–as North Georgetown Secondary hosts lively Culture Day

Story and photos by Tamica Garnett

IT WAS an explosion of culture, colours, food and creativity at the North Georgetown Secondary School culture day last week, where students and teachers learnt to appreciate all the different ethnic cultures that make Guyana the cultural medley that we are. Culture from all six of Guyana’s ethnic groups were well accounted for, and then some. Many of the children and teachers took the opportunity to not only celebrate their own culture, but

to show appreciation and togetherness by dabbling in cross-culture happenings.
Quite a few Indo-Guyanese chose to don dashikis and African print outfits, while several Afro-Guyanese enjoyed being decked out in saris, shalwars, and kurtas. There were also numerous Chinese kimonos being worn by pretty much every race present.
Classes were suspended for the day as the students went about interacting in each other’s culture.
The morning half of the day saw the students being given the chance to walk around various booths set up on the school’s front lawns, including the food stands which pretty much had it all.
Setting the mood was sweet pan music, and the thrum of the African drums.
In the afternoon, the students were treated to a show in song and dance that reflected several cultural aspects.

HISTORY IN BRIEF
Acting Headmistress, Michele Jordan sat down with The Buzz and gave us a brief history of the event.
This is the ninth year that annual event is being held; it is usually always celebrated on the day before Mashramani.

“It was the brainchild of Ms. Natasha Paul; she’s a member of staff, and a former student of the North Georgetown Secondary,” Ms Jordan said, adding:
“We became aware that many of our students don’t know about the culture of each ethnic group, so you find students would come and they would say, ‘Miss, what is ‘jalaybee’?’ So, this brings an awareness of and appreciation for each other’s cultures.”
Watching the children walking about, laughing, connecting and checking out the different booths, you could be sure that the initiative was achieving its aim.
To ensure everyone is involved, each grade level is tasked with preparing foods for a particular ethnic group.
The initiative also hits two birds with one stone, as it also dubs as a fundraising activity. The food brought by the students is sold, quite cheaply one may add, and the proceeds go to a project at the school. This year the school hopes to use the earnings to upgrade the compound.

“The proceeds of this year’s culture day will go towards building up the school’s compound. We need to have our inter-house sports, field events, held right here in compound, rather than having to leave to go to another ground. And over the past weeks we noticed that there would be puddles of water where the ground is uneven so we’re hoping to build up all of that,” Jordan.
Jordan got full support from her staff, including the Deputy, Dawn Monplaisir. Some of teachers seemed even more excited than the students to be a part of the day.