Bicycle

So I finally broke down and bought a bicycle. This metallic beauty (named Oscar because that's the brand, I'm so original) only cost me $13,500 (about $75 US). I don't live far from town proper, maybe a half mile, but the bike makes it much easier to get there and back, and I've been using it a lot. Its also much easier to carry stuff to and from the market, etc, so I've been really happy with it in general. However, because its basically the world's cheapest bicycle, there have been some issues. I was riding back into the rice fields just to see where the road went and the seat came loose. For some reason there is an adjustment at the top of the seat post if you want to angle the seat up or down or something, and the nuts allowing this adjustment had gotten loose. So I had to ride for about 30 mins alternating between a severely angled seat and an awkward squat. Also, for some reason all the bicycles here have the breaks switched around backwards from what I'm used to. So the front break is on the right hand side of the handlebars, and the back break is the left hand. So I almost killed myself a few times by using the wrong break until I figured it out and got them switched around. The bike is a little small, so its a little awkward to ride. And every time I need to make an adjustment, I have to go to the market (only open until about 4 and school gets out at 3) and hope the guy is there. Sometimes its just his wife or female workers or something and while they are pretty handy, they can't do everything. So then other times I have to go to the guys house where he keeps all his tools and such. He's been really friendly and helpful though, and it turns out that I teach one of his daughters. Its a small town.

So I love riding the bike, probably moreso because of its “character,” but I've also managed to open pandora's box at the school. One day I was riding back from town, and one of the dorms kids asked if he could borrow the bike. I said sure, and he rode it for a while and brought it back. Now not a day passes where at least 2-3 kids ask if they can ride the bike. Other dorms kids have bikes. There are plenty of bikes around. For some reason they all want my bike though. Its only the younger kids and some of them didn't know how to ride and now are looking pretty good on the bike. The constant stream of kids knocking at my door asking to use the bike gets a little annoying, but I figure there's not really any harm in letting them ride around the school compound in their free time.

Mashramani (Part 1)

Mashramani (shortened to Mash and also called Republic Day) is Guyana's independence day celebration. Its held on the 23^rd of February every year. As the day hasn't actually come yet, I don't fully know what all will be going on that day. However, there are a variety of school-related Mash events, that culminate with a national competition in Georgetown just before the actual holiday. So a few weeks ago, there were 3 days of events in Anna Regina, similar to inter-school sports. Events were held at the community cricket ground, and students could attend if they wanted. Naturally teachers were needed to escort those students who wanted to attend, and I was asked to go for all 3 days. With half the school gone, there wasn't much teaching to be done, so I was happy to check everything out. A summary of the events follows.

Dramatic Poetry

Before I start talking about dramatic poetry, a word about the number of schools present. All the schools in the central Essequibo Coast were eligible to participate. I think this was about 5 secondary schools total, and about 8000 nursery (kindergarten) and primary (grades 1-6) primary schools. So each event was primarily made up of children ranging in ages from very young to young. Most of these children performed their dramatic poetry readings by screaming into the microphone as loud as humanly possible. The theme of Mash this year is “celebrating our culture, preserving our pride,” which seems kind of weird, but whatever. The upshot was that most of the poems (yelled at ear splitting volume) were very patriotic and full of Creolese slang. So the readings were very hard to understand as well as very loud. I had a headache after dramatic poetry. The best entrant was a little kid in a suit who proposed to a person-sized map of Guyana dressed in a wedding gown and veil.

Calypso

The calypso competitions consisted of both groups and individuals singing a variety of Caribbean and Guyanese songs. I think there's a real niche market here for some vocal trainers. Some of the children have beautiful voices, but I don't think anyone has really been working on the concept of harmonizing. As a terrible singer, I know the best way to hide is to just sing simple stuff off on your own, staying out of the way. All the group singers sang exactly the same parts, which is tough enough if you're an excellent singer. The dramatic poetry headache only got worse after calpyso. That was the end of day 1.

Masquerade

So around Christmastime in Guyana (at least on the Coast), roving bands of street performers wander around with a few drums, maybe a recorder and triangle, and play music for tips. They also will do some rhyming to impress their patrons. Its sort of like Caribbean caroling. For some reason, this tradition is also part of inter-schools Mash competitions, with both individual and group performers. The individuals do all sorts of dance moves to the beat and have to be adept at picking up money that's thrown to them. The groups have some certain archetypes of costumed dancers: a boy dressed up as granny with lots of junk in her trunk, a doctor, the bad cow (someone with a big cow costume who just jumps around), etc. They all just sort of bounce around on stage for a while to the drum/recorder/triangle noise. I'm not sure how anyone could judge it, but they did. One school had the granny give birth on stage, which was entertaining.

Dance

Choreographed dance routines. The individual performers from ARMS both did Indian dances and were excellent. The girl in the older age group was unfortunately disqualified when her song ran on too long and she was impolite to the judges. I had heard that she'd had quite a streak of national Mash performances going, so everyone was pretty upset. I'm not sure if any appeals were heard on the matter. The group dances were pretty entertaining, though we heard a few popular songs over and over. Both groups from ARMS also did very very well. They had some excellent costumes and choreography. The older girls also had some flags, it was a little bit like a color-guard routine. Both groups of girls took first place in their age categories. Day 2 was a lot more fun than day 1.

Costume

The final day commenced with a costume competition. In reality it was more like a float or display type thing. A student would get up on stage in costume, usually pulling some sort of decorated cart or something. Lots of little kids barely dragging around various decorated carts. ARMS didn't compete in the costume competition. Another school's girl had on this massive dress type thing with an enormous flared collar. She too could barely walk.

Physical Display
The week's events concluded with the physical display. The younger kids did all sorts of exercises and balancing stunts, while the secondary schools basically did competitive cheerleading things, without any yelling or awkward forced smiles. Some of the younger kids at the school got put up really high. Another school made a human pyramid 4 persons high, all standing, which was pretty impressive. They won.

On the whole it was a pretty fun day. I think the national competition is coming up next week and I don't think I'll get to attend. I am planning on going to Georgetown for Mashramani proper. Its supposed to be one of the biggest parties/spectacles of the year, so I'll report back afterward.

Volleyball

Thanks to a generous donation from the Saint Mary's College of Maryland women's volleyball team, Anna Regina Multilateral is now the proud owner of about 12 used volleyballs. The school has a net that's currently set up outside, but I'm told can be moved inside. I've just started playing with some of the kids after school and during their free periods. This gives me a great opportunity to break down some barriers with the kids and seem like more than just some foreign teacher who talks about boring science stuff all day. 

I found out that I'm free when my grade 11 science stream kids have a guidance period. The other WordTeach volunteer, Keith, is supposed to teach them during guidance. Despite the fact that 11 science is filled with some of the best kids in the school, they aren't terribly self-motivated and sometimes I really feel like I'm struggling to get through to them. So Keith quickly ran into trouble with the unstructured guidance class, and just decided the best thing was to just give them a free period every week. So I didn't find out until recently, but this week I took them outside to play volleyball during the free period. Some of them went elsewhere to play cricket, but most of them stuck around and were interested to learn. They said it was the best guidance period they'd ever had. Hopefully it'll pay some dividends in the classroom as well.

Some of the older kids in the school have clearly played volleyball before, which is both good and bad. They generally know the rules, and have some technique. There's almost no attempt to hit the ball more than once on a side though, and no setting of the ball. Bumping is an unstructured mess. I'm hoping that with time I can gradually get them to start working together and playing real volleyball. Its also a fine line to walk because this is rare recreational time for the students, so its important to me that they have a good time and don't feel like they're at practice. Anyway, I have some tall kids and some high flyers that I think will be really excited to learn to spike properly and really start playing. Its a gradual process, but I'm really enjoying it.

In addition to the older kids that I've played with afterschool and a little during school, I've been given a grade 8 gym class. We meet once a week for 30 minutes. One of the gym teachers has a permanent schedule conflict on Mondays, so they had to divvy up his classes and somehow I got this one. There aren't any grades or curriculum, they are just supposed to play team sports. So we're going to play volleyball until they get tired of it or I get tired of trying to teach them. So far I've only had 2 classes this term, but the first class we learned about the rules of the game, how to keep score, proper technique etc. The second class we actually broke out the balls and worked individually on bumping and setting and then on how to serve and rotate. In the future I want to do some simple drills and then start playing games, of course. The kids seem really enthusiastic about it, which is nice.