Young teacher’s views on how better education could create a better community

It is said that the children are the future, and it takes a village to raise a child. These sentiments resonate with the people of Capoey, especially people like Melron Hendricks. The shy 30-year-old is one of the community’s teachers and is currently attached to the Cotton Field Secondary school on the coast of Essequibo. Although he teaches outside of his village, the love he has for his community and people is unparalleled, as he stated, “What I enjoy about Capoey is that it is a tourist destination and its natural beauty would have captured visitors from places other than lake Capoey.”

The people of Capoey, he says, are another aspect of his home that he loves. And also why he believes Capoey is the tourism hotspot that it is. He stated that, “The villagers are very friendly and they tend to be very invitational, meaning that persons that come to Lake Capoey to view the beauty would normally be invited by them. And they would carry them around and show then what Capoey has. That is what I enjoy about Capoey.”

His passionate pursuit for the development of his people is perhaps owed to the fact that Capoey is embedded in him just as much as he is embedded in it. He said his childhood growing up in the village was unique, with playing the lake and getting carried home on his father’s shoulders. “I really enjoyed playing with my fellow cousins. We made some memories. And to see Capoey from when I was a child to now, I would have seen mass development, and it has continued, and I know in the future Capoey is going to be one of the most developed communities in Guyana,” he said. Melron went to reminisce about his early days in the village. His birth was special, as he was among the very few births that happened at home during his time. “I was at home, so I am indeed a man of the soil because I am fully from lake Capoey because I was born at home. I know many persons may have been born at the Suddie hospital but I was different,” he said.

His decision to become a teacher was heavily influenced by his father, who was also a teacher, and other mentors in his life who came in the form of teachers and inspired him to guide the next generation. Melron also expressed the importance that good teachers had on him, saying, “Growing up as a child in Capoey was memorable I would say. Because I started nursery school here and from there I went to Capoey primary school. There the teachers at that time were not trained and they would have worked tremendously with us, sacrificing their time and so on so that we could be educated today.”

These teachers and their influence on him made him see the importance of the much-needed guidance for the youth of his village, saying, ” I saw that a lot of young people needed to be guided. In Capoey, there are persons there, but there needs to be more. So, being a teacher would have given me the opportunity to guide these young people from a foundation to carry them career-wise. That is why I wanted to be a teacher and I love my job.”

In the past, most of the community’s young people, especially the men took to doing more physical and labour centred jobs, such as logging and mining. This has led to a neglect of school by some villagers if the past and has a profound effect on today’s adults. “Yes, indeed there is a large rate of illiteracy especially with the adults because of not being educated at an earlier time. There were not facilities and they were no opportunities then. These persons would have worked their way through, however they had not the opportunity at that time to be involved in these learning processes. So that is why there is a high rate of illiteracy as it relates to adults,” Melron stated.

But the village is in the process of recovering and improving its literacy level. As Melron explained, “There are so many opportunities out there we can grasp. However, are still in the process of developing as it relates to education. And over the years I have noticed young people, they would have started taking education seriously, and now we have young professionals. And that is commendable. Recently there has been an increase of children passing the Nation Grade Six Assessment and that shows the development with the education sector with the past years.”
Education, Melron believes is one of the stepping stones on the path to Capoey’s bright future. “Education is the key to development. Once we are educated it opens our mind, it builds our cognitive abilities and helps us be more decisive. So, when we are educated it paves a way for us to come together once we would have learnt social skills. These factors would bring us together and with our high cognitive abilities we would be able to develop Capoey more,” Melron said.