A kite, oh Skites.
Easter was one of the more enjoyable holidays when I was young. I lived next to the seawall and a stone’s throw away from the Atlantic ocean. Yankee would burn shark oil in the mangroves there, smell up the area, and come into our yards for water. He was reportedly deported to Guyana from England after stabbing his wife 97 times with a scissors. We had no internet then, so stories got passed down and around and that’s what I knew about the mangroves. I was always too scared of him to walk on the sea side. I obviously had no class field trips of relevance either as I quite liked when the mangroves caught fire and disappeared. I used to think he burned them, but in retrospect that would make little sense for why would he want to see those who lived behind the seawall when one had an entire sea to oneself.
Back then, thanks to numerous hours of blackout, we’d sit on our front steps and be privy to all sorts of things that couples do when on or over the seawall at night. The sounds of women screaming for help stand out. The beatings were constant. I am sure I watched someone disappear slowly. Twice. If I remember correctly fishermen would set nets in the sea and retrieve them when the tide was low. Timed incorrectly the tides would leave and they’d be standing in sucksand/quicksand. I’ve never had to try this, but am told that if you’re caught in quicksand, spread your arms wide and don’t move. They were probably 100 m from the seawall, but nobody in the crowd had anything that could save them. Not even the Guyana Defense Force helicopter could though I’ve spoken with an ex GDF person recently who seems to think they saved the person.
Easter Monday, though, the seawall was filled with people. Considered a national holiday in Guyana, many went there to fly kites. My memory is better linked to the outfit I wore and the boy I liked — back then we actually selected cloth and patterns and paid a dress maker and had numerous crushes—than to flying a kite. Maybe I remember selecting a locally made waxed paper kite from a vendor outside of Guyana Stores and being given a bird shaped plastic one that came from abroad. Adding a razor blade to the tail and cutting someone else’s is probably a story from my dad’s childhood that somehow gets confused with mine as I age and stories get mingled. My sister would probably write, “I put a razor blade on the tail of my kite to…”, as her memory does a “find and replace” operation whenever she hears something good.
I wonder if my drone flying skills would be better had I actually flown kites and not designed dresses in high school. In 2015 I was the Principal Investigator of a half a million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation to provide Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) — Water Awareness Research & Education was the title. One teacher was researching how above ground surveillance could be used to identify hotspots for green infrastructure installation. In other words, could we fly a drone over an area and look for signals like erosion or “greenness” to determine where rainwater pools and therefore would be a “hot spot” for an intervention that decreased flooding. A much easier way to do this would be to walk around and ask people who use it to identify the wet spots they encounter when they walk through the area. But, we are engineers and our students are being pushed to do and use STEM, and that translates into a physical thing that is “consumed” and far removed from having to meet and interact with real people based on my experience.
So, during the 2018 easter celebrations in Guyana, I lived vicariously through the newspaper and postings from facebook friends. As an environmental engineer who believes climate change is real, I am still trying to reconcile that Guyana is on the verge of becoming an oil producer. And that ExxonMobil will be the first company to benefit from that production. Significant, as they are the company in court in New York and Massachusetts accused of lying to investors and the public about the risks of climate change. Much of this information can be found on the #ExxonKnew website. ExxonMobil has since launched its own website #ExxononExxonKnew demonizing those who accused it of covering up the information it had on climate change. In March 2018 a lawsuit by ExxonMobil brought against those taking them to court for climate change denial was thrown out of court. So, for a country that pushed a Low Carbon Development Strategy — majorly done by McKinsey & Company, paid for by the Clinton Climate Initiative/Foundation with funds from a private donor that this Guyanese can’t get any information on— it’s like a mind muddle trying to figure out where Guyanese are coming from on their development trajectory. Imagine same way Norwegians have to reckon with this each day.
Amidst this mind muddlery, photos of the Government of Guyana distributing plastic kites hit the internet (they also gave out locally made ones, but the cheap plastic ones with barbie made an impression). As did photos of ExxonMobil doing same followed by comments from people that it’s good that the children got kites to fly. I subsequently learnt from the ExxonMobilGuyana page that their kites were made of cloth to avoid rain damage, but could not figure out why their shapes differed so much from the traditional Guyanese wax paper kite. Then, rising from left field with hope and inspiration came photos from journalist Tangerine Clarke of a kids kite making workshop for the kids of Albouystown hosted by Councillor Malcolm Ferreira.
You see, my colleague Jonathan Gaines leads a program called Bulls-Eye Mentoring at the University of South Florida to promote Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) amongst middle school kids. Recently he was installing drones on box kites and using these to capture local terrain for scientific research. So, this notion of linking learning STEM with culturally relevant and fun activities is a hot topic. Given that math is one of the two subjects every Guyanese kid has to take for the Caribbean Examinations Council examinations, and given less than 50% of students receive a grade 1, 2, or 3, I started to look online for “math and kite.”
In mathematics, a kite is a quadrilateral with two pairs of equal-length sides adjacent to each other. That might explain why the shape of the ExxonMobil free cloth kites did not resemble the shape common on the Guyanese market. Needless, I learned something new writing this piece — that skites like kite has multiple meanings I never knew of before. More importantly, I discovered that there is still opportunity to develop curriculum that integrates kite making into STEM learning and include cultural contexts that feature Guyana. This conclusion is based on the curriculum already posted online on places like teachengineering.org that involves kites. So, I would encourage a young, enthusiastic, and entrepreneurial STEM educator to team up with Councillor Malcolm Ferreira and create some learning material and tools that make kite flying accessible, fun, and educational. In the US, the National Science Foundation sponsors initiatives to foster that kind of partnership, paying teachers to be a part of the team. Those grants are on the order of 500K US to just one group. If ExxonMobil wants to play with Guyanese children, they need to pay to do so.
