Graduates and teachers and helpers

(including me) :)

St Johns night where people pass over the coals

to get rid of your sins. Here Russian our fellow

librarian has just passed over.

Every Wednesday we take them on a field trip

this Wednesday (in the picture) we took them

to the pit traps.

Pit Traps, which are looked after by Oswin on

the right. He gave them a small talk about what

the traps are for and what they do with the

info collected.

A snake caught in the traps. A snake which is

more closely related to a lizard, its head and

tail look similar as to confuse prey.

After a hot walk to the traps we set off for

Rainbow Falls for a cool down.

Rainbow Falls

Photos!

Summer Library Programme begins

Computer Class

Schools out for summer!

School has now finished and was nicely rounded of with a graduation ceremony which was held on the Saturday after the last day of school. The graduation ceremony was for Grade 6 and Grade 11, Grade 6 pupils will now be moving up to the next grade or if they passed with high marks they will be going to a secondary school in St. Ignatius with is 2 hours from the village and they will board there. Grade 11 with ahve now finished school and be elligible to carry on at a college if they do so wish.

All of Grade 6 were in white gowns 2 of Grade 11 chose to wear a blue gown the boys wore white shirts and black pants along with a blue sash and blue graduation hat (which I had spent the whole week making - 30 of each!). There were speeches, songs and guest speakers as well as the girl (Shelly) who brought first in Grade 11 gave a speech of thanks too, followed by the presentation of certificates (which I also designed) and the handing out of prizes. After the ceremony was over pictures were taken of the proud parents at students which Sarah will be printing them whilst she is home on holiday in America. We also took class shots with all the pupils and the teachers that helped get them there, we were also asked to be in these pictures :)
A big lunch was put on by the hot meals program where all teachers, pupils, special invitees and parents were invited to eat, that evening they music and drinks and people celebrated most of the evening. It was a very happy day!

I am now currently working in the libray where we are running a summer library programme which is designed to be educational as well as fun activitied planned too. We have audio book they can listen and follow along with the book, similarly we have movies and the book they can follow with too, we have craft sessions (which I am heading), games sessions - which include anything from puzzles to word games to sports games outside. Every Wednesday we have a field trip planned in the afternoon, last Wednesday we took a group of 12 to see the pit traps (traps set by Shamir and Oswin to record insects, frogs, lizards, spiders and bugs) it involved a 15 minuted walk downa nd into the bush where they were then givena quick talk by Oswin about why they have the traps and how they set them up to be animal friendly. We were lucky to see 4 big spiders lots of giant centipeads and a small snake. After the traps we were all hot and sticky so we took them to a place called rainbow falls where we had a quick splash in the water to cool down when we returned to the library they were asked to draw a picture of the traps and what we saw, they enjoyed themselves throughly, many of their parents told us later that they came home and told them all about the trip and couldnt wait to come again the next day :)

So far the programme is quite successful and we have a steady amount of children coming to the library on a daily basis, as well as the library running activities the school is still open for children who need to do remedial classes (the children that need extra help and are falling behind, or children who have already been kept back a few years and are not progressing). The village is also running its own classes which are called Macushi lifestyle classes, an idea that was thought of by Alice. The classes are deisgned to get children in the village learning the traditional ways of village life as some of these seem to have been forgotten. For example cotton spinning, customs and beliefs, Mucru (unsure of spelling) plaiting, hide plaiting, Corial (wooden boat) making, and Cassava making and a few more, along side these traditional teaching there also classes to show them how to document all the work by using cameras and computers.

This weekend we had a big games event in the village, Yupukari invited some of its satellite villages to join in a tornament of football for both girls and boys. Kaicumbay, Quatata and Fly Hill were all invited and the games began Saturday afternoon and the weather held out for the most part and then the finals were played on Sunday. Both days were such good fun, the whole village came to watch and people from the other villages too, food was sold, fruit, sugar cane and local drink, I spent most of time under a big mango tree with some friends and children cheering on our side. On Sunday evening they had a presentation where the trophy was handed over tot he Yupukari football team and then the final team was announced. The final team consisted of all the best players from each team to go forward and represent Yupukari as a whole against other teams in the Rupununi. After the selection was made the fund raising began which mainly consisted of selling the local drink Cari/Kari.

Me teaching at the adults computer classes.

Last weeks of school

We are now in the last two weeks of school here and end of year exams are under wayy so we are helping with some extra tuition but also helping the teachers with their examination questions. It has become apparent that the teachers are very good at asking the children knowledge questions but not so good with composition and application questions so we have been trying to help improve their understanding of what makes a good question and pushes the children to understand a subject properly rather than just recalling an answer. We have mostly been helping with grade 5 and 6 working on their English skills for example my room mate Sarah has been working on their subject and predicate abilities trying to improve their sentence structure, I have been working on their descriptive language. It has been difficult controlling some of the classes as they seem to think coming to the library for their lessons means they are out of school and sometimes they act up. So it has been a steady flow of teaching and preparing for the summer library program which we have some exciting things planned, such as trips out, movie times and craft workshops up in the tree house. I am very much looking forward to the summer program and hope it is enjoyable and successful as we hope.

I have just started work on the nursery, grade 6 and 11 graduation certificates which will be handed out in a ceremony on the last day of schooling. Along with the certificates I have been working on creating some graduation type hats, but only having cardboard and paper to work with it has been a little challenging. The head mistress is going to Lethem on Tuesday to buy some fabric to create outfits and to cover the hats so I will then be roping in teachers and parents to help cover the hats we have two weeks to make just over 22!

Last week Wednesday the Village celebrated St Johns day, the celebrations started in the market square in the evening with a camp fire which later the coals were spread out until they reached the right temperature. Once the coals were glowing away it was time for a prayer followed by people passing over the fire with bare feet, I was told that if you believe you wont be burned then you won't needless to say I was not even tempted to cross over. My room mate told me last year she crossed over and she had blisters on her feet for three weeks after! After the fire walking music began and people danced into the night including me.

It has also been an exciting week in the village as the village has been given solar panels by the government, one for every house hold including our own! So they village is now alight in the evenings and people are enjoying the extra light hours to read or cook. We ourselves have been reaping the benefits of having lights in the house, we have two one in the living room and one in the bathroom so we can now finally see when we brush our teeth or have a shower! It also means we can use our torches and lanterns less which will be a big change as we were using them every night.