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                                                                                                         by Kristen Hare

Students at Johanna Cecilia High School, photo by Kristen Hare

    When the fat packet holding my invitation for the Peace Corps came, I learned I’d be going to Guyana, which I had to look up, and that I’d be a community education promoter.

    OK, that sounds vague, I thought. I can do that. 

    Really, I was there to become a teacher. And in Guyana, when I learned that, I was terrified. Most of the volunteers in my group were. We had college degrees. Some were well-traveled. But we weren’t teachers. We had training, actually good training, and a bit of practice working with classes near the capitol. We had a volunteer from an earlier group who was a real-deal teacher. She helped a lot. 

    Still, when I arrived for my first day at Johanna Cecilia Community High School, I felt clueless and unprepared. Embarrassingly unprepared. My Peace Corps-provided lesson materials were geared toward children in Africa. We were in South America. The cultures and issues were totally different. A few of the young girls in one class quietly and kindly made sure I knew that I wasn't wearing a slip, and everyone could see the outline of my underwear, and this was a really big deal. I spelled words incorrectly on the board, using my American English instead of the British spelling Guyanese use. Specifically and in general, I was just a spectacle.

    Each evening in my tiny two-room top house, where I had a benevolent breeze and a narrow view of the Essequibo River, I worked on the next day’s lesson. I planned and schemed. And, just in case my cluelessness won anyway, I brought along crayons, paper and Harry Potter as my emergency fallback plan each day.

    Shortly after becoming the white miss at JC School, I sat down and wrote this small note to myself during a brief and quiet break one day. I found it recently and, since everyone's heading back to school, it seemed like a good time to share:

    It takes courage to stand up in front of 200 small faces each day and:

1. Get their attention.
2. Say something worthy of that attention once I get it.
3. Not look too long on the beautiful or smart among them. I was neither beautiful nor smart at 12.
4. Remember what it was to be that neither-beautiful-nor-smart girl, instead ugly, round, awkward, but still interesting.
5. Remember what it was like, then, in my smallness, to need my teacher’s attention, and to find a way to give it now, from my bigness, to everyone.
6. To remember names like Hourilall and Dravina. Wait, Druvina?
7. To walk the wide, open halls and not get lost in the palms waving from the green rice fields outside.
8. To walk those same halls and not get lost in the brown-eyed stares and quiet whispers that follow my every step. 

    This is going to be amazing, I thought, sitting at my small desk, feeling the breeze creep through the barred windows, sipping hot water. 

    I’d sweated through my pants already.

    I can do this, I told myself.

    Thirty minutes later, I put my hands to my face, pressing back my fear.

    I’m not a Guyanese teacher. I’m an American reporter. I’m someone who does not like to sweat. I’m someone who might swap my grandma’s ring for a real iced coffee. But I’m still here, at this small desk, sweating through my pants.

    Three months down. Two years to go.