An Update About… Everything

I’m suddenly BUSY. It’s great. The weeks are starting to fly by.

Last week we had our End-of-First-Quarter meeting, and I finally got to present the Provincial Observation Form I’d made in February, and the Reading Assessment I’m going to start this month. Got to prove that I’ve actually been doing something at my desk besides playing Spider Solitaire (which I’ve gotten very skilled at).

We have a teacher problem at the local school… one of the teachers is having a rough time at home and it’s coming out into her work. She has absolutely NO control over her classroom, which is a major problem seeing as her classroom has 20 first graders and 20 second graders. And there’s no real kindergarten in this country. She doesn’t really teach them anything, she just writes things on the chalkboard and expects them to copy into their exercise books. I’ll cut her a little slack – that IS the way things are done here still… it’s still very traditional compared to developed countries – but the other teachers at least TEACH in the process of writing and copying. Plus the things she writes are too difficult, and she says, “I don’t understand why they can’t write this.” Well first, you haven’t taught them how to write yet, and second, they don’t really know how to read yet and they certainly can’t read what you’ve written!! This is FIRST TERM, first and second grade!! The kids run all over the place, constantly leave the classroom, draw on the walls, dance on the tables, throw their books out the windows, and scream over her. And she literally does nothing. Sometimes she just keeps on “teaching,” talking in a normal voice, which no one can hear over the noise of the kids, and sometimes she just stands there and looks at them. When I did my needs assessment interview with her, she basically told me, “I don’t think you can really help me… I went to Teachers College, and I did all of [former PCV's] workshops when she was on Mota Lava… so I’m just fine. Maybe you can help the other teachers.”

So we’re starting slow. I’ve been challenged to have a one-day classroom management workshop planned and ready to go by the end of the term (mid-May). There will be INTENSE follow-up monitoring… hopefully she won’t be able to get away with not putting the training to use. We’ve already put an aide in the class to help with supervision, and I’m hoping to start training her with teaching reading to 1st grade, so the kids might not come out of this so bad. I WISH we could split the classes and make the aide a 1st grade teacher, but I’ve been told we can’t do this because we don’t have an extra classroom. I think they’re really just avoiding putting an untrained teacher in charge of a whole class.

In other news, my house is still amazing. I finally got a foodsafe last week, so the rats are no longer eating my bananas. Food acquisition has been a little rough… eating a lot of ramen and peanut butter (not together… ew.) but I get a bunch of island cabbage about once a week, so at least I have some green going into me. They’re still working on my house during the day while I’m at work. Monday I came home and the bathroom had been painted neon freaking yellow. I laughed out loud.

Cyclone season has ended as abruptly as it began. April started and the rain stopped. Done. Everything’s dusty… within a week the rainwater tanks were running low. I put a lock on mine after everyone told me I should, which makes me feel really selfish. Seriously, denying people water? But all of my neighbors know that if they need drinking water they can come ask me and I’ll unlock it for them. But only for drinking. We have a trickle of water supply out of a faucet, so at certain times of the day I’m able to fill a bucket or two. It depends on how many people are trying to use the pipe at once. I’ve been bathing in the creek a lot more to save water too, and I flush my toilet with dirty dishwater. My tank is still half full.

Tomorrow Brenda (our nurse at the PC office in Vila) and Kerry (my fellow Banks PCV) are coming, which is SUPER exciting! Brenda’s doing the annual site visiting run for Torba… she called it because she’s never been here, plus she wants to check out the clinic. She went to Kerry’s site yesterday and they’re coming in on the boat tomorrow. Girls’ weekend!!! Then Kerry is staying longer for meetings. She’s also coming back in May but she doesn’t know that yet (muahaha).

Something changed with quarantine and rules at the Vila Post Office, and I don’t understand it all, but what I gathered was that you should now send everything to my Sola address. Mom’s been sending things in those yellow plastic Scotch bubblewrap envelopes and that’s seeming to do the trick.

Alé. I think that’s it for now. Enjoy your springtime. It’s still frickin hot here.