What It’s Really Like To Be A Health Volunteer In Guyana

In this interview, we hear from Michelle Eng. Michelle is a Peace Corps volunteer working as a Health volunteer in Guyana, and serving with her partner, Jaret Williams, an Education volunteer. What Michelle shares gives us a better understanding of the work volunteers do. We learn about the challenges, rewards, and personal growth that happens from volunteering in a new place. Michelle talks about living in a different country, working with local people, and dealing with surprise situations, while at the same time serving with Jaret. Join us as we learn about Michelle’s journey and see how volunteering with Peace Corps can change lives.

Feature photo above: me and my counterpart/co-teacher celebrating Holi/Phagwah

Table of Contents

• The Country at a Glance
• Volunteer Experience and Motivation
• Living Arrangements and Cultural Integration
• Surprises and Challenges
• Advice and Support
• Practical Tips and Language Learning
• Partner-Specific Questions
• Impact of Media and Final Thoughts

The Country at a Glance

Guyana has recently been in the international spotlight due to the discovery of oil off the coast. There’s been an influx of oil/gas/energy workers from all over the world and we’ve seen some growth in infrastructure and tourism because of it.

Guyana is a very diverse country with varying lifestyles and cultures depending on the location. The coast is where most people live and is the most urban. It’s also below sea level, so the sea walls and mangroves are the only barriers between the ocean and neighborhoods. The interior/hinterlands are deeper in the country and offer many opportunities for ecotourism being part of the Amazon rainforest. 

Volunteer Experience and Motivation

1. Can you tell us more about serving as a Health volunteer in Guyana?

Teaching Health and Family Life Education (HFLE) in Guyana

Being a Health volunteer in Guyana, my main job is co-teaching the Health and Family Life Education (HFLE) curriculum in a secondary school (grades 7-11). They give us a curriculum guide from the Ministry of Education that has pretty broad lesson plans, so we’re supposed to co-plan with our counterparts to create engaging, fun activities about different topics (emotions, interpersonal relationships, sexual health, diet, etc.). 

I’ve only tutored/taught small groups before so teaching entire classes of 30 or so 10-14 year olds definitely had its challenges. There would be some discipline problems with students not listening or fights breaking out, but luckily I had a counterpart who would help mitigate these problems and with time I learned different classroom management strategies that worked for me. When classes did behave or when I had an activity they were interested in, it was fun getting to know the kids and answering their different questions. 

Expanding Roles: Working at the Local Health Center

In our second year after Mid-Service Training, health volunteers add on working part-time at the local health center that is supposed to be attached to our schools. The goal is to act as a liaison between the school and the health center to promote adolescent health. We’re supposed to hold workshops for the health workers, plan health fairs, do outreach, and set up an adolescent clinic and health club. Just like working at the schools, there’s a range of experiences working at the health center. My counterpart didn’t really know what to do with me and wasn’t very enthusiastic about doing more work for projects I’ve proposed so I’ve just been another helping hand at my health center.

A Day in the Life of a Health Volunteer

A typical day for me would be to wake up around 6 AM, have breakfast, and leave the house around 8:30 AM to go to school. I walk about 10 minutes to a junction where I catch a car to go five minutes down the canal to go to school. On Mondays and Thursdays, there’s assembly outside, otherwise I’ll settle in and prepare for my class(es). My school is pretty small so I only taught 5 classes a week so I only had 1-2 classes a day, but this varies between volunteers with some having up to 15 classes a week. 

I’d usually buy something from my school canteen for lunch and if I don’t have classes in the afternoon, I’ll go back to help out at the health center until 3-4. In the afternoons, I’ll either do chores, help out with running soccer practices at my school, or run/workout. Then, I cook dinner most nights and after dinner, I’ll watch a show/read/draw. I feel like I have a decent amount of downtime here, so it’s been nice to spend time on hobbies.

On the weekends, I help out at the local library where they have a Saturday morning lesson where children work on reading/math and play games. The rest of the weekend is usually for chores, getting ready for the next week, visiting other volunteers, or meeting them in Georgetown. Since Guyana is a relatively small country, I can make it to most other volunteers in less than a day, excluding the volunteers in the interior that you’d need to fly to get to or take a really long bus ride.

2. What motivated you to join the Peace Corps and choose Guyana?

I was motivated to join the Peace Corps because I wanted to continue to do some kind of community service/volunteering and because it’s an opportunity to live abroad for two years. I joined the Peace Corps right after graduating college and I wasn’t sure what career path I wanted to pursue, so I thought it would be a good way to get some work experience and general life experiences as well. 

I’ve also lived in Maryland my entire life so I wanted to go somewhere else. I’ve always thought that living somewhere long-term is such a different experience than just going on vacation for a couple of days or weeks somewhere, so I was excited for the two-year aspect even if it felt too long at times.

I actually didn’t choose Guyana; I chose “serve where needed most” when I applied. I was a little overwhelmed with all the options, so I thought I’d just see where they placed me. I was initially placed in Lesotho, Africa, but that didn’t work out due to medical reasons, so they placed me in Guyana. I wasn’t sure what to expect since I found out pretty late, so didn’t have a lot of time to look into Guyana, but I’ve enjoyed it here. 

Living Arrangements and Cultural Integration

3. Tell us more about your home situation:

Living Conditions: Suburban Life in Guyana

I live in a suburban area since I live within 30 minutes of the capital city of Georgetown. Many people who live near me commute into Georgetown for work which can create a lot of traffic, but thankfully I live off the main road so I don’t have to hear it or deal with it too much. I also live next to a river with an embankment and mangroves. This leads to a duality of having the busy traffic on one side of my house and a bunch of wildlife (monkeys, birds) in my backyard.

I think joining the Peace Corps and expecting to go to Lesotho, I planned on having the bare minimum living conditions; it sounded like most traditional homes in Lesotho are a one-room circular hut. So, I was surprised to be placed in a bottom flat, two-bedroom home with electricity and good water pressure. We have blackouts sometimes, but they never last more than half a day. Sometimes even with electricity, it still feels so hot that I’ll just lay on the floor since it feels cooler. The kitchen came with a huge fridge and four burner stove with an oven which I’ve definitely taken advantage of while being here. I’m grateful for my living arrangements, but they vary all across Guyana. Some volunteers have AC (most don’t), some don’t have a fridge, some have terrible water pressure, some are meshed, some are right on the main road, some you have to walk far to get to, etc.

Adapting to Life Without a Host Family

One thing about my home situation that’s different is that I never had a host family. I was part of the first group back after COVID, so post was still taking lots of precautions related to COVID. Besides masking up and weekly tests, we didn’t have host families to limit risk for locals. We lived in hotels during PST and then went straight to our sites where we have community coaches who live near us and help us integrate and learn local ways of life. They’ve since changed policies so the next cohort had host families during PST and then could move to independent housing and the most recent cohort has a mix of host families and independent housing with a host family upstairs or next door.

I think when we heard we weren’t going to have host families a lot of us were disappointed and felt pretty isolated in our communities. Then we heard about the challenges the next cohorts had with host families, so both scenarios have their own pros and cons. I feel like I live in a pretty safe area so I feel comfortable walking around and going to my school and shops.

Exploring Guyanese Cuisine and Daily Routines

I’ve really enjoyed the food here – it’s probably one of my favorite parts of Guyanese culture. Due to its history, Guyana has a mix of cultures. For food, the main influences are Indian, African, Caribbean, and Chinese and there’s also plenty of fresh fruit since Guyana’s pretty tropical. My favorite food is probably chicken curry with rice or roti and I love fried ripe plantains. Here’s what I usually eat in a day:

• Breakfast: toast, eggs, and fruit (so many types of bananas, mangos, pineapples, papayas, star fruit, passion fruit, and some types of fruit I’ve never had before – gennep, whitie, star apple)
• Lunch: usually buy from school (chickpeas/chicken sandwich/roti and sour – a spicy, mango sauce)
• Dinner: rice/noodles/roti with some side dish (usually using eggplant/okra/pumpkin). If I go out to eat, I’ll usually get fish and chips or Chinese food. If there’s a special occasion, we’ll go to a restaurant in town or this pizza place in my region. 

For exercise, I do a mix of home workouts and running. My running route is just down a canal and back and it’s pretty quiet off the main road and very flat. One challenge is stray dogs that can get yappy when you run past them, but I usually just slow down when I pass them and then keep going. There’s also the National Track and Field Center in my region. It’s about 45 minutes away depending on traffic, but it’s really nice being able to run laps and there’s a bunch of other active people there usually. There are also a few gyms in the area, but you have to pay and since many of them are open-air, there’s tons of mosquitoes.

4. Any memorable experiences or interactions you’ve had with community members?

Almost reaching my two-year mark, there’s definitely been memorable experiences with community members. One of the first trips we went on was with my community coach and we went to a resort in Yarrowkabra. It was a nice venue area with a pool, playground, and gardens. The family was celebrating her mom’s birthday and it was fun to just hang out with all of them and swim around. 

Another experience was going to the mall in Georgetown to watch a movie with some of the teachers at my school. We watched Bad Boys 4 and it felt even more funny watching it with them because of their commentary and reactions (movie etiquette is a little different here, but we were also the only group in the theater).

Lastly, with the outdoor library, a nonprofit group based on the coast of Region 3, I’ve been able to see more of Guyana. I went on a field trip with other volunteers and plenty of children to Molsen Creek, the ferry crossing to Suriname. We crossed over half the coast of Guyana in a day and it was a cool experience for the kids too. 

We’ve also visited an Amerindian village which was one of my favorites because it was so relaxing getting to walk around the village and swim in the creek. Lastly, we visited the Outdoor Library organizer’s family down the Pomeroon River. She lived in a rural area where everyone uses a boat to get around since they live on the river. 

We got to celebrate a family member’s birthday and play dominoes, have plenty of fresh coconuts (lots of the coconuts in Guyana come from Pomeroon), and jump off their dock and swim in the river. A volunteer who loves fishing spent plenty of time on their dock and caught lots of huge fish.

Surprises and Challenges

5. What has surprised you most about Health challenges in Guyana?

Something that surprised me about health challenges in Guyana is the prominence of home remedies. During one of our medical trainings, we were told to never accept a home remedy for anything and to talk to our doctors first. Home remedies are popular and there’s even a stand in Georgetown that claims to sell a remedy for everything – even cancer. I think the use of home remedies and the strong fear of getting “bored”/getting a shot at the hospital/clinic, leads to some aversion to going to the hospital/clinic. The public clinics and hospitals are completely free, but many people choose to use the private ones if they can afford it. 

6. What challenges did you face while working on Health projects with community members?

One of the biggest challenges I’ve faced working on health projects is my health center not being attached to my school which leads to health workers being less motivated to work on projects related to my school. This is a very case-by-case basis where the health center that is attached to my school is in a “red zone” so I’m at a different health center. I’ve overcome this challenge by working on projects that my health center is involved in even if they don’t affect my school directly and still promoting the health centers at my school.

Another challenge is that there has been a trend of having more of a focus on maternal and child health from the Ministry of Health, but not as much on adolescents and men according to a doctor at my health center. The most popular days at my health center are the prenatal/postpartum and chronic disease (older patients) days. There are not as many services being provided to adolescents and men. That’s why one of our initiatives is to encourage adolescents to go to the health centers more often if they have any health issues. 

7. Could you share some of the secondary projects you have been involved in?

The first secondary project I became involved in was a world map project at my school. Since my class load is on the smaller side, I had a decent amount of downtime and after my headmistress talked about global news at an assembly, we started the world map project. I worked with another teacher to get paint donated and then teachers and students helped me draw the grid and paint it. Since the world map project is a popular project, there’s a manual that was really helpful. I’d recommend a world map project to any volunteer because it’s pretty low maintenance, you can start it whenever in service, and it helps you bond with students and teachers.

The second secondary project I’ve been involved in is a two-day Camp GLOW/BRO camp. A community member from our library actually connected us with someone who works in Guyana’s Rotary Club and she told us she wanted to do a camp. It was honestly super tiring and chaotic at times with things not going as planned and having to figure out how to entertain sixty or so children, but it was super rewarding hearing the children say how much they enjoyed it. Some of the children still say hi to me when they see me on the street over a year later. 

The most recent project I’ve been involved in is setting up both a girls’ and boys’ football team at my school. When I first got to my school, I heard that many of the boys play during lunch, but there’s no official team. I worked with one of my counterparts to start having training sessions and then they were able to participate in their first tournaments. It was challenging because even though they knew how to play and were talented, many of them had never played in a full, officiated game, so they were unfamiliar with the rules. Overall though, they learned a lot and had fun, and I’m definitely proud of them. More recently, there was a girls’ tournament, and that helped me start the girls’ team. Girls’ sports are more behind than boys’, but it’s definitely growing which is cool to see. 

Advice and Support

8. What advice would you give to someone considering serving as a Health volunteer in Guyana?

A big part of being a health volunteer in Guyana is teaching in secondary school, so children ages 10-14 mainly, so I hope you like (and can handle) teenagers! It can be really fun some days but also comes with its tough days so I just take it day by day. 

Non-specific to Guyana, but I think a lot of volunteers feel like they’re not making a big enough impact in the beginning and one thing an RPCV told us is that just being here is making an impact and that even if by the time we leave we’ve only impacted one student, that’s enough. Also, as a Health volunteer, the main responsibilities that we’re told to fulfill are teaching, helping at the health center, and establishing a school health club, but there are plenty of other ways to improve adolescent health. It can also take time to integrate and get things going, so be patient and give yourself grace.

9. What skills or qualities do you think are most important for a Health volunteer?

I think being adaptable, resilient, and being able to be assertive/firm is important. It’s pretty common to have last-minute meetings that you don’t know about until the morning of or to have random teacher absences, so it’s good to be adaptable/flexible/roll with the punches. I think any Peace Corps Volunteer needs to be resilient regardless of where they’re placed just with how much change you need to go through. Lastly, being assertive/firm is important here. I’m a pretty passive, soft-spoken person in general, so people told me I’d have to toughen up and they were right. Especially with teaching teenagers, they won’t take you seriously unless you’re assertive and set the expectations.

10. How has the Peace Corps training helped you during your service?

Training helped us to know what to expect and gave us resources about different projects we could complete (camps, clubs, grants). I think Guyana is different than some countries since we don’t have to learn a completely new language so our PST was mostly health, safety/security, and sector-specific things. We also didn’t have host families at the beginning of PST, so I think our integration and learning were a little slower than it would typically be. 

I think the counterpart you bring with you to training is super important. Two out of three of my counterparts left my school, so it wasn’t sustainable and they took what they learned with them. Sometimes it’s out of your control since I couldn’t have known my counterparts were going to leave, but having someone who plans to be at your school long-term is important for sustainability and completing projects. I think training can also be a little overwhelming with how many resources and information they give you, so I like to jot down action items after each session to plan what I can actually implement after the training. 

Practical Tips and Language Learning

11. Anything that you packed or didn’t pack that you’d like to tell future Guyana volunteers?

My cohort actually created a GoogleForm for this and here’s a summary of the responses!

General tips:

1. Overall, for the most part, I’ve been able to find most things here and there are a lot of ways to ship things to Guyana, so bring things that have sentimental value or are specialty things. 
2. As far as access to things goes, unless you use very particular toiletries, the most important thing seems to be bringing clothes, towels, shoes, entertainment, quality kitchen items, particular medical supplies, and comfort items that you’ll miss. It kinda feels similar to packing for living in a dorm!
3. Thrift clothes

To pack:

• A small, chargeable, battery-powered fan (saves you during blackouts)
• A nice, sturdy, collapsable wind resistant umbrella 
• External hard drive with pre-downloaded movies/shoes/books/etc. 
• Things for hobbies (people have brought paint sets, cooking knives, a ukulele, card games)
• Something that reminds you of home (e.g. pillows, seasonings, posters/pictures)
• Lightweight, quick-drying clothes and quick-drying towels (we air dry and it’s humid) 
• Favorite sauce/seasoning (they have most common seasonings and they have Ranch/Italian but that’s about it. The biggest grocery stores in town have more but they’re pricey)

Don’t pack:

• A raincoat (it’s too humid)
• Too many polo shirts (seen as more casual, some schools only wear them on Fridays)
• Medical supplies (we all get med kits)

12. How has learning the language been?

Guyanese language is English-based Creole so we didn’t have much language training. It definitely takes time to learn and get used to but everyone here can speak English, so I don’t think it’s necessary to try to learn any before staging. I looked up some videos, but the language really depends on where you’re placed. Since I live close to Georgetown, the accent’s not as strong and most people can speak more “proper” to me to make it easier to understand, but in other regions, it’s almost like another language. 

Partner-Specific Questions

13. As a Peace Corps couple, how has your experience differed from that of individual volunteers?

Navigating Service as a Peace Corps Couple

As a Peace Corps couple, I think the first difference people think of compared to serving individually is the lack of feeling isolated. Part of serving as a PCV is the feeling of isolation, at least initially, as volunteers settle into a new place. For us, we always had each other throughout the entirety of our service.

We’ve heard in some countries this is not the case, with couples living with different host families during PST (e.g., Kenya), but we lived together from PST until COS. This has its pros and cons. The pros include having someone through the highs and lows, sharing experiences, feeling safer traveling together, and bouncing ideas and concerns off each other. The cons include having very different experiences due to cultural differences relating to gender.

Some examples of gender norms include more sports opportunities for men and women staying home to care for the children. These gender norms are changing, as we’ve seen community efforts to create more sports opportunities for girls and some women choosing careers over being mothers earlier in life.

My partner and I both play soccer, and it was relatively easy for him to find a club to join, whereas there seemed to be more women’s teams in the capital or other regions. It can also be difficult comparing services, which is something every volunteer might have challenges with. We were told early on not to compare our experiences with other volunteers, but this seems harder in reality, especially since we live together and share every day. When one of us has a bad day and the other has a good day, it can be difficult to try to be happy for the other, even when we know we should be celebrating each other’s successes.

We also have pretty different personalities, with him being more extroverted than me, so sometimes my social battery would be drained after attending different events. Throughout all of this, it’s important to communicate and make sure we understand each other’s needs. Peace Corps was supportive in helping us navigate serving as a couple because they gave us tips in the beginning and talked to both of us separately to help us know what to expect.

The Application and Placement Process for Couples

With the application/placement process, part of the reason why we chose “serve where needed most” was because we knew we had fewer options since not all countries accept couples. When we applied, I think the only difference is that we had an additional couples interview together, which seemed to ensure that we knew what we were getting into serving as a couple.

They seemed to want to make sure that even if we faced challenges either with serving or with each other, we would be able to work things out and continue to serve. During the placement process, we were originally supposed to go to Lesotho, but due to my partner having asthma, they denied his medical clearance (Lesotho’s high elevation and medical services might be harder to access).

So, I suppose another challenge is that it can be harder to get two people cleared for certain sites.

The Impact of PST on Bonding and Integration

Relating to PST, I don’t think there’s anything different content-wise with sessions, but I think there were differences in the bonding aspect with our cohort. I think my PST experience was different, partly because of serving as a couple and partly because I got sick and missed a couple of weeks.

After I was well enough to attend training sessions, I felt like I missed a lot of the friendship-forming stage of PST, and it seemed like some cliques had already formed. Being part of a couple, I feel like us coming in together was a little isolating and didn’t let us get as close with other volunteers, which is something another couple in our cohort also resonated with.

Part of this could be because we always got a room for ourselves during training, whereas everyone else had roommates. This obviously isn’t the case for every couple, and over time, we did get closer to other volunteers in our cohort.

14. Advice I’d give to other couples considering PC

• communicate your needs and what you feel comfortable with
• have your own things (hobbies/projects/groups)
• be sure both people are doing PC for themselves (not just to stay together)

Impact of Media and Final Thoughts

15. How do you think your blog contributes to your overall mission as a Peace Corps volunteer?

I share a blog and Instagram with my partner and I think the main thing is contributing to Peace Corps’ 3rd goal “to increase Americans’ understanding of other peoples and cultures”. We posted a lot more in the beginning when everything was new and it was nice to just share our experiences with friends and family. I’m sure it’ll also be nice to have when we finish service to just look back on. I’ve also had friends tell me we should do more TikToks and Day in the Lifes, but we haven’t gotten around to doing that. 

I think aspiring PCVs who are considering starting a blog/YouTube channel/Instagram/other type of social media should just go for it! I don’t think it’s that much work since you can do as much as you want and it’s a good way to document service and reflect upon it. We’ve also had incoming volunteers reach out to us and ask us questions, so you can also just be another resource and story to share with aspiring PCVs.

16. Any last comments you’d like to pass on to future Guyana volunteers?

The pace of life being much slower is one of the first things I noticed about Guyana. There’s a lot less hustle and bustle which took some time to adjust to, especially after coming right after graduating college. There’s a big “just now” culture where “just now” can mean anything from one minute to one year or never – which can be frustrating when you’re trying to get something done, but also a lot of us have just come to embrace it. So, I’d just say Guyana’s a really beautiful country that’s growing a lot, so if you do come, try to be present and enjoy what Guyana has to offer.

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The content of this post does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government, the Peace Corps, or Guyana Government.