Throughout his life, longtime educator and administrator Edward Jarvis has been met with a lot of adversity that could have left him bitter, such as losing his vision, divorce and the death of a son. But through it all, Jarvis, 66, has found strength in his faith. “We were taught that God is in control and whatever we experience it is part of our destiny. I was able to accept those things. I think the more we attempt to fight against our destiny, the more miserable we become. When good things are coming to our lives we don’t complain.”
Because of many bad experiences, he said, he should be filled with a lot of hate. “I decided to take that energy that I would have put into hate and focus on academics. That worked. When I reached the gate at UG, I left all my baggage outside and focused only on what I had to do there.”
Jarvis was born at Mabaruma, which had the nearest hospital to his home in Waini, and grew up at Santa Rosa, Moruca, where he began an education journey that has taken him to the Cyril Potter College of Education (CPCE) and the University of Guyana (UG).
By the time he had reached university, Jarvis was well aware of that him being from the interior meant having to surmount certain biases. In an essay on discrimination at university, he made the point that “People from a minority grouping have to establish that they were flesh and blood like everyone else, they still have jobs to do aside from not being an animal or beast from the forest, and they have to do their jobs even better than their colleagues.”
He proved his point when he graduated from UG in 2001 while overcoming blindness. “That is how I dealt with coming from the interior. I had to prove that I could learn and perform like everyone else or even better,” Jarvis, the best graduating student in the Faculty of Education, told Stabroek Weekend.
Jarvis started school at the then Santa Rosa Roman Catholic School at eight years old.
“It wasn’t easy. I spent five years at the convent run by the nuns because we hadn’t anywhere else to stay. Then my mother relocated to Moruca so that my siblings and I could complete school.”
When he wrote common entrance examinations he was not placed at a secondary school but was successful in the College of Preceptors (CP) examinations. It was on the basis of the CP examinations that he started teaching at the Grade Four level at Santa Rosa. “I taught along with the late Teacher Bridget Daniels. After one year I was given charge of the third formers in the secondary department. I taught English, Biology and Physiology to students in the forms preparing for CP. I ended up teaching some of my classmates.”
As a pupil teacher he wrote and was successful at the Third and Fourth Year Teachers Examinations and at 19 years gained entry to CPCE in 1974 and was in the first batch of students to walk through the doors of the new facilities at CPCE in Turkeyen.
“By 21 years, I was a trained teacher,” he said.
From CPCE, he returned to Santa Rosa Primary, where he spent two years. During that period, at the community level, he had some memorable days playing the guitar and singing in a local band called The Natives, along with Dion De Souza, the late Vic Ferreira and the late Carl Rodrigues.
Two years later he was transferred to Arakaka in the Matarkai Sub-region as the acting head teacher.
Arakaka Primary, he said, was another learning experience. “I took the job to enable my wife at the time to get into teaching. I had to do multi-grade teaching. It was a short but significant experience. One of the things I learnt is that when you take responsibility for a new school you should first read the log book and see what is happening and make changes gradually if there is need for change. You have to learn/understand the context in which a school is operating.”
In 1979 he was transferred to Carmel Primary in Georgetown, where he taught until 1982.
He then took a break in teaching for a decade during which time his tried my hands at different things, including shoe-making and trading.
Loss of vision
Around 1990 or 1991, Jarvis was diagnosed with diabetes and in 1992 he lost vision completely in both eyes. At the time he was back in Moruca.
“When you become blind your system helps, you to find ways of coping. You become aware of your environment by smelling, listening, by feeling for vibrations. I could be in a room and know that a pot of water is boiling because I could smell the steam and hear the bubbling of the water on the stove. Beyond that, it is a terrible situation. You put on a shirt and you don’t know what colour it is.”
Six months after losing his sight, he underwent surgery at Woodlands Hospital and regained vision in his right eye. He underwent three surgeries between 2005 and 2007 and eventually regained vision in both eyes.
How did he cope with the blindness? Jarvis, who at this time was transitioning to becoming a single parent of four children while dealing with a divorce, said, “That was a tough time for me.
My late son, Michael who was about 13 or 14 years at the time, dropped out of school to look after me. He gave me insulin injections, cooked breakfast and lunch then went to sell at Stabroek Market to assist in earning an income for the home.”
He continued, “When Michael passed on, because I had become so attached to him, it was really tough. Not that I do not love my other children but he made the sacrifice when it mattered, and when things improved for me he could not benefit.”
With Michael’s passing, he said, “We try to pull some positives out of the experience. For example, he helped me to start build the house where I live in Diamond. When it is his birthday or death anniversary we try to do something on the house by either painting or adding something. We have his pictures throughout the house. We focus of the lighter side of him when he was alive and the stories he told. That way we have been able to deal with losing him. Whatever we do he is never left out.”
His daughter, Daune, is a graduate teacher, his son Kerry, a businessman, was the first mayor of Lethem, and his son Mark is an engineer.
Returning to education
In 1994, Jarvis returned to teaching, he taught at Graham’s Hall Primary, at Industry, for three years.
One of the most valuable things for him in teaching was to see the look in children’s eyes when they understand a concept for the first time. “That is one of the limitations of doing virtual teaching because you can’t see those expressions in the children’s faces to know who is following and who is having a difficulty understanding what is being discussed.”
As a teacher he had to be attentive to pupils so that when they walked into a classroom he was able to pick up immediately when a child was not feeling well.
“Children go through a lot of stuff at the hands of parents, caregivers, and guardians. Sometimes the teacher is the only sympathetic ear that the child has.”
Growing up at Santa Rosa with the whip and the yard stick, Jarvis said he realised at CPCE that corporal punishment was not something he wanted to do. He recalled children at Graham’s Hall asking him why he did not beat them and his response being to ask why he should beat other children when he did not beat his own.
In 1997 he began his pursuit of a Degree in Education to regain some professional ground. At the time he was at UG he was still blind in his left eye.
On graduating in 2001, Jarvis was appointed hinterland coordinator at the Ministry of Education to help the ministry understand the peculiarities of the hinterland and to act as the go-between for the hinterland and the central ministry. He held that position until 2008. From 2006 to 2008 he began working with the community-based school feeding project funded by the World Bank.
The project’s three sub-components were to strengthen the teaching course in the hinterland, enhance the learning environment and enhance school and community collaboration. The third component included the school feeding aspect. In 2008 the coordinator for the World Bank project resigned, Jarvis applied for the post and was successful. When the World Bank project ended in 2012, the Government of Guyana retained the school feeding aspect.
“I was asked by the ministry to continue coordinating the project and that is what I had been doing since. It may be fortunate or unfortunate that I coordinate the programme.
I was also the coordinator of the World Bank project under which this programme came into being so I try as much as possible to keep the same focus that the programme started with.”
Feeding programme success
To join the programme, communities have to provide a kitchen, form a management committee with representatives from the school and community, identify people to be trained as cooks, fill out a 12-page proposal with basic information about school and community and kitchen staff must have basic training in managing the kitchen.
The ministry provides the funding for furnishing and meals. Lunch is provided for primary schools but if there is a secondary department, the children also get meals.
“The funding is small but the programme has been a real success,” Jarvis said. Teachers also get lunch on conditions that they eat in schools, help to supervise children while they have their lunch and no special dishes are to be prepared for them.
In recent years, Jarvis said, “We have seen outstanding performances in some schools such as Waramuri Primary. There have been an increase in enrollment and attendance rates. People from the community have gone into farming to supply the schools, cooks have received training resulting in better competence in food handling and food preparation.”
In the Santa Rosa area, he noted, the woman who runs the government’s guest house was once the head cook for the kitchen at Santa Rosa Primary.
“Shea Primary and Sawariwau Primary in Rupununi have herds of about 100 sheep each coming out of this school feeding programme. Shulinab Primary in the Rupununi also has sheep and Paruima in Upper Mazaruni has a village shop. The schools are managing these while creating employment.”
Jarvis has travelled Guyana extensively with just a few places left to be seen so he has a fair idea of locations where the school feeding programme is in place.
Most of his travels overseas were work-related. Among the places he has visited were Colombia, Brazil, St Lucia, Barbados, the United States of America, Canada and Uganda.
“What struck me about Uganda is that there are so many things we take for granted in Guyana that people in other countries would die for.” He noted the similarities between Guyana and Uganda in terms of the climate, food and culture.
His visits have taught him lessons on Indigenous Peoples and other peoples’ cultures, tourism and given him perspectives he otherwise would not have. He noted a consciousness he has developed about his identity over the years. “I eat cassava bread, paddle a boat, shoot with a bow and arrow and I know some bush medicine. I am about 75 percent Amerindian and I think of myself as an Amerindian. We were the first people here. How is it we ended up at the bottom of the social and economic ladder?”
Jarvis also sees a good awareness developing among people from the hinterland and he believes it is being driven by education and information technology. As a youngster travelling in and out of Moruca, he said, the boats were owned by someone from the Pomeroon. “Today you can get a Moruca-owned boat to take you in and out of the area. That is a result of the consciousness of the youngsters in Moruca who know they can run a boat service and run a business.”
