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