Miss Meena's First Degree...er, Term Torture

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  Grove, Guyana
Thursday, December 20, 2007

October began in what a WorldTeach  "Culture Curve" handout terms as the first level "Initial Euphoria: You are so excited that if anything, you have expectations and attitudes that are too positive for the country." So working with that definition, let's say that I went in with the goal of getting the kids and library to a point that we can name, oh, Venezuela. Well I might as well have been aiming for Mt. Everest. Though the challenges had begun pretty early on, I managed to keep my optimism, but by the first week of October when teachers weren't in class because they were "running their students" or interrupting my class for fundraising, or dragging me off to fundraising meetings, or the kids were just running wild in anticipation of "Sports", I completely succumbed to the second level of the culture curve: "Irritation and Hostility: Your focus moves from similarities to differences. These differences, which seem to be everywhere, are troubling. You blow up at seemingly insignificant things. You turn a lot of events into major catastrophes. This is known as CULTURE SHOCK!"
 
So there you have it folks. I, even though I was born and spent my childhood in Guyana, was (and still am) suffering from culture shock after being away for 10 years. And to be honest, it wasn't so much a shock as about an earthquake worth about a 7 on the ricktor scale (I was in the internet when a 7 earthquake did indeed hit Martinique and we felt the tremors all the way here). 
 
The rest of the year continued to chip away at my spirit until one day I came home with the express intention of simply packing my bags and returning to New York. There were MANY instances that led up to that moment, some of which I will not mention because it will have my family on the first plane down here with the sole agenda of what Guyanese call "murderation and cussing". It will also have every paranoid member of my family calling me to pack my bags at get on the plane anyway. There were two incidences in particular that were completely disheartening to me (and that I can safely write about).
 
After the teachers were leaving their classes unattended, some not even bothering to write any notes on the board, but were having their students write their own notes on the board, and classes were simply running wild, I told the Deputy Headmistress that I would most probably not return to that school the following term. When the Headmistress returned, she requested a meeting where my partner Pat and I were asked why we were leaving. Well, I didn't hold back. Long story short, the Headmistress spoke to the teachers in the department, who responded by "going on" about us and how bad American schools were while we were standing right there. So to take count of the obstacles in the school in addition to the lack of resources: the students AND teachers.
 
Well. Math seems to hate me. Though that might be because I hate Math. Either way, the numbers were about to increase.
 
One week before the last week of school (I know, but that's the best way I could describe it), Grove Primary School was celebrating its 50th Anniversary with a bunch of events. So instead of doing like the rest of the teachers and simply sitting there, I decided to go work AGAIN on the library that I had been single-handedly trying to throttle into shape. This was on Thursday. As part of the Anniversary celebration, old teachers and students were invited to the school so the administration wanted to the library in order so as to create the illusion that the school had a library that its students had been utilizing all along. The fact that no one lifted a finger to do anything for the sake of the students who desperately need a library but instead were worried about what people would think is another story altogether. So anyway, I'm slaving away, moving tons of books to fit them into a usable form. The day before one senior teacher had "fixed" the library by sticking her entire class in the library and telling them to simply push books on the shelf so that it would appear that there are books on the shelf. In no particular order. I found How to Quit Smoking next to an American Mathematics textbook and between a children's illustrated storybook and a Guyanese Civil Rights book about President Cheddi Jagan.
 
And I'm still getting to the bad part. For me and Pat at least.
 
The library was (and still is) a fire trap with empty, broken boxes all over the place. So while I was sorting and packing books, Pat had a box cutter and was cutting up the broken boxes so they can be disposed of. In marches the Acting Headmistress. She demands to know what we're doing. Well, we respond, we're packing the library. Oh, she says, but the teachers already packed the library. Well, everyone knows me. I looked around at the books pushed haphazardly on the shelf and still stacked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa on an overflowing table, and garbage in all the corners and say to her, "They did?????"
 
But, ladies and gentlemen, the worse is still to come.
 
She then looks at Pat cutting up all the broken boxes and says, "Miss Pat, what are you doing?" Well, I'm cutting up the boxes because they're a fire hazard, Pat responds. Oh, but the teachers wanted those boxes, the Acting Headmistress says. But they're garbage, Pat says. "But how do you know what is garbage?!" she asks a 63 year old North American woman with as much condescending authority as she can muster. And liking the feeling of power she gets from embarrassing an old white woman, she again demands about four times, "How do you know what garbage is?!?!"
 
THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is when I decided that I had had enough of a country that did not wish to be helped.
 
And even though the Deputy Headmistress was an old teacher of mine and had invited me to sit with the "old students", I absolutely refused to attend a school that by that time I wanted no association with. This meant that I had to take the next day off of my own time, but whatever.
 
And And And, in addition to the Headmistress insulting us at lunchtime on Thursday when we then went home because there was no purpose in being there, I stayed home the Friday of the Ceremony, but the Headmistress then called Pat into her office and reprimanded her in not very nice words for leaving for the previous afternoon.
 
I hate to say it, and I hope I change my mind before I leave in July, but the more time I spend in Guyana, the more I come to hate this country and the system that runs it. If Guyana's educational system dies, it will be because it is being asphyxiated by the bureaucracy that it so loves and that rigidity prevents most of the children in the system from answering a simple question that requires their opinion and not a regurgitation of information. The question that I can NEVER get my students to answer satisfactorily is "What did you like about the story?" or "What didn't you like about the story?" It requires their opinion. All I get are direct quotes from the story because that is all the students are taught to do, spit back information verbatim without thinking for themselves.
 
At the end of the semester, with 50% being passing, out of my 44 students, 4, quatro, F-O-U-R of them passed. The highest percent was 67%.
 
And while we're on the topic of math, let's make a tally of all the obstacles at the school in addition to the lack of resources: the students, the teachers, AND the admin staff.
 
Just after school closed, WorldTeach volunteers had a meeting with ministry officials, and I did not hesitate to tell them about students breaking furniture everyday to hit each other with, how two boys hung a third out of the window, and when they finally pulled him back in, he was so terrified his eyes were red, trying to catch his breath while the teacher yelled at him and not the two boys who actually hung him out of the window, saying that he should have called out, but he was enjoying it. Ok, one, HE was out of the window. Why chastise him? Two, you can tell that he's petrified and shaking, why are you telling him that he enjoyed it? And most importantly, he's being hung out of a window and his wind pipe is shut off, how the hell can he yell, and how the hell can you hear? AND, with everyone else yelling around you, how can you differentiate his "I'm being hung out of the window" shout?
 
The first term did not end on a happy note for me. I was reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera and came across a few passages that aptly describe how I feel right now about being back in Guyana. I've selected a few pieces for your reading pleasure:
                 In Paris...he had told himself with his hand on his heart that he was not prepared to exchange all that for a single instant of his Caribbean in April. He was still too young to know that the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past....Everything seemed smaller to him than when he left, poorer and sadder, and there were so many rats in the rubbish heaps of the streets that the carriage horses stumbled in fright. On the long trip from the port to his house...he found nothing that seemed worthy of nostalgia (P 106-7).
 
Do I sound like a bitter old woman? Yes I do.
 
But you know what, the country really has improved a lot (rats not withstanding, they're the same), and I'm impressed by the four lane highways, credit and debit cards, stop lights, fancy stores. I am. But it's the people who I want to help and they are the ones who rebuff all (or most) attempts.
 
So after all of that, you notice me still here, right? Well, the kids need me. And besides, I'm too stubborn to simply give up and go home. I get the feeling that if I ever did that, I would regret it for the rest of my life. So they're gonna have a library whether they want one or not. For the kids' sakes.
 
All the same, I think I was as happy as the kids when the term ended. I did go to Suriname for a week and that was nice. Read on to the next entry for details on that. As always my loyal fans, please email me, leave comments, let me know that you're still thinking about me. I hope that I didn't depress you too much. But the Suriname entry is much better. Promise.
 
 
Sal
 

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