A Day in the Life of a Paamese Teacher (21st August)

Warning: This blog is full of satire, I’m really having a wonderful time and wouldn’t be anywhere else in the world! :0) The home sickness is slowly abating and as I look out my window (or thatch, who needs a window?) and see the children playing, the sea gently lapping against the black sand beach, and hear the neighbours playing their guitar, I am so glad I took a GAP year! For those of you who don’t know me too well my humour is comprised of nothing but pessimistic irony or exceedingly corny jokes, and this humour has nothing to do with how I’m feeling emotionally. In fact, it gives me a more optimistic view as I look at every annoyance for its comedy. :0) So don’t any of you dare start to worry about me or pity me! I wouldn’t wish to be anywhere else in the world… I just sometimes wishe you guys were here to share the experience with me. You won’t believe half the stories I tell you when I get home. :0)
12am (Vanuatu Time): Wake up to the sound of wild dogs killing chickens.
1am: Wake up to the sound of wild cats yodelling.
2am: Wake up needing to pee, running to the toilet because you can still hear those wild dogs in the distance.
3am: Wake up to the sound of a rat running around underneath your bed.
4am: Wake up to the sound of the rat now running up the wall behind your head.
5am: Wake up, as you have several times already, to stretch or roll over because your bed is way too small for you and made of wooden slats (very bad for the back). You do have a mattress, but it’s less than an inch thick.
6am: Wake up to the sound of roosters, who have now finished their cock-a-doodle-doodling for the morning, trying to make baby chickens with the hens. :0) Ah, the circle of life!
6.30am: Get out of bed, shuffle off to the outdoor dunny, wipe the rat droppings off the kitchen bench, squash a few giant spiders, chase out the chickens (those that weren’t eaten the night before), wash the dishes from last night’s dinner (of course, you have to make a trip up the hill to the tap), make several more trips up and down that hill with several water carrying devices, boil water for ten minutes, purify the rest of the water for half an hour, and begin to cook breakfast.
7.00am: Breakfast! Now you have two choices for breakfast (most days). Usually the students will bring you a loaf of bread, if they didn’t run out of flour the day before. :0) So you can cut yourself a slice. Alternatively, you can take some rice and cook it with sugar and a little vanilla essence (if it hasn’t run out yet) or coconut oil (if that hasn’t run out yet). This is followed by a vitamin tablet, you hope that’s enough to prevent scurvy. Bon Apetite!
7.15am: Wash the dishes, brush your teeth in the outside wash room, brush your mangled mop you dare to call hair, pull on some clean clothes, grab your books and stumble up another hill (Vanuatu is all hills) to the Vaum Junior Secondary School to get ready for your first lesson.
7.30am: Teaching! Yay! :0) There is just a little sarcasm to that ‘yay! :0)’ If you’ve ever had the privilege of teaching year 8s, it doesn’t matter what country you’re in, then you’ll understand my satire. They are a bunch of destructive, lazy monsters! All my visions of a country full of eager-to-learn-angels have been dashed. The year 7s are such a relief, unfortunately, most of my classes are with the year 8s. Most Ni-Van teachers try to steer clear of them. They’ve already made the rest of the faculty cry this year. Fun for me! I see it as a challenge!
8.30am: Either teach another lesson, or plan another lesson. Lesson planning was fun for the first few lessons… now I usually lesson plan for that lesson an hour of so before I’m meant to start teaching. Not that that’s usually a problem anyway. It’s not like the school has any resources for me to prepare for a lesson. On the contrary, the only resources the school does have are half an encyclopaedia set from the early 1980s, and National Geographics from the 1970s. Makes my life interesting.
9.30am: Recess! Yay! 15min of escaping to my grass hut. And now I’m awake enough to run around finding the dishes and bits of roof that blew away the night before. I’m not sure if our hut is even going to have a roof when we leave. :0) Then I can nibble a piece of bread before it’s back to school.
9.45am: Yet another lesson… or lesson planning… It’s in this time slot that you usually have double lessons. That means 2 hours of bored Ni-Van kids who want to do nothing but throw paper, rock on their chairs, hit each other… and that’s if they’re not wagging! :0)
10.45am: Next lesson begins
11.45am: Yes! Lunch! (Wipes forehead in relief). Trudge back to the hut, trudge up the hill to the tap, get water, trudge back down to the house and start to boil some more – you guessed it! – rice! This time I can boil it with a little stock (if that hasn’t run out), curry powder (if that hasn’t run out), herbs (if they haven’t run out) or spice (you guessed it, if THAT hasn’t run out). I spend the next hour or so either escaping to another world by reading a novel (only read 7, unless you count the Lonely Planet Guide which I’ve devoured several times, in which case I’ve read 8), or writing letters home.
1.30pm: Sigh… You guessed it! Back up the hill to the classroom. Don’t get me wrong, not all the kids are bent on making my life a misery, most of them are adorable little angels. It’s just that those few that are rotten manage to make such a vivid impression. Don’t worry, I’m not regretting coming here, in fact I lie awake some nights thinking of how I can get my own back through homework or notes… :0) call me malicious, but I love setting tests! :0)
2.30pm: Yes there is another lesson, but I don’t have a lesson for any class in this slot of the day so I always get to finish early! Yay! :0) Now I can limp back to the hut, take my portable shower (thank you Sophia!) which has been warming in the sun and have a wash. First I have to reattach the shower roof which blew away the night before and nail our piece of fabric into place so no peeping Tom’s can get a good look. Then it’s washing time, making sure I’m careful not to get a splinter from the broken floor, or bang my head on the too low roof. And… what’s that slimy feeling on my skin? Oh, wait… that’s cleanliness! :0) That’s what it feels like not to be covered in volcanic ash. :0)
3.00pm: Free time. Sigh, the bliss! I either have a nap, read a book, write my novel, write more letters home or plan what travel I’d like to do during and after my placement. I usually do this on a rug outside our little hut, on the grass, mere steps from the gently sighing sea. I can look out over the biggest backyard ever – the Pacific Ocean! It’s beautiful! Some days I’ll entertain the neighbour’s kids by reading to them, talking with them or playing uno. I also sometimes play card games with the students… the nice students. Not only are the kids adorable and remind me why I’m here, but the parents are so grateful you’ve distracted their kids for a few hours that they’re likely to send some unrisen cake to your door the next morning. Oh, yes! :0) Cake!!! :0) I’m salivating just thinking about it!
4.00pm: Now is the time when the kids start arriving with homework questions, and not just students from your own class, students from every class and every grade. The other teachers aren’t too nice about giving homework help. After about the 20th student asking the same question I can understand why... still, I love sitting down with them one on one. :0)
5.00pm: Start to cook dinner. Guess what’s for dinner? Rice! Rice, rice, RICE!!! :0) And just as before, unless they’ve run out, you have a choice of flavouring it with either garlic, spice, herbs, curry or stock. Yummy! … :0( I won’t start listing the many things I’ve craved since I got here, because it’ll slowly drive me mad!
5.30pm: eat a picnic dinner watching the sun set over the ocean. Swat the mozzies, shoo away the chickens and sigh at the beauty. Then lie down and watch the first star twinkle into existence. Don’t sigh at how stunning it is though, because now it’s gotten darker you’re likely to swallow a beetle.
6.00pm: don our black hoodies and sneak up to the school kitchen to see what left overs we can nick. Driven by our need for fresh food we’ll search every nook and every cranny. Some days we’re rewarded with yams, a little limp cabbage, or if we’re particularly lucky, sugar or noodles. One day we were lucky enough to find a warm loaf of bread. I can’t stress to you our delight at being able to eat risen dough that hadn’t been left to sit on a hot shelf for a couple of days. :0)
6.30pm: take your laptops, ipods and camera batteries up to the staff room and charge them. While you’re sitting here guarding your precious electronics from the rats you might like to either read, count how many rats you can spot in the bookshelves, lesson plan, write even more letters, type up your blog or type some more of your novel.8.55pm: Quickly run down to the house before the power cuts out (if it hasn’t already), go the loo, and get into bed while you can still see what you’re doing. If you’re lucky the power could last for up to another 3 hours. Or not so lucky… power till 10pm is fantastic, if the power’s on till midnight you tend to be kept awake by the light. If the power stays on you can, you guessed it, read for a little longer or just stare at the photos of your family and friends thinking ‘I wish you could be here with me, just for a day, so you can see for yourself how wonderful and how terrible life in the South Pacific can be’. It’s such an unbelievable adventure! :0) After day dreaming about all the notes, homeworks and tests you’re going to set to get back at you’re year 8 class you begin to nod. Now it’s off to sleep, where you’ll have vivid, weird, intriguing, sometimes terrifying dreams, because of the lariam (malaria medication). Don’t forget to check your bed for beetles, spiders and rat droppings, and say your prayers (you definitely need them some days) before nodding off to sleep. And guess what. You get to do it all again tomorrow!