This is what we are here for....
on Derek and Trudy (Guyana), 12/Mar/2008 19:59, 34 days ago
The last week and a half have been spent visiting schools in Bartica and in the riverain area surrounding Bartica. The schools vary in size and effectiveness and in the stunning beauty of their settings but two factors remains a constant on almost all the visits...the delightful, brighteyes, well turned out children and the lack of real learning going on...Ian and Christine before us worked their socks off and you can sometimes see the evidence of their work....a bright, attractive classroom, a harworking committed trainee teacher, a hardworking , intelligent, professional headteacher doing his/her utmost ...but there is still much to do to improve the effectiveness of all the schools. Many of the teachers do not interact with the children and resort to having the children rote learn, copy down stuff from the board and feel that what teaching is...Travelling to visit the schools by speedboat across the Essequibo and into the Mazaruni is just brilliant and it's at times like these we forget about the intermittent water supply into the house or the cockroaches or the cramped quarters near the school dormitory . for we are on the edge of tropical rainforest and the weekend walks we have undertaken so far have yielded up a tiny part of the exotic bird life, the staggerinly large and beautiful butterflies of irridescent blue, brimstne yellow , bright red and the dense tropical forestation.So far the weather has been cool for here ( c. 25C ) and very wet and people keep telling us this is the dry season ...We think this is in part due to el Nino but I have never quite worked out what that means. Anyway the 'cool' weather has helped us acclimatise quite well but there are days when we return to the house exhausted and we haven't really done that much.Our social life continues to be good and we meet more extraordinary 'locals...Peter and Malcolm the gold miners, Dr. George the Cuban doctor, Assim the ebullient retailer, Frankie the man whose wife has died and who has 6 children to support and never seems to stop working....these are people that I feel is part of the reason we are here ...to improve the education system for these good guyanese people