What is
Guyana 26?
Why are you
leaving for two years?
Why are you
going to Guyana?
Are you going
to build houses?
What are you
trying to accomplish?
What's Peace
Corps all about?
What will
you do?
These are questions I got a whole lot of before I left. I asked myself a
couple of those questions before I left too, and some of them I still can't
totally answer yet, but I can tell you a whole lot more about what the goal of
me being here is.
For me personally, I joined the Peace Corps because I want to help people
all over the world love reading. I believe literacy is an impressive source of
empowerment. When you can read you can communicate and you can understand the
world around you in a new way. I am inspired to share my passion for literacy
with others, and hopefully have them become so passionate they will continue to
help spread literacy after I have gone. An important component of Peace Corps
to me is that I will only be in a community for two years, but I want to have
an impact which I won't even be able to predict.
Another component of my desire to
join was to get to know other cultures and show them what I'm all about. I want
to explore a new corner of the world and become a part of that community, not
just an observer. As I become integrated into my community my goal is to help
accomplish Peace Corps goal of developing the community by building the
capacity of different skills needed within communities. Part of what I will do
as a volunteer is see and hear what communities need and do my best to help them
accomplish their goals. The development I'm trying to accomplish should be:
sustainable(can last after we've come and gone), grassroots(done with the
people, not for the people), and people to people(focused on relationships built
between people).
There are also goals I'm trying to accomplish as an education volunteer.
I'm working with a set of guidelines called GLIFE which stands for Guyana
Literacy Improvement For Everyone. The main goal of GLIFE is to eliminate
illiteracy in Guyana; quite a task. There are a lot of different ways I can
choose to help improve literacy in my community. I can teach with a teacher in
a school, pull small literacy groups out to work with them, teach the teachers
through in-services, set up after school reading programs and other such opportunities. In general, if it has to do with literacy, I
can consider it part of my project. I will find out more about what I will end
up doing specifically after I find out what my site is on June 13th. I'll also
get to explore what secondary projects my community might be interested in like
camps or clubs focused on developing other skills. Again, I'll get to find out
more of that when I get to my future site.
On Monday we all went on the extra bumpy ride to Red Grounds to do a lot
of tech training sessions. The trainers let us have about an hour to use the
tools they brought in and develop learning tools we think we'll be able to use
in the classroom. This was wonderful and challenging at the same time since we
don't know what schools we'll go to or what grade levels we will be working
with yet. Such is life though, always trying to prepare for the unpreparable. I
was able to make a set of lovely alphabet cards, and laminate them with tape,
which I feel I will be able to use with different skill levels depending on
what students I will be teaching.
The rain here is not a subtle sunset, it is a radiant flame, easily
fierce one moment and sedated the next. The rain here does no mess around. It
comes violently, pounding it's giant fists on the house, then sweeps away
before you even realize it is gone. Sometimes it sticks around for longer,
making everything seem harder when there is a curtain of rain between you and anything
productive. It is coming on the rainy
season here, I'm still waiting for it to really pound down on us.
Tuesday was filled with a number of glorious things.
When we took the minibus home today we stopped to let Matt, Kathrina and
Eben out at the junction. Their family was taking a while to give them a ride,
so everyone came out and our language and culture trainer, Norwell, gave us an
impromptu dance lesson. He was trying to teach us to roll our hips without
moving our torsos. it is just about as hard as it sounds, for me at least. Eben
did really well. The rest of us...we gave a solid effort.
Upon getting home I got to help make sada roti. This is different from
the oil roti I had been making. It is much thicker. It is reminiscent of
english muffins. It's delicious. I thought I liked it more than the oil roti,
but they are both so good and I really can't choose. As I was helping cook the
roti on the towa I was feeling great because I hadn't burned any or done
anything embarrassing as I'm prone to do when cooking. I managed to cook one
really well, having it poof up in the middle and everything. I was trying to
toss the roti from the hot towa to the serving dish when I realized I probably
should not throw it because there was no way it was going to make it. The roti
got really close to landing in the dish when it bounced off and landed on the
floor, which everyone laughed at. I brushed it off and ate it anyway, but it
was rather hilarious.
I was discussing my inability to dance with my family over dinner when my
dad, Ravi, thought that was impossible and took it on himself to show me some
dance moves. I still cannot dance. But it was really fun to try. He and my mom
danced together and it was absolutely adorable.
After dinner my brother Shivo kept asking me if I could write up some
guitar tabs for him so he can practice when I am away. I finally got all the
stuff I needed to write him a lovely copy of many of the major chords and some
basic tabs I started working on when I was beginning. I hope he will get the
chance to keep practicing even when I'm not here.
I'm so lucky to be here with this host family, they really help my days
when I'm struggling, or they make them even better when I'm not.
Wednesday this week was partially spent in the school, during which Kelly
and I planned a dynamite lesson. However, once we got to the actual teaching of
the lesson it didn't work out quite as well as we were hoping. We attempted to
have our class think, pair, and share with a partner, but it it became think,
pair, and stare instead. It seemed the students were not used to sharing information
with each other. This was a good
learning opportunity for me to see how students respond to different
techniques. I'm looking forward to getting to my new site where I will get to
know my students better and will get to learn what techniques work well for
different students depending on how comfortable they are with different
techniques.
Thursday was a totally different story in the classroom, which was much
needed. I was hesitant to see how the students would respond to the lesson we
had planned for the day. Kelly and I began with a game called "I'm going
to the moon" because you play it by trying to have students guess the rule
based on what you are taking to the moon. We began by getting really excited
and telling them we are going on a trip to the moon; we then invited them to
come with us. They got super excited too. We began talking about what we needed
to bring with us. We then shared some things we were bringing and asked them
what they wanted to bring. We were able to brainstorm many things which they
said and made a list on the chalkboard. If their suggestions didn't fit the
rule we were able to change their statement a little bit to make it fit the
rule. They picked up the pattern(the suffix -ful) really quickly. We then
played another game where we had my stuffed dog from Mel and tossed it to
different students and asked them a question. The students responded really
well to this and were able to follow the rules for tossing the dog and being
gentle. It was quite excellent. I tried to do the whole "tell the answer
the dog tells you" thing, but I think they might need a bit more training
with that one. But it seemed beneficial for them to have a new manipulative in
the classroom.
Friday was another all together at Red Grounds day. We trained. It was
long. Training is great and I do love how hard they work to prepare us, but I
can't help but be excited to be on my own and get to start doing more in the
classroom. It reminds me a bit of my last semesters at college where I got
tired of my college classes because being in an elementary classroom is a
really good way for me to learn in a hands on environment.
Saturday was also filled with training. That was not my favorite time. I wanted
to hang out with my host family at home, but instead I got to go to Red Grounds
and get more training there. We did, however, finish joyfully early. We got to
go to the airport and use the internet at the bar there. It was quite
wonderful. Let me tell you how much I loved it. Words cannot express. I got to
send some emails and look up some glorious recipes. It was a fine, fine time.
Training will be over relatively soon, though. I cannot wait. But, at the
same time, I can totally wait because I really do enjoy working with all the
other trainees and my community in Laluni. I look forward to being on my own,
but I do know it is going to be a challenge to integrate into my community all
alone. I keep reminding myself though, I signed up for this. I knew it would be
hard. I knew it would be an entirely new, probably super challenging experience.
I came here with a whole lot of passion, and a couple times it helps me to
remember my motivation for joining. I think it will end up being exceptionally
helpful as I continue forward, as I encounter my tough times. There will be
tough times. There will probably be some pretty awful moments where I really
doubt my ability to make this happen. But I will be resilient. We've been
throwing around the world "resiliency" a whole bunch during training.
Resiliency to make it through, to survive no matter how hard it has become.
Resiliency is the key component in a successful volunteer, as they say. I
personally really rally behind this thinking because I think it is the truth in
other components too. If someone is unwilling to give up, they will succeed.
There's a quote of some variety which goes something like this: "No matter
if a person thinks they can or cannot do something, they will always be
right." True, true facts. This is a promise to you, to myself, that I will
make it, that I will accomplish the most amazing things.
