Finally completed the video on the water challenges in Georgetown Guyana encountered during my last summer's visit. My first movie created using Windows Movie Maker. 

I continue to talk about water conservation with my students. Judy Krebs from Clermont County Soil and Water was in doing a class presentation on water quality and macro invertebrates. We are planning a science night at the school and we will have water conservation as our focus. We are planning on painting a rain barrel titled "We are the change". 

Reflecting back on my Guyana experience, I remember the time put into writing that daunting, exhausting, synthesis paper required for every GFP (Global Field Program) trip. The topic, medicinal plant! ( I should have known better than to pick such a broad topic.)  Attempting to narrow my focus, I pointed my research to malaria and its treatment looking at medicinal plants and western medicinal practices.  As I searched through the peer reviewed literature, the flood gates opened and nearly swallowed me up. I knew going in, I would have my work cut out for me, but tackled the task anyway because of my love for medicine and plants. What should have been a five page paper turned into twenty, but little did I know that it would bring with it a wealth of knowledge including issues on watersheds, health care, culture, and education. In one way, I cursed the paper, but in another, an eye opener to the issues I would soon witness as I entered into Guyana.

Landing in Georgetown at 11 pm, I met up with seven other GFP students. This is where our adventure began, as we experienced taxi and hotel issues. Thank goodness for my classmates and their sense of humor and flexibility, this kept it a fun adventure with fond memories.

Getting up the next morning and traipsing around Georgetown, I became quickly aware of the water and pollution issues. Georgetown's location of 6 feet below sea level posed many challenges within itself. Walking along the streets, I noticed the liquid-filled channels located along the streets filled with bottles. What a great media for mosquitoes to breed.  I realized my total lack of knowledge of watersheds as I began to seriously think about waterways and how they operate. 
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As I continued my journey into the interior Northern Rupununi , we spent the next 10 days in Iwokrama and Surama. Finding a stark contrast from a polluted, large coastline city to that of  a pristine intact rain forest environment, I found my attention still directed in the area of watersheds and their health implications. Getting our drinking water from a rain barrel and brushing our teeth from the brownish tint of the tap (coming directly from the river) was eye opening and something I was not accustomed to doing.

As I returned home, simply seeing the toilet flush and the weekly garbage pickup became a welcomed and celebrated event. Something I had once taken for granted was not the experience of others. I began to ask a lot of questions about our watersheds and how they operate. From this my inquiry project was born for myself and my students.