Last night we heard a strange noise outside our house, a person calling for us. It's only strange because we are viewed as the grumpy old couple who goes to bed at 7pm, and most people don't come to visit us in the evenings. It turned about to be Melissa, bearing a message from one of the other Adventist schools called Parima. They were looking for someone to teach 7'th graders for about a month until a teacher from the US could get down. Parima is a 2 hour plane ride away, located in the western mountains near Kamarang (click on map to see enlarged image).
It is a very beautiful area with places to hike, waterfalls and who knows what all else. Much different from our flat land existence at Bethany. So we said sure, why not?
Today about 10am James Ash, principal of Parima, also a pilot landed at our airstrip and came to give us some information. It turns out that the Parima area has only one public junior high/ high school, located about 4 hours from the village. All the young people wanting any kind of education have to attend it. Unfortunately, being a public boarding school in a 3'rd world country, it is absolutely ruining the children. The Parima school then has to try to undo 5 years worth of corruption when the kids attend the college there. This year they have started a pilot program to take just the 7th and 8th graders and educate them on the college campus. Support was overwhelming from the village, and many parents begged them to take their kids who were in the upper classes. The problem is that there aren't teachers, so just one grade can be done this year. Next year hopefully more teachers can be found to open it up as a full scale secondary school.
Where we come in is filling in teaching 5 youngsters Math, Science, and English, until a qualified teacher comes in 3-4 weeks. The old teacher just went to Venezuela. In conclusion, you're not going to hear anything from us for about a month, but at the end we should have some really cool pictures and stories saved up.
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