From a school dropout to a representative of the people, Charlene Garraway, 55, took menial jobs to earn a living for herself and two daughters before returning to school at age 37 to complete her secondary education. She then followed up her education through extra mural studies.
Now a political and community activist, Garraway is an Alliance For Change (AFC) councillor on the Regional Democratic Council, Region Three – West Demerara/Essequibo Islands.
“I dropped out of secondary school in form four at 14 years because the living situation with my parents had changed. To make matters worse, my mother lost her job as a community development officer (CDO) when there was a change in administration. She was not motivated anymore. I could not send myself to school,” Garraway told Stabroek Weekend.
Garraway related that her mother was a CDO, a political appointment, made by the then People’s National Congress (PNC) administration.
“You see these changes taking place when a new government takes over, downsizing or appointing their own people, they have consequences. My mom was out of a job and we had to move from the government house where we were living at Charity on the Pomeroon River at the time. That’s how things went downhill for us. We were three siblings.”
Garraway’s hometown is Marlborough, Pomeroon River but she grew up at Charity where she attended primary school and subsequently Anna Regina Multilateral School (ARMS). After dropping out of high school in fourth form, she subsequently became pregnant with her first daughter and then another.
As a single parent, she moved to Georgetown in search of a job to raise her daughters who are now adults with their own families.
“After giving birth to my daughters, I did different kinds of jobs, like housework, nanny work, to provide for me and my children.”
After a while, she moved to Uitvlugt on the West Coast Demerara, where she has settled and made her home.
While her two children were at high school, Garraway could not afford to send them to extra lessons, so she tried to help them as much as possible remembering some of the things she was taught at school. Her second daughter was always in the top five at secondary school so she never had cause to send her for extra lessons.
“In preparation for the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC), I couldn’t help her beyond a certain level. When I was helping her, I was reading her books and understanding the contents and concepts. At school I had liked Integrated Science so I had the foundation. Reading her books in fourth and fifth forms and then drilling her meant I was learning what I should been taught when I dropped out of school. So my love for completing high school was there.”
After her second daughter successfully wrote nine subjects at the CSEC examinations at Zeeburg Secondary School and obtained all nine with a double award in Agricultural Science and then went on to graduate from the University of Guyana (UG), Garraway was inspired to return to school to complete her secondary education.
“I enrolled at the Business School in Brickdam at 37 years for a two-year programme, to write CSEC. I was among teenage students and younger adults who were preparing for CSEC. They were happy to have me in their classes. I especially enjoyed the English classes, where I excelled in composition and grammar.
“With the subject, Economics, I just wanted to try it and took a chance at it. I had dropped out of high school and I had no chance to go into any particular stream to do what I love, or, to use it as a stepping stone to what I had wanted to become. I was good at Economics and the teacher had liked me because I learned very quickly.”
However, as a cricket lover she would miss classes to follow the West Indies team across the Caribbean when the team’s performance was at its peak. When she returned to classes, she had to relate to the children her exploits and they helped her to catch up in class as well.
In class, Garraway said, the children respected her. “They knew I had the experience but they didn’t know that I had dropped out of school in fourth form which was where I had to start all over again. Maths was a problem for me and the children sometimes sat with me to teach me the fractions, graphs, trigonometry and whatever because I was very weak in Maths. Sometimes they came home to help me.”
Garraway wrote Mathematics, English, Economics, Social Studies and Spanish and obtained Grade Twos in them all.
Seeing herself as a role model for those who dropped out of school, she said, “I try to help them to understand where they are and motivate them to go out there to improve their skills and knowledge and in doing so they will improve their life. All is not lost at age 14. Seek help. Help is there. Even when you are at age 30 and you are with children or no children, you are still not lost. Just keep your focus, stay organised and go after your purpose. You have to discipline your mind. It won’t happen all at once. Do the right thing, even if you have to change your circle of friends. Sometimes you are in a circle and you are not moving because you do not belong there. I was probably in many groups like that. With reflections, prayers and determination, I got out because there were times I felt I did not belong there. I even went back to high school after so many years.”
After finally successfully completing her secondary education and with her children all grown and managing on their own, Garraway travelled “in and out of Guyana” to earn a living.
‘Nanny work’
What was she doing in and out of Guyana? When she obtained a visitor’s visa for a foreign country, she said she travelled in and out of the country to babysit a friend’s child who was autistic. She recalled that because of her “nanny work,” she was able to travel from New Jersey to Kisumu in Kenya, Africa to look after her friend’s child. The child’s mother was Guyanese and father was Kenyan.
She recalled that no family member was able to accompany her friend to Kenya at the time and she was in Guyana. While babysitting her friend’s son, she had once told them that when they were travelling to Africa she would like to accompany them. After no sibling was able to accompany her friend, someone suggested calling Garraway and asking her if she would be willing to travel to Africa. “When the phone call came through asking me if I could travel to Africa with my friend and her family, if you know how quick I pack-ed my bags and got to the United States. Then it was off to Kenya for 12 days. We stayed at a beautiful resort.”
When returning through Heathrow International Airport, Garraway said, they missed their flight for which the airline was culpable and they returned to New Jersey as first class passengers on Virgin Atlantic. “Could I pay for a round trip to Kenya? No way? But when you give of your best in any work you do, you will get ample rewards. That was a reward for me. And I have gained a God-given family because they treat me like a family member.”
Having babysat many children, Garraway said she developed a love for children and this led her to pursue an early childhood education certificate programme at the Institute for Distance and Continuing Education (IDCE), University of Guyana. “I did the first course and got distinction in it.”
After she had finished with babysitting, Garraway worked as a receptionist at the Venezuelan Embassy. “I had gotten a grade 2 in Spanish and with practice in the language, that landed me the job.” After that she did some administrative work for a quantity surveying company before becoming involved in politics.
Passion for community work
Describing herself as a very generous person who loves to share, Garraway believes that she inherited that trait from her mother who was a political activist who mixed her political activism with community activism.
“I grew up in a home, where my mom, a Burnham girl in Charity at the time, was always helping people or getting help for people through her connections, going into communities to see what help she could give and doing this and doing that. As a member of the WRSM (Women’s Revolutionary Socialist Movement) she helped a lot of women and girls get involved in skills training programmes. She knew how to mobilise people for group activities. I learned a lot from her.”
So for several years Garraway began organizing different activities centred around school holidays for children. She organised Christmas parties, picnics and kite-flying, hampers for senior citizens at Christmas time, back-to-school hampers for children among other activities with the assistance of friends living abroad. She also responds to requests for help on the humanitarian front.
During the pandemic, Garraway reflected on what she had learned at the IDCE on early childhood education and thought about the children at home missing out on schooling because of lack of teaching materials or having no electronic devices on which they could study.
“I have had some training and the know-how on how to work with children in early childhood. My house is always full of books, crayons and pens and pencils for children.”
She came up with the idea of an outdoor community library which she launched in January 2021. The library does not only lend books to children. Garraway has added group reading sessions as she found that of the 63 children registered in the group over 30 of them cannot read.
“The library’s objective now is to improve their reading and their writing skill will follow. Every Sunday we have this group session. Every Sunday we have volunteers coming to teach the children to read. We put the children into groups depending on their ability. We prepare snacks for them. This is a community project I am now focusing on.”
Asked how she became involved in politics, she said, “I don’t know. Maybe it was a passion and love for people. Maybe, it was my love for helping people because of my own experiences, knowing that I have a voice and that I can represent the underprivileged.”
She joined the AFC when it was formed in 2005 and is now its regional councillor for Region Three.
According to Garraway she had had enough of the Peoples Progressive Party and the PNC because “They did not make any difference in unifying our people in keeping with our national motto. I wanted something more inclusive and so I joined the AFC.”
One of the reasons she continues to forge ahead with her activities, she said, was because the other opposition councillors want to make the PPP look bad so they sit and say or do nothing at council meetings and allow the PPP councillors to do what they want. “I speak up. With the resources, the oil money we are getting, we have to stand up for our supporters whether in opposition or not and make the money work for everyone,” she said.
