all day with nothing to eat or drink, now receive a simple hot meal and a large cup of fruit juice.  We are so excited and proud of the congregation for getting it running again.  We visited them last Thursday to encourage them and took the photos you can see below.

Cooking a yummy chicken curry

 

Excited children washing their hands before eating

Me teaching the children a song for grace

Grateful smiles

Cheeky boys!

Mark helping serve up!



Happy face!

A couple of other random photos – it is rainy season and today it has rained non stop – this is just a pic of our waterlogged garden!  The extra rain means mozzies abound so we are being eaten alive just now!  Roll on dry season! 

 

Also a photo of Mark baptising a man and his son a couple of weeks ago and one of three of our local preachers at their accreditation service. 

 

 

 

 

Education in Guyana

I thought that today I would share some of the things I have learned about the education system here in Guyana.  Some of this will make you teachers out there weep and hopefully make you appreciate the wonderful resources we have in the UK.  It has certainly had that effect on me!   I know this blog is longer than usual but please persevere and read it all. 

Children are offered a free education from the age of 3 – 16 – they go to nursery from 3 – 5; Primary school from 5 – 11 and then Secondary school – the Secondary school they attend is based on the results of their tests at the end of Primary school.  It is a real blessing that education is freely provided along with a set of uniform if the family is too poor to buy it themselves.  However, I have noticed that the schools are greatly under resourced – they do get a small amount of funding from the government but it is certainly not enough.  Children are meant to provide their own resources such as pens, pencils etc but many families can’t afford it so their children just have to beg and borrow pencils from a friend.  I have seen children sitting in class taking it in turns to write as they are sharing a pencil.  L

The schools consist of large wooden buildings usually with two stories – downstairs for the younger pupils and upstairs for the older ones.  They are basically large bare rooms divided into ‘classrooms’ by blackboards and children sitting in rows on benches. 

An example of a 'classroom' this would be one class within a large room consisting of 5 other classes.

A typical school building - the younger children are downstairs and the older ones are upstairs.

I have been teaching phonics at one school for the past few months and have discovered some of the difficulties faced by the teachers.  Here are some of them:

·        Noise carries from the neighbouring classes so it is difficult to make yourself heard over the din. 

·        Children are sitting in rows on benches and there is no area to gather them together on a carpet for input. 

·        Blackboards are not easy to write on and nothing shows up clearly as they are very old.

·        There are frequent power cuts so it is often dark when the lights go off, especially on cloudy and rainy days.

·        There are no resources such as computers, textbooks, colouring equipment, photocopiers, libraries, reading books or games.  All they have are some exercise books and pencils and the teachers have a few copies of textbooks from which they copy onto the blackboards. 

·        There is no PE in schools – there is no equipment for it and no space for any games or activities inside or out.   They have a recess in the morning and a lunch hour, but the times in-between consist of children sitting for long periods of time on their benches with nothing active to break up the day.

·        Not all the children come to school every day – they stay at home if their parents need them to work, if it is raining heavily (a lot don’t have proper shoes or waterproofs and the roads get very wet and muddy particularly in the rainy seasons).  This means that children often miss huge chunks of work and never catch up. 

·        Many of the children do not have anything to eat or drink all day - they may come to school having had no breakfast and then have nothing with them for lunch either.  Some of them just bring sugary snacks or drinks or crisps for their lunch, which have no nutritional value but are cheap to buy here.  This has to affect their learning. 

I have also discovered other things, which are stacked against the children getting a good education:

·        Teachers do not necessarily have good qualifications themselves – in the school where I am teaching of over 400 pupils, only one teacher has a degree, the rest are learning on the job.  Someone can become an ‘assistant mistress’ straight from school and begin teaching a class – they earn about £100 a month.  Once they have trained sufficiently they can become a ‘senior mistress’ and then they could earn up to £200 a month.  The poor reading skills of the teachers clearly has an impact on the children in their care and it is no surprise that literacy levels here are so low.

·        The teachers do not interact with the children – from what I have observed in the other classes, teachers write questions or text on the board to be copied but don’t give input or ongoing feedback during the lesson.  All the teachers I have observed simply sit at their desks marking or staring out of the window or texting (!) while the children copy from the board.  Sometimes the children are required to recite things together from the board. 

·        There is no interaction at all between parents and teachers – they do not have parent/teacher consultations and apparently if a parent goes into school because of a problem their child is experiencing the teachers then victimise the child so parents stay well away.  The children walk to and from school on their own and are not collected by an adult even when they are very young.  You often see even very small children walking along the roads (some of them extremely busy and dangerous roads) many of them without proper shoes. 

·        I have been told that some years ago the government removed reading from the curriculum but then after a few years realised that everyone was leaving school unable to read so it has recently been reintroduced.  The children are simply taught letter names and have no tools with which to decode words.  They just learn spellings by rote and have no idea how to work out a spelling for themselves. 

·        There is no music, art, RE, ICT, history or PSHE on the Primary curriculum. 

·        There is no training for teachers in the area of behaviour management or raising the self-esteem of children.  Children who have done wrong are humiliated and possibly smacked and there is no discussion of the wrongdoing or how to prevent it.  I had a boy in my class group last week who had kicked a girl and been smacked and sent back to my class – he was crying hysterically and told to ‘shut his mouth’ by the teacher.  After my input I sat with him to ask what had happened and tried to talk to him about why what he had done was wrong and strategies to cope next time he got angry.  I felt inadequate really but can only do what I can to help the odd individual.  

·        There are children being abused physically and sexually within the schools and a lot of incest because of families living in such cramped living conditions, but this is largely ignored. 

We are now supporting seven different schools in this area – 5 Primary and 2 Secondary – through doing lunchtime clubs and devotions (what we would call an assembly back home).  I am also doing phonics teaching with some year 4s and year 6s who cannot yet read.  I also have several teacher training sessions planned on phonics and behaviour management and raising self-esteem.  I have also been asked to lead a phonics training session in our local nursery school.  In addition, as a long term project over the next year, I am planning to write a safeguarding policy which I am going to try to instigate amongst the churches and subsequently the schools.  Once I have done the policy I am going to offer training for staff in this area and intend to contact the head of child services in the capital to seek help and awareness for the abused children across the country.

It feels like an overwhelming task to try to even begin to unravel all these problems and I know I can only touch the tip of the iceberg.  Please pray for me to be guided to the right children, teachers and organisations to be as effective as I can be during the next two years.  

 

 

Fighting off crocodiles and piranha!

Last Saturday we went to the Essequibo area for me to lead a training day for workers with children and young people.  This proved to be rather an adventurous day!  We left home at 5.45am to drive West – firstly we had to cross the Demerara River on the floating bridge that I have mentioned before and then when we got to Parika we had to cross the Essequibo river by speedboat.  The Essequibo river is the third largest river in South America after the Amazon and the Orinoco and is 20 miles wide at its mouth.  We were crossing just near the mouth so it was equivalent of crossing from Dover to Calais on a small rickety wooden boat, laden with 20 people and their luggage!   As each person stepped into the boat it sank lower and lower into the water until I was sure it was going to sink! 




The boat we went on - taken on the way back when it was dry!

 


Another shot of the boat as we got off of it - you can see painted on the boat the word 'blessed'!!

 

This crossing rates as one of the most terrifying experiences of my life!!  The first hurdle was getting into the boat – it is the rainy season and it was tipping it down when we arrived at the stelling (this is what they call the jetty from which the boats depart) and I had to pick my way down some rickety wooden steps which were really slippery – one slip of my foot would have sent me plunging into the river.  Once in the boat, not only was I afraid of the boat capsizing which would have meant losing my handbag (complete with passport, credit cards, camera etc) and all my equipment for the training day but the river contains crocodiles and piranha – we have heard several stories of fishermen losing fingers and toes in the waters of the Essequibo! 

A shot across the Essequibo - it doesn't look as wide as 20 miles because the river is dotted with lots of islands - some of which are bigger than the Caribbean islands!  The river is that wide!

The rickety stelling from which we climbed into the boat - this was the end of the day when it was dry but it was SO scary in the rain in the morning! 

View from the boat while crossing

Another shot across the Essequibo with one of the islands in view - not the other bank!

 

I knew that lots of people were praying for us and I did feel remarkably composed considering but I was not able to speak all the way across and shed a few tears as we left the stelling.  Mark held my hand all the way across and tried in vain to make me laugh!!  I was SO relieved to make dry land and then had to compose myself very quickly to begin my training day almost immediately.  The people made us very welcome and seemed to enjoy the day but I knew I still had the return journey ahead of me. 

Youth are the same the world over!  I took this during the lunch break!

Mark - my technical help, driver and emotional support!

Me with the group who came to the training day - this looks like a proper missionary picture!!

Arriving back at the stelling safely - messy hair but great relief!

During the training day

Add caption

Mark took this in the graveyard outside - graves here are above ground - he liked this because it looked like his and hers tombs!!  LOL

 Thankfully it had stopped raining by the time we headed back across and I was not quite as scared on the way back as I knew what to expect.  We finally made it home about 6.15pm so it was a long and gruelling day but we pray the people of Essequibo will put all my ideas into practice so that it was worth the effort!   We are certainly not having a dull time in South America!!

Things I have learned in the last 5 months...

Today is our five month day and I have been reflecting on some of the things I have learned since being here…

• I can be adaptable and find creative solutions to problems.
• I CAN cope with insects and animals everywhere!
• I like sunshine and never being cold but don’t like too much heat!
• Communication with family and friends means the world to me.
• I don’t need as much in the way of food, drink, material things as I thought I did – usually I find I can manage without most things I thought I needed.
• I can make my own recipes depending on available ingredients.
• To trust God for every day as it comes.
• I can make a difference in a person’s life without doing much at all.
• Even here my life is easier and more luxurious than most people in the world.
• God has equipped me to deal with these trials.
• I can be content with a little or a lot.
• Following Jesus and surrendering to his will is not without cost.
• Presents and cards on special occasions are not important – it’s the thoughtfulness of people in small ways that counts and the being with those you love.
• With God’s help I can have peace in all situations – waiting in long queues, sitting in long services, in the midst of loss, turmoil an chaos, and when things don’t go my way.
• Counting your blessings does help me appreciate what I DO still have.
• I NEED a social life!
• I love being in control of my own diary and never want to go back to full time teaching.
• God only asks me to do my best and leave the rest to him – I can’t do everything or help everyone.
• I love Jesus but HATE dead religion – oppressive systems, pointless committees and man made rules.
• My hair isn’t as important to me as I thought it would be!
• Mark and I can work through any problem together with God’s help.
• That I am so thankful not to be forgotten - we have some wonderfully supportive friends and family – support hasn’t always come from where I would have expected it to but some unexpected people have risen up and shown us such love and kindness.
• What we are doing here seems to be affecting people at home as well as here.
• I still hate it when people are late for things.
• I still REALLY miss a lot of stuff – exercise (surprised myself there!); seasons; walks; hot water; abundant food; having a cat; ordered roads and most of all being with people I love and who love me and being able to be myself and let my (now messy!) hair down! 

Here is the trifle I made using some of the single cream I accidentally bought!  Creative solutions! Ha!

And for a profound ending I quote a hymn of Charles Wesley which was sent to me and sums up my trust in Jesus really through all this…my prayer is that it may be a comfort to those of you that I know and love who are going through tough times at the moment…

Thou hidden source of calm repose;

Thou all sufficient love divine
My help and refuge from my foes
Secure I am if thou art mine;
And lo!  From sin and grief and shame
I hide me Jesus, in thy name.

Thy mighty name salvation is;

And keeps my happy soul above
Comfort it brings and power and peace
And joy, and everlasting love;
To me, with thy dear name are given
Pardon and holiness and heaven.

Jesus my all in all thou art

My rest in toil, my ease in pain;
The medicine of my broken heart
In war my peace, in loss my gain;
My smile beneath the tyrants frown
In shame my glory and my crown.

In want my plentiful supply

In weakness my almighty power
In bonds my perfect liberty
My light in Satan’s darkest hour;
In grief my joy unspeakable
My life in death, my heaven in hell.

Rainy season

Guyana has two rainy seasons each year: Dec – Jan and May – June.   We got away with it lightly during December/January this year and it wasn’t too wet but in the last few days rainy season has come upon us with a vengeance! 

As the rains start and the ground becomes waterlogged, thousands of beetles which were under the ground come out and form flying plagues which come out at night and gather around any light source.  It is gross!!  Sitting in the house you can hear the flapping of thousands of beetle wings outside and you do not want to walk through the swarm!  The next morning the roads are black as they are covered in the dead bodies of all the beetles.  A feast for the chickens who roam the streets!!

We have been kept awake the last few nights by torrential rain storms and the ground around the house and church is waterlogged with huge puddles – we remember when we visited in Jan 2012 the ground around the house looked more like a swamp and it seems it is reverting to that again now!  Sadly that brings with it more mozzies!  We can’t allow the cows, goats and sheep into the garden at the moment to eat the grass or it would become a quagmire!  It is also a hard time of year to get washing dry especially with the high humidity. 

The rainy season means that the main road in and out of Georgetown gets flooded especially at high tide so it brings more chaos to an already overstretched road lay out.  The drainage gullies and trenches originally built by the Dutch and British to prevent flooding have all become blocked up by all manner of refuse and dead dogs and so there is little to stop massive floods.  It certainly isn’t pretty! 

We feel sad for the people here whose lives are already difficult and arduous enough – the rainy season just makes things even more miserable – for those waiting hours by the side of the road for mini buses to get around, those whose houses leak and are crumbling and for those who are homeless.  Thankfully it means the temperature is cooler - a chilly 24 degrees C, plus we have a car, wellies and good umbrellas - but we will still be very glad when the rainy season has passed! 

Some photos from Florida

We cycled each day to the pool...I cycled to the gym once only!  Don't want to overdo these things!

At a British pub - Mark is happy with his bangers and mash, Colman's mustard and Boddingtons!

 

And I'm happy with fish and chips and Pinot Grigio

At the club pool - looking like I have been decapitated!

A sign in the car park at the church we went to!

Our wonderful hosts, Tricia and Sam

Ready to go out to the dinner theatre

Old friends!  I have known Tricia since I was 13!

Mark kayaking!

At an outlet mall - one of many shopping trips!

On the plane - feeling a bit sad leaving!

At Sanibel island

Waiting to watch the sunset at Captiva island

Lovely sunset

I took dozens of the sunset!

Ah happy people!

With Shelby, one of Tricia's daughters - I used to babysit her when she was tiny!

Hershey the dog trying to join me in the pool!

Back from Florida

We have just returned from a wonderful and much needed break staying with friends in Florida.  The holiday was amazing and there was so much we appreciated…hot water, plentiful and tasty food, delicious wines, swimming, cycling, sunbathing, hair cuts, skyping family with a REALLY clear signal, watching TV, water sports, watching the sunset, shopping, relaxing, peaceful nights, pleasant temperature, catching up with old friends and meeting new ones.  It made us realise all the things we have been missing! 

While staying with our friends, we found out that one of their friend’s daughters had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer and it was a real privilege to be asked to get together with the group of friends to pray for them all.  We continue to pray for them all at this difficult time.  We also managed to attend worship at a local Methodist church and I found it very moving to be in a church with musical instruments, electricity for the whole service, projectors and video clips and a pleasant temperature with air con!  It was wonderful to worship and not be responsible for anything! 

Coming back has been hard and we took off from Miami with heavy hearts, knowing we are doing what God wants us to do but knowing the reality of life here and the difficulties and frustrations we face day by day.  We got home about 1.30am this morning and had to make do with a dribble of cold water to wash before we fell into bed exhausted!  That didn’t cheer us up too much BUT we were thankful no-one was having a loud party! 

We could hear the Mahaica congregation singing this morning in church (it’s just outside our bedroom!) and they were singing the well known hymn, O Jesus I have promised to serve thee to the end’ and the words really struck home to me today.  I realise that I HAVE promised to serve Jesus to the end, not just when things are easy and smooth but also in the tough times – come what may.  One verse says, ‘Oh let me feel you near me, the world is ever near, I see the sights that dazzle, the tempting sounds I hear.’  I have been dazzled in the last two weeks and I have to admit I like it!  

The other hymn they sang was ‘Take my life’ and the verse ‘Take my will and make it thine, it shall be no longer mine, Take my heart it is thine own, it shall be thy royal throne.’  I realise I have sung that song many many times and it is easy to sing when everything is going my way and not so easy when God’s will and mine are different and I have to learn to submit to him again day by day.  I can’t do it without God’s help and the support of all my lovely friends and family who keep on remembering us and sending their love in many different ways.   

So tomorrow we are back on with the task – I have a lot to do and prepare for – coming up I have several training sessions on phonics for schools, we are leading a marriage enrichment day, confirmation classes for some of the young people, another training day for children’s workers and many other things!  I shall be glad to be busy and the time will fly!!