Wha'm in me life does steh so

Yesterday saw the arrival of Project Trust's Guyana Desk Officers, Doug and Chris, in Wakapoa. We'd received an email a couple of weeks ago saying the visit was planned, but having spent six months in the land of 'Just Now', Claire and I were a little sceptical. We were therefore delighted when we saw two very tired-looking white people walking across the sand towards our house, shouldering rucksacks whose primary purposes turned out to be transporting decent chocolate for us :)

It was a decidedly quick visit - they arrived at lunchtime, and were supposed to be observing our lessons, not realising that Claire has Friday afternoons free and I teach P.E. for two hours. They played a lot of volleyball (at my insistence. Chris took it gamely, even though we got rained on and returned home covered in wet sand and sand fly bites), paid for and cooked the first decent meal we've eaten in weeks, provided us with rum and Mini Eggs, and happily sat on our floor in the dark playing cards by torchlight. Oh, and they then slept in our hammocks, which is trying for even us; there isn't that much space in our house so we really did sling them up poorly. 

More cards were played in the village benab this morning while we waited for the boat to arrive to take us to Charity. Once we'd hopped inelegantly onto the stelling - after the beautiful ride through Wakapoa creek and down the Pomeroon - we said goodbye, and Doug and Chris headed back to Georgetown. Claire and I headed to the other side of the stelling to sit and gaff with our friend Philip. 

Philip is a Rastafari poet, who keeps scraps of verses on scraps of paper in a biscuit tin attached to his guitar case. He presses a selection into our hands whenever we meet, and of all the things I've acquired this year they are some of my most treasured. He also keeps getting into fights or stealing things and being dragged to Charity lock-up, so we can only see him between stints of incarceration. A hero, truly.

***

Over rum last night, Doug and Chris chatted to us about our time in Guyana (with rather more candour than expected - it was admitted that Wakapoa won't be on the cards for next year's volunteers), and our conversation inspired me to compile a list of things that the past few months have taught me...

• A boat is not full when the seats are all taken. A boat is not full if you have only one child sitting on your knee. A boat will be deemed 'full enough' when seemingly everyone from the surrounding area is squashed into/teetering precariously on it. Also true of minibuses in Georgetown.
• I am crap at volleyball.
• Food is a huge part of my life. When it's raining and we're stuck inside, I can happily pass the time by swinging in my hammock and thinking fondly of snacks I miss. Shreddies, I'm lookin' at you.
• I'm good at killing things. Perhaps not Amerindian Good - yet - but hand me a book or a broom and I will happily rid your house of that pesky bat/tarantula/frog problem. Pancake would be wise to stay away from me when she's in a leg-licking mood.
• I don't think I want to teach for a living. No, that's not necessarily true. I don't want to teach in Guyana for a living.
• Hand washing isn't hard. It's time consuming and dull, but we're pretty adept now, and clothes come out actually feeling/looking/smelling clean (despite being washed in the creek). My white tops still look white - they're perfect for showing off my newly-hench arms.
• Jaguars are hard to spot, and I should probably stop straining to see them in the dense foliage we pass through in boats. Considering I consistently fail to see either of the two jaguars in the tiny enclosure at Chester Zoo, I think it's a lost cause.
• Guyanese night time church is held in tiny clearings in the rainforest by candlelight, and is absolutely terrifying. If you attend you will be exorcised, slapped on the head a few times and given a lolly.
• Somtimes, in Georgetown, you will attempt to cheer yourself up by buying cheese. Actual cheese. It will be your first cheese in months, and you will love it like a child. When you reluctantly yet tenderly place this cheese in the only fridge in the village upon your return, you will not see that cheese again, and you will be sad.
• Unripe passion fruits are excellent pelting tools. Once the village pigs have plucked the low-hanging fruits off the vine they're pretty much the only way to get the ripe ones. 
• Guyanese people choose to eat mangoes when they're green, seasoning them with salt and wiri wiri pepper. You can try to persuade them to wait for a couple of weeks, but they will not, and simply so you get a mango, you too will have to pick and eat them green. It will be a shock the first time. And each subsequent time, to be honest, though you'll get better at hiding it.
• The above is a total non-issue because I now habitually eat so many fruits I'd never previously heard of, and tasting them is like suddenly being able to see a new colour. Jamoon, whitie, kokerit, awara, mamey, star apple, golden apple, custard apple, noni, ite, sapodilla, corio, doung, guinep, bimbli, monki-monki, fat pork, souri, sumatoo, the flesh around a cocoa bean, so many weird varieties of banana... I could keep going. I need to compile a proper list. It's incumbent on me to never let the novelty and excitement of all this wear off. I don't think I need to worry.
• I can fry anything. I am a frying wizard.
• Claire is also a frying wizard.
• I can't outrun a piglet.
• I can outrun a 14-year-old Amerindian boy who loves running, and he isn't happy about it. We have had many, many races around the village in an attempt to disprove this.
• If you're sufficiently poor at cooking, it is technically possible to make scrambled egg from a box of cake mixture.
• I miss reading so much. Aside from the few we brought with us, the only book we own is the autobiography of a forensic pathologist left behind by a previous volunteer. We've read it several times.
• I am 90% certain I could competently perform an autopsy.
• Sand is potentially the most annoying substrate it's possible to live on. Wet sand is worse.
• The education system here (or at least in many hinterland communities here) is monumentally f***ed-up. I'm sure at some point I'll write the obligatory rant about it, so I won't open that can of worms yet, but rest assured that it's coming...
• Sarcasm is something that English (and Northern Irish) people do very well, but it is lost on Guyanese people and you'll look like a dickhead, so don't bother.
• Banks Beer tastes a bit like piss, but I've grown to love it.
• El Dorado 5-year definitely does NOT taste like piss. It's all I'm carrying back to the UK.
• I still miss bacon.

So, that's my list. It isn't the most comprehensive, but it's true to what our year has thus far been like. Feel free to visit us and I'll kill a bat as a token of welcome.

Me na na wa teh call di post

As promised, an installment talking about more than food is here. It's still highly likely to be MOSTLY about food, though. And I'm well aware that at this stage you're probably all sick of reading this thing, so you're very welcome to, y'know, not.

Greetings from Tobago!... is a phrase that at one stage it seemed I'd be unable to say. All the PTVs flew from Georgetown to Trinidad, failed to transfer our luggage to the flight to Tobago thinking it would be done for us, and Dan and I (and only Dan and I) ended up missing two planes. We remedied the situation somewhat by eating ungodly amounts of airport chicken, but we were still mightily relieved to eventually step off the plane and onto the beautiful island of Tobago (or 'Tobags' as it's affectionately being called, in a not-at-all-annoying way).

We've been here since Friday, and enjoyed an actually-vaguely-OK Christmas dinner at 3am on Christmas Eve (apparently 13 drunk 18-year-olds don't excel at militantly planning a complicated meal). Christmas Day itself was then spent on a boat tour of the island, punctuated by snorkelling over Buccoo Reef, lots of rum punch, and dancing around in the shallow waters of Nylon Pool, a waist-deep sandbar about a mile offshore. We surprised our guide by wining Guyanese style, rather than doing the dance we'd all favoured before spending four months in South America: The White Girl Shuffle (I do do a mean White Girl Shuffle, though)

Since Sunday we've not done much beyond wander up and down Pigeon Point, eat gyros, and swim, but that's exactly what we wanted. The last couple of weeks of term absolutely killed me. Having to plan and execute seven lessons a day for a mostly illiterate class with no resources other than chalk and a forced air of enthusiasm is draining at best, and makes you want to kill yourself and everyone else in the world ever at worst. This holiday has definitely achieved its purpose in that I feel refreshed and ready to head back to Wakapoa. It's also been a nice brain break to spend time with other people without having to affect my own bastardised brand of Creole in order to be understood. We did all note with amusement that we now naturally pepper our speech with lots of Guyanese phrases, though, and I'm fully intending to irritate each and every one of you by using them back in the UK.

I've forgotten what I was going to say next but I'm sure it can't have been that important, since whatever it was was eclipsed entirely by a vague imagining of myself with locks (I've been told I'd suit them. I'm inclined to agree). It's almost time to begin cooking dinner, though, so I'd better go and at least show a willingness to help, then use my helpfully standing in the kitchen as an excuse to pick at whatever anyone is making. Excellent stuff.

I trust you all had amazing Christmases and enjoyed a more thoroughly-planned Christmas dinner than the affair we created. Hope it snows all over your faces.

L xxx

FOOOOOOOOOD

It's three days before Christmas (somehow), and all the PTVs are now back from their respective villages and congregated in Georgetown. After leaving Wakapoa at the end of term Claire and I spent a few days in Bartica (a gold and diamond mining town in Region 7), accidentally locked inside a vacated Benedictine monastery. We subsisted on the few bags of Big Foot crisps we had stashed in our rucksacks, and the passion fruits we could reach from one of the windows. I typed the whole story on Facebook while it was happening, so won't repeat myself here, but it was interesting. 

Now we're safely ensconced back at the PT flat, we are free to spend several hours every day gorging ourselves on food in Coffee Bean - a café near St. George's Cathedral, which could feel quite Guyanese, if we didn't fill it with white people and out-of-tune Christmas carols - and that's where we are now.
It's awesome.

It's odd to be back in a place with roads, crowds and people who don't know every detail about your life. In August we walked tentatively to and from the sea wall bubbling with general, undirected excitement and apprehension, and jumped at every call of 'white girl/white dog/white meat', and now we happily stroll around at night/in small groups etc. I've not forgotten that this can be a dangerous place, but so can anywhere. We're all a lot savvier now, and it helps that we can speak Creole. We corroborated this feeling of being at ease by heading out to a Brazilian nightclub the other night (now we've each perfected our Forró dancing, which involves a lot of ass shaking and foot shuffling. Also awesome).

We told our almost-carer Rishon (daughter of our in-country rep Kala) of our plans:
'Rockies?' She raised an eyebrow. 'Good luck. If people start running, run in the same direction.' We glanced at each other and smiled nervously.

As it turns out, it was just as well she gave us this warning. At about midnight we heard gunshots, saw fire, and were swept outside into the street in a wave of people screaming in Portugese. We stood around in a bemused circle for a few minutes, before shrugging and getting a taxi back to the flat. We're still not sure what happened, but we're all fine.

This morning we went to get our work permits stamped and visas extended. In true Guyanese fashion, we waited around for a long time in needlessly formal attire, before being interrogated as a group because one of the guys didn't get his passport stamped when he'd re-entered Guyana from Brazil. Then we had a snack. I've fully got to grips with all the paperwork and time spent doing nothing that living in Guyana seems to entail.

On Friday we head to Tobago for a week. One of our contingent emphatically declared 'if I remember anything about Tobago next week, it wasn't a success', and I agree to some extent. I'm all for drinking (several) cocktails on the beach, but can attest to the fact that I stop Forróing and begin simply spasming in a dress past about rum number five, so we'll see.

If I can find any wifi in Tobago I'll try to write something more, but I seriously have to go now because I have some bacon coming and I effing miss bacon. Bacon trounces staying in touch with people.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Concerts, cricket and cats

As I type this, I am nursing several wounds.

Well, 'wound' is possibly a bit strong. I am nursing several tiny scratches, and a couple of puncture wounds (there’s no other word, OK?) on my wrist. I could have avoided all of these things if I had it in me to avoid the animals that caused them: in a bid to free three kittens from the burden of orphanhood (and abuse from Amerindian toddlers), we somehow adopted them, and the puncture wounds are from a dog biting me. That one wasn’t my fault, though. I was innocently walking somewhere, and - in a seemingly random act of malice - a dog emerged from a bush and attached itself to me. This was all a couple of weeks ago, and the dog is still alive, so I’m not so much worried about rabies as I am pissed off that my bruised wrist prevents me from writing properly at a time when I have lots of writing to do.

The mounting workload is the only thing currently standing between us and a much-needed break, and it seems unconquerable. We spent all of our free time a couple of weeks ago writing exams, all of our free time last week invigilating and marking exams, and all of our time now writing exam evaluations, report cards, index cards, class logs, class journals and schemes of work and lesson plans for next term (I say 'writing', but in my case it’s decidedly more 'pitifully scrawling, and complaining about Rio the dog to anyone who’ll listen').

We were given a break from paperwork last week for the school’s Christmas concert - a night we played a relatively large part in running, but now denounce entirely. I’d deemed it a fabulous idea to teach my class 'The Twelve Days of Christmas', and spent longer than was strictly necessary parading around on the sand, conducting and ensuring it was perfect. And it was! My class of 38 had initially been reluctant to learn what they clearly saw as a random song Miss Lucy made up on a whim, but at my insistence they persevered, and actually ended up enjoying it. They were all rightfully upset when another teacher later declared they weren’t all allowed to sing it. Fair enough, I thought, 38’s quite a lot of kids. I was mentally whittling down the choir to perhaps 12, when she pointed at one girl and said 'Tifona can sing it on her own.' This annoyed me hugely, given the amount of effort my class had put into practising, and considering that most of the other acts ended up being long, identikit dances to Pepe Moreno songs by huge groups of kids. Also, it's not like the song would become shorter by omiting anyone singing it. Can you tell I'm bitter? Tifona did a great job, anyway.

The day of the concert arrived in a blur of balloons and grass skirts. Claire and I got up at four (which doesn’t actually seem that early, horrifyingly) to make curry, which we would then be responsible for selling during the interval of a concert we’d also be filming. Luckily the video quality was so poor that we had to delete it – it definitely works to our advantage that no one gets to hear our exasperated sighs as the least charismatic compère ever went into another rousing verse - the fifteenth, maybe? - of his song about a zoo. The concert began at six, and we were assured the entire affair would be over within an hour and a half. At midnight we were still crouched by the stage, unable to swat away mosquitoes lest we shake the camera, and generally hating life.

As you can imagine, we were thrilled to be told there’s another concert on Saturday at a nearby school, and we’ll 'definitely be going, won’t [we]?'

On Friday, our HM invited us to a cricket match at Mora, a nearby island. Claire was understandably reluctant, considering we both dislike cricket with a passion I usually only reserve for slightly-too-small sandwiches, but I chirpily agreed, bound by the self-set proviso that I say yes to everything. On Saturday morning, we found ourselves sitting in a boat with Wakapoa Mission’s cricket team – a group constituting the island’s entire reserve of testosterone. Only once we’d settled ourselves under a tree at Mora and mentally prepared for the four hours of mind-numbing boredom that were sure to follow were we told that, by the way, this was now to be an overnight trip, and we’d simply kip on the floor. Claire shot me a murderous glance – not the first, or last, of the day – as we checked off the things we didn’t have: food, money for food, spare clothes, insect repellent, or anything to do. Luckily, a member of the team chose this moment to produce some bottles of vodka, and the rest is history.

(N.B., Ma and Pa: don’t worry that we’re unable to feed ourselves or anything. We found a cashew tree nearby and gorged ourselves on fruit.)

It’s only once we return home to the Mission that we appreciate quite how friendly it is. People are generally nice to us wherever we go, but it’s lovely to jump out of the boat and immediately be swarmed by dorms kids and dogs, then walk home in a motley gaggle of children and neighbours as everybody waves at us.

It will be slightly odd next week when we head back to Georgetown and spend extended periods of time with other white people. Claire is the only white person I’ve seen for months (we thought we saw one in Charity the other week and followed him briefly, before realising he simply had albinism), and it’ll be strange to be – almost - in the majority again when we accost the hostel in Tobago with our presence. We’ll be a smaller group than originally planned: of the 16 Project Trust volunteers, one went home almost immediately, another flew back quite recently because he’d macheted his hand and needed surgery, and two have their own plans in the south of Guyana. Those remaining will doubtless be overjoyed when I place them in lines and make them sing The Twelve Days of Christmas.

I hope everything in Britain’s good. I’m going to stop writing this thing now and use my remaining time on the computer to find out what’s going on in the rest of the world (I hate not having any access to news – I only found out about Gaddafi last week). Love, hugs and kitten scratches to you all.

xxx

P.S. We actually chucked the kittens out yesterday. They’re pretty big now, and have more than proven themselves to be excellent climbers/clawers, so we reckon they’ll be OK. Three girls from dorms have adopted them (and, sadly, renamed Mr. Beefy 'Beyonce'.)

I finally get to a computer and...

my face feels like it's about to fall off.

I'm sitting in an internet café in Anna Regina (the name of which I still find dimly titillating to say), having just spent about four hours sitting in a lumber boat drifting down the Pomeroon - hence my being covered in sawdust and smelling of a fine piece of furniture - and a further hour singing Lionel Richie with our taxi driver Fordyce. I've left it so long since the last blog that I can't think of where to begin.

I guess the face thing is as good a place as any - and it's not even interesting. Whilst sitting in the taxi, I excitedly tore into my bag of plantain chips with hot pepper sauce, and managed to spray said sauce all over myself. Guyanese pepper sauce is basically pure wiri wiri pepper (similar in flavour profile to but much hotter than scotch bonnet), and is only needed in very small quantities. We must have looked a little odd: singing very loudly, Fordyce and Claire laughing as I half howled with pain and half powered my way through 'Say you, say me'.

But I digress. I feel I should probably update you with something a little more substantial than my snacking considering it's been two months.

I'll tell you more about Wakapoa, since it's where I spend about 99% of my time.

Any confusion I felt before arriving as to what exactly constituted 'Wakapoa' has been eradicated. I'd assumed it was one village, but have eventually deduced that it's many settlements sprinkled along the shores of Wakapoa Creek. Claire and I live on St. Lucian's Mission, which boasts the health centre and the secondary school for the whole Wakapoa community. Life on the Mission really is centred around the school: WSS and its dormitory stand in the middle of a patch of white sand, and there is a cluster of about ten houses and a small shop on the periphery of that, but that's essentially all there is. The circle of sand is fringed with palm trees, and a few feet further back the palms yield to rainforest, then mangroves. Deep, tannin-filled creek water the colour of iodine surrounds all. It sounds idyllic, and it is. Usually, though, we're too busy or distracted to appreciate it fully, which is a shame, and something I'm increasingly trying to change as I settle in and get to know more people.

Our lives have now fallen into a comfortable pattern:

We get up when it gets light at about 6am, and hastily plan lessons (did I say 'hastily'? I meant 'thoroughly and fantastically'), then shower - which involves a bucket of creek water and a mug when our water tank's empty, which it soon shouldn't be since we're entering rainy season. Next we'll eat a fortifying breakfast of bake - sort of like a dense pita. It can be cooked on a griddle, or fried, and we usually make so much that it does breakfast for us and our two dogs, Lontws and Pancake. We then walk the 20 metres that separates our house from the school. Dorms kids materialise as we shut our front door, and we all meander across the already-boiling-hot sand in a big group, arms linked. 

For the first month and a bit I was teaching in The Shack, but I'm now back in the main school building. It's nice to feel more a part of the school community, but there are now six classes in one room (simply sitting in different areas and separated by blackboard partitions), so it can be an absolute nightmare to talk over the other teachers/children. My class is also much bigger than the others. I teach 38-40 children daily, and the next largest class has 16. The smallest has four. It's just as well that my kids are the youngest and therefore smallest in the school, as we don't have more desks or space than anybody else, so they all have to cram together. The hearing problem is compounded when it rains - thunderous, torrential, rainforest rain - and the zinc roof means we're all immediately deafened. During these times, my class know that I'll start gesturing wildly at the board and be giving them the ol' crazy eyes in an attempt to get the lesson across without any words, so they usually pay attention pretty rapidly simply so they can laugh at me. This suits me fine. 

After school and any school meetings we'll play with the dorms kids for a while (I taught them Duck Duck Goose and the Macarena. If I achieve nothing else, I'm proud of that), then typically wander across to sit in the shop, owned by our friend Dale. This is useful in that we get free snacks, and cuddles with Dale's gorgeous baby brothers, but less so in that Dale frequently buggers off, leaving us to serve people Guyanese items of which we're only just learning the names (and essentially making up the prices). Eddoe? Ajee? Belna? Sure, take this thing. 

We sit in the shop - or in the hammocks near the shop - gaffing and playing with the kids and dogs until it gets dark, which happens in about ten seconds at 6pm due to our location on the equator. Unless an auntie kindly offers to feed us, we'll head home and cook something together by the light of our head torches, then sit on our front step chatting with our neighbours, before diving under our mosquito nets. To help with ventilation and heat management walls in Guyanese houses don't reach all the way up to the ceiling, so Claire and I can continue to chat from our beds at normal speaking volume. We debrief after the day, reminisce about home, take the piss out of each other's accents, and watch enormous tarantulas walk languidly across the ceiling. 

Latterly, I've taken to simply braving the mosquitoes so I can sit outside and gaff (and stare at the incredible stars) for longer, but I have paid the price: I am now so covered in bites that I look vaguely diseased.

Anyway, I'm being rushed off the computer now. I'm sorry I've been so crap with updates, but now I know where to get on the internet hopefully they'll appear more frequently.

tl;dr: Guyana's amazing and I'm never coming home k bye x

First post in-project

This is my second attempt at a blog post since arriving in Wakapoa, and I'm having to type it on my phone whilst eating a biscuit and swinging in a hammock, so don't expect great things.

Despite what the above undoubtedly suggests, life here isn't easy! The area is absolutely beautiful, and it'll certainly be disappointing next year when I'm back in the UK and no longer waking up to the babble of macaws in the tree beside my window, but I will definitely not miss the mosquitoes, sand flies, unrelenting heat, lengthy water-purification process, chalk dust all over me ('dust-free' my arse) or having to cook everything in one tiny karahee (a wok-esque aluminium thing) over a faltering kerosene flame. Actually, I won't particularly miss the parrots either. In Guyana, the generic parrot name isn't Polly, it's Robert, and people have repeated this to the flock enough that they now scream 'Robert' at each other constantly. It was amusing initially, but when you're trying to sleep it can get a little wearing.

September is Amerindian Heritage Month, and to celebrate this several days are organised where typical Amerindian pursuits are showcased. Wakapoa is home to the Lokono (Arawak) tribe, and most of the activities, foods, and dances were specific to this area. We caught a boat to a nearby island to see what these would be. It turned out the day mainly involved imbibing copious amounts of paiwari (chewed up, fermented cassava) then drunkenly chasing mangrove crabs around a field. We did sample the paiwari (and we were essentially forced to participate in the crab chasing), but managed to refrain from getting drunk. Another moment of confusion - and they are frequent - was experienced when we were jokingly accused of being high. We later learned that 'high' means tipsy, and that someone is only considered 'drunk' when they're completely catatonic, so we relaxed a bit. Tomorrow we're heading to another island to, in all probability, chase more crustaceans, so we'll be sure to use high and drunk correctly.

In other news, teaching is DIFFICULT! Wakapoa Secondary School is simply one room, containing five classes and four teachers. Entrance exams for many schools were also abolished recently, meaning that secondary school-aged children who have never been in any formal education before can now be enrolled directly into 7th grade. This removal of a barrier to education is good, but what the Ministry of Education is asking these children to achieve academically is no different to the children who have been lucky enough to attend school since kindergarten. They are being set up for failure, and funding to schools is promptly cut based on their perceived lack of attainment. When there is nothing else to take in terms of resources, this means one or two fewer teachers are employed, regardless of the number of enrolled students, and the problem is compounded. Enter the relatively cheap Project Trust teachers.

A remedial class for Grade 7 has now been created, and this is the class to which I have been assigned. I am their sole teacher. Even though the curriculum, exams, and mark schemes are identical to those of the existing Grade 7, it nevertheless grants me more freedom to go at the class' own pace most of the time. I try to work through the niggling futility of being expected to catch up to another class but having to go slower than them by necessity. In a perverse way the futility is freeing. 

I spend a good chunk of my seven-hour teaching days singlehandedly attempting to teach my class how to read and write (as well as sit down and listen for prolonged periods), whilst trying to keep things varied and engaging. I'm straining to recall all the best and most exciting (and least resource-dependent!)  lessons I've ever had, and serve up some kind of useful amalgamation. I also fret about whether literacy will actually serve my students in the future. For some, surely, it won't. Luckily I also teach the other core subjects, so try to address this doubt with more practical lessons elsewhere. I am already so tired. I don't know how doable I would find any of this long-term if I didn't have the naïve, frenetic energy of an 18-year-old.

The 38 children and I have also now been relegated to what can only be described as a falling-down shack, on the other side of the school compound to the main school building. It's dark, stiflingly hot, and floods almost immediately whenever it rains - which is a lot, in rainy season. We have, incidentally, perfected the art of hurriedly leaping onto the desks and baling the water out of the hole in the wall that constitutes a window when this happens.

I'm yet to utilise the 'rod of correction' - my punishments tend to involve sweeping sand out of the room or shooing bats away - but the other teachers do. Frequently. Hearing it is taking some getting used to.

We were warned before coming here that everything is covered in a 'blancmange of buearocracy', and I can wholeheartedly confirm this. It seems that actual teaching comes completely secondary to all of the records and daily/weekly/termly/yearly schemes we have to fill out. Completing these would obviously be fine, but it's not great when there's an entire school full of children sitting at their desks with no teachers or activity, since the teachers have all been pulled out of their classes in order to write these records for the following terms. All this when the majority of students present had to paddle a dugout canoe an hour or more up a creek in order to reach school that day. I was scoffed at and admonished by our headmaster when I tried to leave my class with something to do in my absence. It's frustrating not being allowed to teach because we're too busy filling out forms detailing how important teaching is.

On the plus side, my moods are improved almost instantly when our nextdoor neighbour blasts the Backstreet Boys or Celine Dion, and we warble along whilst eating mango and stroking the dogs we appear to have adopted.

I'll try to post again soon, but now I'm going to go and apply insect repellent before I'm eaten alive.

Lucy x