A slow success: schooling in Wakenaam

The only secondary school in the island of Wakenaam is buzzing with activity. It is 8:00am in the morning, and students are furiously cycling in. The headmaster arrives in a car, with bundles of test papers. A bell rings, and classes convene. The noise subsides.

Jaidat Persaud, the headmaster of the school, located in Sans Souci, is pleased with the way things have turned out. Established in 1970, the Essequibo Islands Secondary School now churns out up to 70 graduates a year. Apart from Wakenaam, the school also serves students from the 'feeder' islands close by. Persaud feels that as a result, the school's resources are stretched and he is able to take in far too few students, indicated by the fact that the whole island of Wakenaam has as many as six primary schools.

Yet, he is proud of its recent successes, like, for instance, being adjudged the best school in Region 3 (West Demerara/ Essequibo) for an average of 85% marks in the CXC examinations, in 2001. The school regularly participates in sports tournaments, travelling into Georgetown and beyond to compete in such sports as soccer, tennis and cricket. Education and career patterns, he says, are most often shaped by the parents of his students, who are usually coconut or rice farmers. He notes that there is a serious desire in people to better themselves, but understands that some students - who do not find academics easy - would want to opt out of school (at some stage) due to the difficulty of the situation (reaching the school, staying there, affording the clothes and time).

Persaud says that out of 70 students who leave each year, only 20 will move on to a graduate degree at the University of Guyana. The remainder will opt for non-university training, at technical institutes and colleges, or directly enter the job market. Like other small places, Wakenaam too sees its fair share of migration. Most people leave for Georgetown, and this is understandable, Persaud says, given the opportunities available there, against the limited economic output of an island like Wakenaam.

The success of this secondary school is matched off against the crumbling, dilapidated structure of the primary school at Maria's Pleasure. Parents of students complain that when it rains, the school gets flooded. "There is not a single space inside the building," says a member of the community, "which remains dry." Students run around the grounds, then settle down for classes, which are all convened in one large building that has no partitions between classes. "The real problem," says a parent, "is that the Parent-Teacher Association needs to be revived. The school has to fight for its rights. We have to constantly remind people that we need help. We have no representation."

Living off the land, barely

Camille, a resident of Noitgedacht, and a single mother, runs a small provisions farm on her lot of land. Primarily, she grows fruit: plantains, bananas and cashewnuts. There are about 150 families, she says, between the two villages (Arthurville and Noitgedacht), separated by a small trench. She talks of the market, which is tough. Since she (like many farmers around) prefer to sell wholesale in places like Parika, rather than directly to consumers at home on the island, that means paying for transport to get to the coast.

Camille's plot of land measures about 600 x 36 feet. On it, she grows provision crops, but worries that the way prices are going, it may not any more be profitable to live by farming alone. She is used to the system of half-day power (in this case, from 4:00 pm to 8:00 am), and adjusts her personal and professional activities around it. She distinctly remembers her village getting electricity in 1979, and doesn't particularly suffer from the lack of running water (when there is no electricity) as she has built herself a pond, plus a trestle, on which she keeps large amounts of water stored.

Camille talks of how she has been "blessed by good health." Neither she, nor her children, have ever been to hospital with a serious problem. The doctor from the one hospital on the island (in the central, populated area around Sans Souci) comes around there at least once a month. Plus, there is a small Outdoor Clinic in Noitgedacht, which serves basic medical needs. All the treatment, including the drugs, is free of cost.

'Oscar' Indar Binda is a retired farmer, who started life as a labourer on other people's farms. Binda used to climb coconut trees to pick the fruit. He has reared eight children here, five sons and three daughters. His family returns every now and then to see him, he says, as he relaxes on the front steps of his wooden home. Yuvraj Binda, his youngest son, smilingly talks of his life on Wakenaam Island. He is a carpenter, and helps contractors build homes. Of late, he isn't getting much work, due to both the economy, and the rainy weather.

The Binda family thus resorts to farming as a subsistence staple. Yet, the falling prices of fruits and vegetables have meant less money coming in from that effort. Yuvraj would like to go to Georgetown, but cannot think of how he will manage there, without the money to set him up in a stable profession, and without family contacts to support him. He can see the limited work opportunities available to him in Wakenaam, but yet, there is a fondness and love for this island that he grew up in.

"Most young people just get out of here," he says. The lack of telephones is a major drawback, especially for a freelancer like him. No one can contact him, and he has to trudge all the way to Belle Plaine (a few miles away) to make calls. It is also fairly expensive to make calls out of Wakenaam, there being only very few telephones there at all. He wishes instead, that there could exist something like a community telephone, one for every few homes, which would save him this travel, expense and discomfort.

Bill is a processor of coconut oil, in the village of Maria's Pleasure. He employs three women in his business, to cut down the coconuts, and extract their flesh. The work of producing (crude) coconut oil is intricate and hard: first, the coconut is peeled. Then, the flesh is crushed. This is left to sit in barrels overnight, after which it is boiled, to separate the oil from the husk. Bill talks of the days when he could make good money on coconuts. Now, he says, he makes as little as $500 profit on every 1000 coconuts cut. Each day, he and his team are only capable of processing about 2000 coconuts.

Bill blames the falling prices in coconut oil on unregulated imports, which did not seek to protect a domestic industry. There are other, simpler reasons, why occupations in farming - like growing rice - are not working. Either there are no kokers for rice fields, or, as in the case of the rice plantations around Maria's Pleasure, one koker, wrongly built, appropriates water away from where it should be sent, thus turning what were once rice fields, into barren grazing grounds for cattle.