Week 6 and Time is Flying!

            We spoke too soon in our earlier blog posts; this week showed us what Guyana’s rainy season actually looked like. Pouring rain here is similar to what snowstorms look like in Ontario; the roads are backed up, people are late, and most things get delayed. We normally walk to classes but when the streets are flooding with rain we join the majority of the population in driving to school or work.

            As it is our second last week in the classrooms we have tried to focus our lessons on more serious topics such as substances, substance abuse, healthy relationships and abuse. By doing so we hope to allow the students a final opportunity to ask anonymous question box questions in the last week. We find this very important to do, especially with these topics.

Although we are still in most classrooms for another week, some of our classes have had to end this week because of upcoming exams. We found out from some of our students that they can have up to 14 exams, meaning they need additional class time for revisions. We have been very fortunate to be able to be in as many weekly classrooms as we have been considering the stressful end of year examination period in Guyana.

            This week we continued attending classes, going to Ruimveldt Children’s Aid Centre, and being featured on NTN’s Morning Show. On NTN this week we focused our segments on Puberty and Hygiene. In our Puberty lessons we normally focus on reiterating that there are changes physically and mentally in ALL people as they are developing from children to adults. Even though we acknowledge that most people know proper hygiene, we do like to address it again when discussing puberty because as our bodies are going through changes proper and consistent personal hygiene practices become even more important.

            This weekend we were able to travel to Essequibo again with the Guyana Foundation to be involved in another learning session with some of their skills training participants. We focused our sessions on an introduction to mental health, bullying, peer pressure, healthy relationships and abuse. Even though the participants had completed school, we emphasized that bullying and peer pressure could be experienced at all ages. In these sessions we really try to hear from the participants in order to create a mutual learning environment and learn more culturally relevant information.

We were fortunate enough to be hosted for a night in Essequibo by the Guyana Foundation and some of their generous friends in the community. We had the chance to visit Lake Capoey, a black water lake, the following day. We have been so fortunate to experience such genuine hospitality these last two weekends with the Guyana Foundation. We hope to be able to continue collaborating with this incredible organization in future years, as their focus on training in regions that have higher rates of Suicide is a major focus for QHO.

We are looking forward to seeing what our last week in Georgetown, Guyana has in store for us!

            

Bye for now,

Shannon, Haylee, Shannen, and Manny