QHO Guyana: Running through G-town with my QHOs

Goooood Afternooon!!

Coming to you live from Georgetown, it’s QHO! This week went pretty much according to our routine, with a few exciting and eye opening things thrown into the mix. At the beginning of the week we were finishing up teaching lessons on healthy relationships, peer pressure and abuse at Chase Academy, AEA, Reyaz Business Institute and the Red Cross, with our lessons later in the week focusing on depression, suicide and coping at the Sophia Training Centre, AEA and Chase Academy.

Our Thursday morning lessons on The National Television Network are generating recognition farther and wider then we realized. The Berbice team was recognized by the QHO logo on their t-shirts the other day by their cab driver, who had seen our most recent lesson on “How to talk to your kids about Peer Pressure and Substance Abuse.” Reyaz connected us with his colleague who runs the radio at the National Television Network in Guyana. We are extremely excited to be featured on his show
“Reality Check” for our final two weeks here. We will be holding live discussion based questions as well as taking in calls from listeners and answering peoples questions. Make sure to tune in on Tuesday at 8pm Eastern Time, we are really excited to have made this new connection, which will only further our reach in Guyana

***see link to tune in live: http://tunein.com/radio/NTN-RADIO-891-FM-s214151/

It has been a special week with the Ruimveldt Children’s Aid Centre. On Wednesday, the boys began the process of painting the playground in their yard which added some colour and brightness to their equipment. There will be more painting to be continued this week and we are hoping to add a mural to the side of the building as well in the next couple of weeks. We will be sure to keep updates coming! After our regular Friday evening, playing with the children and feeding them dinner, we went for a walk through the community behind the center where majority of the kids live. This was an experience that is hard to put into words, but exposed us to a side of humanity that is both eye-opening and shocking, demonstrating the resilience that these incredible kids have.

It was great having the Berbice team in Georgetown for the weekend again- we had a quiet Friday evening as we all had such busy weeks, so it was great being able to catch up with each other. On Saturday, we felt super privileged that that Reyaz had invited us all to the Anna Catherina Islamic Complex for a dinner and awards ceremony. The new government was honouring the complex for their achievements in the community- and Guyana at large- with the Golden Arrow Award, the highest National Award of its kind. Due to the nature of the event, both the Honourable Prime Minister Mr. Moses Nagomootoo and His Excellency President David Granger were present, and we were fortunate enough to exchange greetings with both of them. Don’t worry, we will follow up with pictures to prove it!!

Just this afternoon we were shown great hospitality by our good friend from the market, Sunil! Sunil is our go to guy 4 times a week, when we stock up on all of our fresh fruits and vegetables. We have just returned from spending the better part of our day with him and his lovely family, who cooked for us a wide variety of the most mouth-watering dishes! Curried channa (chickpeas), stewed spicy pumpkin, stir fired garlic chokka (okra), dhal and rice, baggony (eggplant and onion fritters), roti straight off the griddle, and homemade passion fruit juice… Are you hungry yet?! They are an incredibly generous family who have taught us a lot about Guyana, both in the market and in their home, and have truly made us feel like family.

Hard to believe we have only two more weeks ahead of us in this wonderful country, hope June has been good to everyone so far!