THIS WEEK, the Pepperpot Magazine decided to feature some students who are benefitting from one of the institutions in Mon Repos and how they are influenced by the people and the village in which they live temporarily.

One such student, Hadali Atkinson of Paloma, Santa Rosa Village, Kumaka, Moruca in Region One (Barima -Waini), has expressed her gratitude to the people of Mon Repos for welcoming her and the other students with warmth and pleasantness at the Guyana School of Agriculture and, by extension, their community.

Coming from a divorced home, the second-year student explained that she shared her time between her two parents. According to her, she spends some time with her father, who resides in Region One and then comes to Georgetown and spends time with her mother. As fate would have had it, sometime in 2019, while Hadalli was with her mother, she decided to surf the web and stumbled upon a site for GSA.

Hadalli stated at the time that she saw the Agro-processing course and thought it was interesting, but she knew nothing about it. “I had never decided to ambitiously get into agriculture after I finished high school, but it just took a turn for the worse. I said I would apply and try the course, even though I didn’t know what it was about,” she explained.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Hadalli said that she didn’t apply to GSA for her second year, but she was given a “grand opportunity” by Mr Raymond Latchman, who hosted a community meeting that she attended in Santa Rosa. “Mr Latchman explained that there was a scholarship that was available for one person from the community to pursue their studies at the University of Guyana (UG) or GSA in the agricultural field and along with that, she was given a financial grant from the Ministry of Agriculture,” the student said. “It is exciting, but I had a lot of challenges, but they did not stop me. I grooved in, and I wanted to know more about agro-processing. It made me want to know more about agriculture and how it starts, meaning from scratch.”

Hadalli went on to say that being in Region One never allowed her the opportunity to have a kitchen garden, nor was she exposed to livestock. She explained that Santa Rosa does more substantial farming—nothing on a large scale, but the residents are more into crops and not so much livestock. Poultry and meat are usually sourced from Region Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam) when it is required by the people of the community. “I have never seen liquid cow’s milk in my district, but only the milk in its powdered form,” she said.

Hadalli expressed how proud she feels that the people from Santa Rosa now call her and ask questions about agriculture and even livestock. According to Hadalli, she has been motivated and cannot wait to go back and help the people because of the knowledge and practical skills she acquired from the GSA. “These skills will help me help others, especially those in Region One,” said the enthusiastic young lady.

Hadalli wants her peers to know that they can accomplish anything to which they put their minds, and she wants the residents of Mon Repos to know that they have everything that is needed in their community. It is easily accessible compared to Santa Rosa, said Hadalli and she is thankful that people of Mon Repos were nice to her while she ran her errands through the village.