Impressions of Baramita

The jungle canopy spread out before me like an emerald sea. Millions of acres of jungle broken only by an occasional river or small piece of jungle cleared for a garden. And then we were upon it: a small clearing cradling a muddy airstrip. Shops and homes lined each side intermingled with jungle grasses and wild guava trees.

I’d arrived in the interior town of Baramita which can only be reached by air or a seven day trek through the jungle. Although the Baramita is located on an airstrip, the majority of its people live in outlying villages within a 3 to 5 mile radius. Interestingly the villages have no nucleus and each house is located 10 to 15 minutes apart on a web of trails that make it impossible to accurately determine where one village starts and another ends.

I soon learned that homes were extremely basic. Although those closest to the airstrip were actual buildings built on stilts, those in the jungle were often nothing more than a tarp on a stick frame, with hammocks strung underneath. A small cooking fire would be near by with a pot or two resting beside it. Any other belongings were tied under the tarp and onto the wooden frame.

Carib, a local dialect that’s indigenous to Brazil, Venezuela, and Guyana, was spoken by more than 50% of the people. Thus, making contact with the outside world difficult at best. These Amerindians are a shy people, with National Geographic-ish looks, who rarely meet your gaze. Communication is limited not only by the language barrier, but by cultural norms which dictate a reserve with the outside world.

The heat is sticky and intense so children often wear nothing but underwear or a skirt while at home. Children are not children long in the interior, however. I learned that it was not uncommon to hand out condoms to 12 year olds, treat 13 year olds for STD’s, and deliver the babies of 14 year olds. In an area where babies raise babies, family is important. Teenage mothers often live with their own parents and receive assistance in raising their children. Life is hard and most age prematurely or die leaving the youngest of their children to be raised by others.

Life is hard, but thats life. So with a string of batteries they power their jungle radios and listen to some music while they beat their cassava roots into bread and wait for the jungle breeze.

Mashabo School

The room was alive with laughing voices, crinkling paper, and the sound of desks being scraped across the floor. Children squeezed two or three to a desk hunched over their books copying their lessons while others chased each other or sat chatting and eating bright orange ajuara fruits. The room was divided into sections by movable chalk boards and the voice of a teacher could be heard from the far end of the room. How anyone could accomplish something in a school that loud was an amazing feat.

Due to teacher shortages, Mashabo Primary School has only three teachers for seven classes. The teachers divide their time between the classes, with 20 minute sessions followed by hour long periods of independent copying of lessons. In total the children get less than 2 hours of teacher student interaction each day.

Walking through the third grade classroom the children shyly peaked out at me from behind their books. “Can I see what your doing?” I asked. Eagerly they brought me their notebooks where they’d scribbled out an assignment about air and sound for science class. “What did you write?” I asked. “We don’t know,” they replied, “we just copied the part we’re supposed to.

I noticed that many of the children had no spacing between the words they’d written and others had not only misspelled things, but had switched sentences midline. “Do you know what the assignment is about?” “No, we haven’t talked about it yet,” was their answer.

“Can you read,” I asked Deborah, the little girl whose paper I held. “No, not really.” “Can you?” I asked another child. Once again the answer was “No.” One by one I asked each child and from each the answer was the same “No, I don’t know how to read.”

Throughout the week I continued my investigation and to my dismay I learned that not only could none of the first, second, or third graders read, but neither could the rest of the children through grade six. With the exception of two children…TWO! It seemed unfathomable that nearly 90 children who had been attending school since they were 4 years old could still not read.

That week I spent two days teaching the 3rd graders. We talked about phonics, science, art, and math. We did experiments, skits, and colored (something they had rarely done as none of them owned crayons). They loved it all.

Nearly three weeks have passed since then and I’ve often thought about the children of Mashabo. And so, when spring break ends next Monday and the children return to school, they’ll be returning to find one more teacher. And hopefully, with a lot of patient effort on my part as well as a lot of prayer, all thirteen 3rd graders in Mashabo will be reading by June.

*Anyone wishing to contribute to purchasing phonics materials and other school supplies here in Guyana for the Mashabo children, e-mail: alexisacs@hotmail.com.

Disappointment!

Isn't it always funny that the thing you most desire is often the least likely to happen? This past Saturday I visited the Georgetown Zoo. Although it was small, it promised a wide sampling of Guyana's indigineous animals. I was excited to see some of the strange animals I had only heard of, but there was one animal in particular I was really looking forward to.

The blue and gold macaw was beautiful, but not what I was looking for.

The squirrel monkey that raced across the top of the cages celebrating his freedom and ability to patrol the zoo was cute, but not what I really wanted to see.


The curious looking agouti, with little pig hoofs, a rodents body, and a red hind end was interesting, but not what I was looking for.


Elizabeth even got to meet her cousin...

... the red faced spider monkey. But still I didn't see what I'd come to see.

In a murky pond covered in slime I found a grossly obese manatee floating with its infant.

Once again, fascinating, and fun to pet, but not what I REALLY wanted to see.

At last I arrived at his cage. I scanned the scrubby grasses and muddy pits, but the cage was empty! What?! Did he die? Did he get moved? Where was he? Then far back in the corner, inside a fenced in shack I spotted a black blob. Looking closer I saw that the blob had legs and was sleeping on short platform. What? I come all this way and the beast didn't even have the decency to make an appearance. With the zoom lense on my camera I was able to capture him in open mouthed slumber. And that, sadly, was the closest I got to seeing a tapir.

An Afternoon in the Clinic

She was only 20. With a baby girl cradled between her knees she told me that she was pregnant again. This fact alone was not enough to surprise me, but when she added that her current pregnancy was her 5th child I couldn’t decide whether to be shocked or sympathetic first. As I completed her chart with questions on current and past pregnancies and watched while the baby’s heart rate was checked I considered how to most appropriately address the subject of family planning.

I soon learned that she was not alone as one teenage mother after another poured through the clinic doors with their infants and toddlers. Many were unwed and carried their infants while pulling their toddlers along by the arm. While the rest of us cringed, first time mom’s discussed home remedies they’d heard such as washing out their infants eyes with urine. The lack of general knowledge was astounding.

In each corner of the clinic a health worker or student met with the mothers, checked their babies, and answered questions. Sleepy babies screamed in protest when they were undressed and set on the scale and then settled down to watch from the safety of their mothers arms while their weight was charted. Simple questions about diet, eating habits, and development brought all sorts of answers. Breast feeding is the accepted norm and the mothers thought nothing of baring their breasts regardless of the gender of the person assisting them.

While the women held their babies and waited to be seen the laughter and talking could be heard from outside. Along the boat dock were twelve to fifteen boats. In each sat a brother, a boyfriend, or a husband. They had done their part by paddling the mother and child to the clinic and now they settled down to wait. Child care and family planning are not tasks deemed necessary by many Guyanese men, but rather they are left up to the woman. And so the women came: for healthy baby checks, for WIC vouchers, for prenatal exams, and for birth control tablets, injections, and condoms. And as they came, we met with each one and did our best to educate them or say something that will make a difference in their life, or the life of the child they held.

Random Photos That Don't Have A Story...As of Yet

Rainbow over the Sisson's home after an afternoon of rain.

Resting after harvesting 500 lbs of pumpkins.

Even Kitten was hungry after all that hard work...he found the pumpkin juice to be quite to his liking.

A boa constrictor we found one morning in our bora plants. He was quite friendly after he finished breakfast and let us carry him around for a while.

Four hours spent with the planer on the floor of the new workshop...a break from the ordinary...but not entirely pleasent. I think my arms hurt for at least two days after I was done.

Phagwah: An Exercise in Unity

The air around me was a-swirl in a powdery mist of pink, green, and blue. I viewed the world through the fine dusting of powder across my glasses. Pink powder caked into my ears and I had green and blue streaks across my cheeks. Any movement caused the fine dust to rise into the air before once again lighting on my skin.

We had come as observers but the small group around us apparently hadn’t caught on to that concept. With bottles of colored powder and pop bottles filled with liquid color they surrounded us with smiles on their faces. “ Happy Phagwah!” they said as they smeared our cheeks with color and shook baby powder onto our heads before kissing each cheek.

Phagwah is a Hindu holiday that celebrates the coming of spring and the color that it brings. In addition it is a holiday that promotes a putting aside of differences and a celebration of friendships and diversity. The ceremony began by a group of singers sitting on the floor leading a “Happy Phagwah” song. East Indians of all ages that had gathered for the celebration worked their way around the sitting group of song leaders sprinkling baby powder and colored powder on their heads. Once the song was over the people converged on each other with colors of all types – pinks, purples, blues, greens, and shimmery glitter filled shades. Little boys with water guns filled with liquid color laughed and chased each other and covertly took turns trying to spray the “white girls” without beings seen.

After the celebration towels were produced and faces were clean and then it was off to the next house where people crowded onto the veranda and more Phagwah songs were sung. Little boys sat still while clutching their water guns and waiting for the moment when it would be time to color each other again. Snacks were served, the group colored each other, and then it was off to the next house for more of the same – the Hindu version of a block party.

Two hours later we left, color soaked and laughing. We had come as observers but they had welcomed us as family. We lived different lives, were of a different race, and were of two vastly different religions, but we had celebrated together none-the-less.

New Horizons

My patient sat still before me as I used the needle driver to wiggle my curved suture needle through his flesh to close the cut I’d made just moments before with a dull kitchen knife. Now you before you wonder just what kind of bizarre torture ritual I was completing let me assure you that my patient was in no pain - for he was only an orange.

One of the benefits of living on the campus where my sister teaches is the fact that I am welcome to sit in on any class that I’d like. So when a missionary doctor from Georgetown arrived to teach a class on suturing I decided to broaden my horizons.

Sitting in class with the sticky orange in one hand and the needle drivers in the other I carefully sutured in and out of the orange flesh. After learning the horizontal and vertical mattresses, the simple interrupted suture, the figure eight, and the sub-cuticular suture which completed in the flesh below the skin, I decided that the social work profession should defiantly include suturing. But since that’s highly unlikely that any social work giants will ever concur with that thought I guess I will have to satisfy myself with suturing fruit.