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.

Youth Week

Monday was the beginning of Youth Week which involved a combination of fun and work. Monday the school sorted out all the old chairs and tables which were broken and gave them to village volunteers to mend, whilst the librarian sorted out all the books in the school, ones to keep, ones to repair, ones to throw and use for something else. We then went about sorting out new books from the latest shipment to put back in the school this took us until the end of Tuesday to complete as we had to label and inventory them all as well.

Tuesday night was meant to be camp fire night however the rain soon put a stop to that.

Wednesday was Independence Day so school and the library were shut, the day was kind of quite with people spending time with their families but in the evening there was music and local drink for sale. I spent the night at a friends house with a few other people and just talked into the night which was fun.

Thursday the school had the children planting and digging flower beds outside the school to make it look prettier, in the library we played a few games with them.

Friday school continued as normal in the morning but in the afternoon there was a small parade followed by a school concert where each class performed a song or a little play, we also had one of Yupukari's satellite village, Quatata, also attend the concert. There was lots of whole school singing as well which was fun. After school I did a craft station in the library showing the children Origami, we made animals out of paper the animals included Butterflies, Tigers, Elephants and Giraffe's the children enjoyed it very much and seemed excited to go home and show their parents.

Saturday was the last day of celebration, we had sports games in the village where Quatata came and another satellite village called Kaicumbay also came, Yupukari played them both at football and volley ball winning all of the games!! Whilst the games were going on people were selling drinks and food in the market square, in the evening most people gathered at the far end of the village where there is a shop and benab which plays music and sells drinks it was here where people partied on into the early hours of the morning.

Back in Yupukari

I have now been back in Yupukari for a week, after spending a week in town sorting out some paper work. There is lots going on in the village, Caimen house has been under reconstruction and now has a new front to it which acts as a reception hammock room and is very inviting. The teachers quarter is nearly finished now just the inside construction to go and then it should be complete by end of June, where my neighbour Miss Lucy is hoping to move in. The library is next to under go a revamp, an extension is being added onto the side to increase the amount of space on the bottom floor. It will allow for more room to display the books and to have more sofas for a story corner, we have one already but it is only big enough for a few children to sit down at once, we are also hoping once the extension is built we can set the computers up and leave them up rather than having to get them out and put them away all the time.

My room mate has been away for a week too visiting friends in Region 1, so I have been looking after the library in her absence. I have also been going to nursery most mornings helping Miss Lucy with her class. We have been learning new words as well as trying to improve their reading, we have started to teach them about whole, halves, quarters and thirds. Over the weekend we baked 2 cakes to try and help them visualise whole, halves, quarters and thirds I think it was fairly successful and they definitely enjoyed eating them afterwards. Lorrie and I have been taking Grade 2 everyday for the past week to help improve their reading skills, we have picked a select amount of dolch words (words they should know by their age) and going over them each day and designing different activities to complete with them.

For the past two days some teachers have been absent due to workshops in Lethem they have to attend so the librarians have also been filling in school lesson too, I had forgotten how hard some of the teachers have it, some are teaching several grades at once and so it is difficult finding work appropriate for the different ages.

Next week is Youth week and Independence Day on the 26th, the school have organised lots of different events such as games, a rally, and a concert, I hope to organise some fun activities in the library too. Independence Day is a public holiday so I expect a lot of people from the village will gather in the square and participate in games as well as selling food and drink to celebrate.

New Project, New People

I am working on a new project, I am creating a photographic counting book for children. The photos also depict what village life is like here so hopefully they will be able to relate more to the book. So I have been all over the village recently taking photos and trying to find the right number of things yet still make a good picture...I have had a lot of fun doing it and have been to parts of the village I had never been to before. I have been working on the project with a young boy called Jason who has been helping me take the photos but also finding out the Macushi translations of some of the objects for me so we can do the book in English and Macushi.

I am also going to be asking the headmistress if I could take be a Physical Education teacher and take lessons for each class on whatever day they normally have games time. I hope to teach them some games that I used to do at school and hopefully they will be able to teach me the ones they do here.

My room mate has just come back after being in Georgetown for a week, it is nice to have someone else around the house again, we are also having a couple coming to stay with us at the end of the week who are IT experts and are coming to look at our internet connection and laptops. Hopefully they will be able to make some of them run faster as it would be a huge benefit for computer club. They will be staying with us for 3 weeks I think, it will be weird having an older couple around the place for a while.

Rainy season is beginning here, last week we had a lot of rain which is when I found out my house is not so water proof! I woke up in the middle of the night to find a river of water throughout my whole house...except my room! :) So for most of this week repairs are being done to my house to fix leaks and replace old mosquito mesh. We have also now been given our own water trestle which is being hooked up today so we will finally have some running water.

Next week I think I am off to Georgetown to sort out some much needed paperwork I am not looking forward to the 13 hour bus journey there and back though!

School Break Over

So I haven't had the internet for a while as the modem and some other bits had to be taken to town to be fixed so the internet was down for about two weeks - which has been quite nice to be out of reach it was actually quite liberating not to have to check emails and the urge to see what was going on in the world of the net.

It has just been spring break here where the children had two weeks off for Easter, for the first few days I helped out in the library with Grade 6 revision for there common entrance exam which took place over the break, the results are not out until June so finger crossed they pass.

I then went to Lethem for the Rodeo that takes place there, it was a nice opportunity to meet up with everyone I have met so far. The Rodeo takes place over the course of three days with many different events happening, for example on the first night there were two beauty pageants, then on Saturday and Sunday there was bull riding, lassoing and other such activities. One of our friends was competing in the beauty pageant and another friend is a vaquero and took part in all the Rodeo events and eventually winning Rodeo King!! So as you can imagine we were very happy to be there and cheering everyone on.

Lots of construction work has also taken place over the Easter break, Caimen House has a new front which is a new hammock area, the teachers quarters are really coming along, and the library is about to under go an extension which is exciting.

School started back today so back to work, today I am re - advertising my computer program to see if we can get any new comers or even to just remind the people who came before they are still on and they can come back and refresh themselves. After school I am also helping with Grade 9's projects they have to do for each subject so we will be checking what they have been doing over the break and see what improvements could be made.

During this week I am also hoping to get together with the sports teacher here to start organising swim lessons as the sports competitions are in the next couple of months and we need to start preparing.

Lorries Wedding

MASHRAMANI

Trip South!

The past week has been very busy, I have still been teaching computer lesson as well as helping Grade 9 after school with there projects in Maths, Science, Social Studies and English. We also celebrated Dr. Seuss for the week which was a lot of fun, reading his books to the children and watching them enjoy the silly rhymes and made up words he uses, they then set about trying to draw the Dr. Seuss characters and their own. I have also spent the week planning for Grade 6 revision lesson for after school at the library - 3 of us have taken two weeks each to help them prepare for their common entrance exam which is after Easter. I took the topic of social studies which has been challenging for me as I had to learn fast about many different aspects of Guyana in order to understand properly and teach it back.

On top of teaching we have also had a lot of guests, at the moment we have 40 christ crusaders camping in the village for 10 days, they have been doing a tour of different villages and each night they hold a service and spread the word of god, as well as handing out free bibles to people in the village. The children have been enjoying themselves greatly joining in with the singing and dancing.

We have also had British Diplomats come by as well as regular guests, we also celebrated the return of a lady called Alice who helped set up the Caimen House and library here. She has been away for 2 years and the village were incredibly excited to see her come back. So it has been a hype of activity here in the last week which was topped of with some friends coming through at the weekend and then taking a trip south on Sunday to a place called Shulinab. This was particularly novel for me as the furthest South I have been so far is Lethem and I have had numerous invites to go South and finally I did.

Shulinab is another little village in the South Rupununi, we went to celebrate a 60th birthday of a guy called Uncle Boogie aka Alan. We got there in time to see the last of the games being played and then everyone set off to his house where drinking and dancing commenced, followed by numerous funny speeches. It was nice to see the whole village gathered as well as several volunteers - which told me his was quite a man to receive such an audience. I especially enjoy these kind of events because it is the time when nearly everyone I have met gathers in one place and catches up on what everyone has been up to, but it was also interesting to see somewhere new and see how village differ from each other.

This week will be a bit quieter than the last as the camping group will leave on Thursday but also my room mate is away for a week in Georgetown helping with the training for new Peace Corps volunteers. School is also winding down as next week is the last week of school before Easter break where they get two weeks off. In the Easter break Rodeo takes place which is a fairly big event in Guyana for which we will travel to Lethem to celebrate it, it is run over 4 days and I am told that in the past it has been a day event but this year it is to take place at night. I have heard many stories about it and am really looking forward to seeing and experiencing it for myself!

Mashramani

On Tuesday we celebrated Mashramani in the village, which is republic day for Guyana. It is classed as a public holiday so everyone has the day off work and school. The village had a parade in the morning where each class got dressed up and had a big cart with speakers following them around booming music out! They did a tour of the village and finished up on the sports court where it turned into a bit of a party with everyone dancing and enjoying themselves. Later the games began which included football, cricket and volleyball where Yupukari played against people from Katoka, I kept score and unfortunately Yupukari lost at all 3 which I am told is very rare. There were also stalls selling food and the local drink Carry. The drink then started to flow in the evening and people were in good spirits until early in the morning. (Photos coming soon)

Wednesday was fun day, where the school had the afternoon off and played games, similar games to sports day back in England, like the 3 legged race, sack race, egg and spoon race but instead they use a lime. We played until the rain came down and boy did it rain, after a while people got fed up sheltering from the rain and decided to just carry on through it which was a funny sight people falling over all over the place.

Today is the last day school day of celebrating Mash, a concert is being held this afternoon where each class has a little performance to show the village. I have been helping make nursery costumes this morning and looking forward to seeing them in action!

The weekend is due to be fairly quite a lot of people are out of the village so means I have time to do some much needed washing!! Then Monday is another public holiday called Phagwah which is a spring celebration, traditionally people wear old clothes and get wet and then colourful powder is thrown at you and that is your costume for the day!

Two weeks of madness!

Just when I thought life couldn't get any busier, the past two weeks have been crazy! It started late on a Friday night when a group of friends came in that we hadn't seen in a while so we had a little drink and stayed up in to the early hours. On Saturday we recieved an email to say a van had fallen off a near by bridge, so everyone piles in a minivan and the boys on their bikes we drive off to this bridge to see if we could help. The boys were like an army people moving around grabbing things we would need to help, we had ropes, food, drink, plates the whole lot! When we finally reach the bridge there is no van but clear evidence of where the van had fallen off. We decided to carry on to Karanambo and join some of the people we knew there, when we arrived we learnt that the van that had fallen off was actually someone we knew, luckily everyone was ok and no one got hurt. We stayed at Karanambu for the whole day and then eventually I came back to Yupukari on the back of Mike's motorbike - first time for me on a longish journey on the back of a bike. The following Tuesday I went to Lethem on the back of Chris's motorbike this time, it takes two hours which does not sound too long but when its blazing hot sunshine it feels like it takes forever! The journey back was even more interesting after we lost the motorbike keys but luckily the bike was still on and running so we could continue with the journey which was very dark with limited bike lighting, however I arrived back in Yupukari safe and sound.

I have also been to a place called Katoka which is a neighbouring village to Yupukari. To reach Katoka we went by bike but first had to cross the river by putting the bikes in a boat and paddling them across, for vehicles they do have a pontoon which can be used. The journey takes about 45 minutes bumping around on tiny little bike tracks in the middle of the savannah. On arriving to Katoka we were greeted by a friend of ours called Trevor who handed us a coconut to cool off. The ground is very sandy compared to the red gravel in Yupukari and there are lot more palm tress and open space, the place is also generally more peaceful and people live a slightly more basic lifestyle with out house toilets and kitchens. We spent most of the afternoon there, it was like a mini holiday break which was very much appreciated.

Last Thursday I joined a group of people on a 4 day river trip to a place called Mapari, or rather the creek we would be camping by is called Mapari. We set off in 2 boats and travelled down river for about 6 hours stopping for lunch and drinks on the way. When we get to Mapari the boys set about like an army setting up the camp, hammocks were being slung up everywhere with rain covers hoisted up above the sleeping area and kitchen area. In no time we had a fully functioning camp. My first night sleeping in a hammock was surprisingly comfortable and warm so I was very pleased that the next few nights of sleep would be enjoyable. The next day we went to visit the falls up the creek where we scouted out possible photographs for the photographer who was with us. The photographer was a guy called Pete Oxford who is putting a book together of Guyana and needed to collect specific shots. Half of the crew spent the evening liming around at camp whilst the other half went on a night trip to see what wildlife might be out and available to photograph. The next day Fernando, Chris and I went to visit Ashley's farm, where we saw Edo (unsure of spelling) growing and many other plants, when we got back to camp the monkeys were in full swing howling away so we decided to take a walk to see if we could see them. We saw a group of spider monkey babies but apart from that we could only hear them. The last full day we had again we split in to 2 groups, 1 group went down river to see what birds they could find and I went with Chris and Fernando fishing. We spent a few hours trying to catch fish but no such luck apart from 3 tiny fish which were only good for bait! I forgot to mention that it rained for nearly the whole time we were there so everything we had was damp and most our clothes were soaked, just as we were about to leave the sun came out and we had a good 2 hours of sun and then dark clouds for the rest of the journey, we kept warm by getting a little merry and being silly.

There is a small chance I may be off again this weekend this time to a place called Saddle Mountain where a friend has a big house up there where we can all stay. However I have to get to Lethem before I can join the trip and that is the trickiest part finding a ride for tomorrow!

The Caiman Project

Saturday night was my first experience of a village party, it was a young girls birthday which most of the village had gathered to celebrate. We headed up to the "bar" of Yupukari which is often referred to as Sankeys. I got to meet some more people from the village which was nice and everyone was in good spirits which meant they were less shy to approach me. I sampled some of the local drink called Cary which is one of the many products made from a vegetable called Cassava. As the night progressed and people became more high spirited the dancing began, the preferred music for parties in the village is Foho music which is a Brazilian style of music. There is also a specific way to dance to Foho which a few people tried to teach me and wasn't long before I was being pulled up to dance in the benab. The music and dancing continued on till the early hours of the morning!

Sunday was a relaxing day which I spent at the river watching the boys catch fish which we then roasted and ate by the side of the river. Sunday evening I was very lucky to be invited out with some of the guests to go and watch the guys go Caiman catching. We set out at dusk on a boat down the lake, the guests and me in 1 boat and the catchers in another. The first part of the trip was very quiet and peaceful whilst we searched for Caimen eyes bobbing above the surface, then all of a sudden a loud thrashing and splashing sound came from beside the boat and before I knew it a Caimen is being pulled up the front of the boat having its mouth taped shut where it is then dragged off to a small landing area in order for us to get a closer look. We climb out the boat and stand beside this amazing creature which lying unnervingly still, the guys measure several different aspects of the Caiman before weighing it and sexing it which some of the guest including myself also had a go, it was a very unusual experience and one I will never forget. It is a very impressive sight to watch these guys catch and handle these dangerous creatures.

Monday I had my first grade 9 English lesson to teach. After speaking with the head mistress and reviewing their exam results from last year it appeared they were falling behind on their writing skills especially figurative writing. The first lesson I prepared covered similes, where I had prepared a review sheet and several worksheets. I took the class for an hour and by then end felt confident they knew what a simile was and how and when to use them. Today I took them again but this time covering the topic of metaphors, although some of them seemed to understand what a metaphor was and could differentiate it from a simile some could not. After spending an hour with them and a lot of them still struggling we decided to stop and continue tomorrow where we will go over them again. As I write I am looking for other ways to show a metaphor and explain it and trying a different worksheet approach which I hope is a lot more successful tomorrow!

Dinner was an interesting occasion yesterday, we have an Australian guest with us and he wanted to catch an iguana and eat it, so the boys caught 1 for him which was then cooked up into an iguana curry. At first I was slightly put off by the idea of eating lizard however after being convinced to try I did and it was delicious!!

River Trip with Sarah and Oswin

Buddy
Laura

25th January

Yesterday I went to Karanambu which is about an hour by boat from Yupukari, I went with my room mate Sarah, Fernando the manager of Caimen house and a boy called Oswin-who sometimes helps out with the Otters over there. We spent the river trip spotting Caimen and an array of birds it was fun to have a trip out of the village and by boat this time instead of vehicle. When we first arrived at Karanambu it was very surreal to be back there, the last time I went I was with a tour group including my Dad and Grandparents. Everything still looked the same and I could picture which room everyone had had. After saying hello to everyone and introducing ourselves to guests there we settled down into a hammock with a nice cup of rum punch, we were also served lunch and for afters Sarah, Oswin and myself went to climb mango trees where we sat for some part of the afternoon. After a few more rum punches we went back to the river to leave, just before setting off we managed to see Buddy the resident otter who lives there and is looked after by Diane Mcturk, he was also a fond memory I have of my previous trip. On the way back we saw 3 different families of giant otter and plenty more Caimen!

Today has probably been the best day so far. It was the first of my adult computer lessons, which I have been working on putting together for the last two weeks with lesson plans and advertising all around the village, have been nervous all day that no one would turn up. The lesson started at 1 and to begin with only two teachers came who I have been teaching computers to every lunch time for the past week so I didn't get my hopes up that others would follow. However slowly but surely people began to arrive until we reached the point where every computer was full and some even had 2 sharing, we started them of with typing and getting to know the computer desktop and keyboard followed by a typing program called Mavis Beacon which teaches them to touch type and use the mouse pad. I have learnt 1 very important thing from my lesson is that you cannot say a specific time for something to begin or end, the lesson was planned for 1 till 3 yet people were still arriving at 2.50. Anyway I was just happen that so many people came and left on a positive note and said they were going to attend the next session.

After I attended a parent teacher meeting where the head mistress discussed her concerns with parents not encouraging their children enough to come to school and other such issues as uniform and bringing books. I was also introduced at the meeting as some parents I had not met yet and it was a good opportunity to explain what i'm doing here.

Tonight I am spending my first night in a hammock as the manager has left for the night and wants the Caimen House to be watched over so Sarah and I are going to sleep in the hammocks near by, am quite looking forward to it just not looking forward to the mosquitoes think I will be doubling up on bug spray!

16th January

So have had an interesting week, we had guests from a University in USA so had fun showing them around and then they came and helped in the school and library as 3 of them were education students. One of their professor donated on behalf of the department, friends and family 2 new digital cameras which I am very excited about as 1 thing I want to do is to take groups of children out and teach them how to use them and load them up onto computers.

Yesterday we had a big ceremony for the old headmaster, all week the school have been working on songs and poems and gifts for his retirement. I made the card which all the staff and some of the children signed and it was then presented to him at the ceremony. It was my first event witht he school and I enjoyed it very much, it has made me feel more a part of the community.

Today I went to my first village meeting where I was introduced to more people from the village and discussed with them what I was doing here, they seemed pleased to have me and were very welcoming. The meeting began with a prayer and then the pledge of Guyana-which I have learnt they take very seriously it is said at every event and every Monday and Friday at school. The meeting is held by the Toshau who is the village leader, Yupuakri's Toshau is the youngest in the country at 22 years of age. There were 3 main topics to the meeting, first issue was about applying to get a vehicle for the village to help people travel to get goods, to restock their shelves, to visit their children who are boarding at secondary school, to visit other villages... Second issue was concerning myself he explained a bit more about me and getting my paper work finalised, and thirdly they talked about getting another volunteer back here. A lady called Alice Layton who helped set up the library here is trying to come back. After these were discussed they moved on to other business concerning the village such as getting speed humps made so that the boys on motorbikes won't speed through the village. The matter of loud music was discussed with regards to 1 particular woman who played it loud late at night and Toshau had had many complaints, they also talked about cleaning up the village as rubbish is left on the floor a lot so they are trying to keep it cleaner and trying to encourage people in the village to keep it that way. It was nice to see people all having the chance to have a input into how the village is run and the chance to change the things they dont like, however I only understood half of the meeting as most of it was in Macushi which is the local language here. I am trying to pick up some of the words as it is also spoken sometimes in school and it would be good to know whats going on so I can follow.

I have just come in from a Wildlife Club meeting where I got to meet the member and hear about what they do there, later we are all going down to the river to play some games and hopefully see some birds which they can tell me what they are.

My House

Day 3

I am still getting use the fact my house has no power and barely any running water, I am learning to cook by torch light and sometimes having to wash in the river. Am making friends quickly and enjoying myself thoroughly!

Yesterday I sat in on ateachers meeting where they discussed what topics they will be covering this year so hopefully soon I will be able to work something out to do with the children that coincides with what they are learning at school, but hopefully in a new, fun and interesting way.

Today I helped coached a Vollyball lesson and then joined in myself and played against some boys from the village. I have just got back from the river where we had to wash as we had run out of water at home.

Tomorrow I am helping a new friend of mine, Monike, with her college assignment helping improve her english and grammar. In the afternoon she is taking me and some others on a picnic where we will go fishing and then cook what we catch bbq style!!

Living Quarters

Porch Kitchen

Yupukari Village

Day 1

After 3 planes and a 13 hour bus journey I am finally here!
Yesterday I moved into my new room in the volunteer house which I share with another volunteer called Sarah, who is a peace corps volunteer and has been here for just over a year now. With my mosi net up and a quick de-bugging of the wardrobe I was then given a quick tour of the village. First I saw the playing field then onto the school where I was introduced to the head mistress Maisy who took me into the school where I met some of the children mid lesson. Next I was taken to the library which is pretty impressive and consists of two floors, I learnt that an after school program has been put in place where the children can come and take out books or have books read to them or play educationalo games on the computers. Final stop took me to the Caiman House where I am told a lot of people like to hang out.

After some much needed sleep I sat in on a librarians meeting (my room mate Sarah is the head librarian) where they discussed whether goals were met last year and what this years goals would be, we also discussed projects and topics that maybe I could get involved with. It was decided that for the first few weeks I will shadow the librarians and see what topics come up and just generally get a feel of how things are run here. Then in a few weeks time we will have another meeting where we will discuss specific things I can do.

Today I sat in on two lessons in the library where a group of 5 year olds and a group of 6 year olds come and listen to a tape to help them learn maths, I got to help the children if they were having any problems. Later I will be helping the librarians set up the classroom upstairs for their after school program, which will consists of story reading and computer stations.

Hopefully later when my camera has charged I will be able to take a walk around the village and take some photos.