Chapatti Challenge!

How many teachers can you fit in the back of a minibus? It’s not a question I thought I would ever have the opportunity to investigate. I was wrong. Initially it was rather amusing as more and more ladies piled in and they laughed delightedly at my bemused expression. However the novelty quickly wore off as cramp in the legs set in and the bumpy road played havoc with my bladder! Poor Mike was practically hanging out of the window. I fear this sort of thing may be a regular occurrence!

Work continues at a pace – slow! I’m keeping fairly busy writing example schemes of work for each year group for science. The plan is to show this to teachers when I start their training and ask them to produce a scheme of work for each of the topics they have to teach, and to then use it to write individual lesson plans. Planning is something that is very poor here with 80% of teachers doing no lesson plans (no different to home some might say!!). This is because they simply pick up the Punjab syllabus textbook that all the children have and do the next few pages in the book for their lesson. Hardly exciting but requires little work on the part of the teacher. Can see that I’ll have my work cut out trying to convince them to do more work! It was an eye opener to me that, after a school outing on Monday when they didn’t return to school until 5.30pm, many of the teachers simply didn’t turn up on Tuesday morning. I asked the head teacher where everyone was and she said they were probably tired from the trip and not coming in! Can you imagine that happening in UK? I have no idea what happened to those classes but the school finished at midday instead of 2.15pm and we all went home. Can’t see how education here is going to improve unless people start to take their responsibilities a whole lot more seriously and that has to start by people at the top setting a better example.

We did have a very good workshop for teachers last week run by two fantastic ladies who teach in Islamabad. It is fair to say that Mike and I were rather confused as to why they were coming in to do training as that is what we thought we were here for and were rather sceptical about the whole thing. (Turns out that one of them is related to Mr Mohsin, the owner of Mitchell’s, in some convoluted way. This seems to be a common occurrence in Pakistan! (Not everyone being related to Mr Mohsin!!)) However the ladies were lovely, very inspiring and have similar lines of thinking and frustrations about the Pakistani education system as us. I managed to follow some of the training even though it was in Urdu and it was interesting working with the primary teachers that I’ll be training – I have my work cut out as they were more interested in what their end presentation looked like rather than content. And so it came to pass that at the end of the day I found myself in the centre of a group of primary teachers, waving the Pakistani flag whilst they sang the National Anthem and held hands. A most strange experience and probably the longest National Anthem on record!

On Sunday we ventured down into Renala Khurd, the town just outside the farm gates, for our first proper explore. It’s much bigger than I first thought and once I relaxed into the whole atmosphere it turned out to be a jolly fun experience! I managed to buy writing paper and envelopes from a man who had been to Glasgow University – very friendly, fluent English. I bargained for a set of bone china mugs and used a combination of Urdu and English to buy ribbon from the embroidery shop. (I say shop but none of these places are what we would know as a shop at home. How anyone knows which shop sells what is also a mystery, although if you go into one and ask for something they haven’t got, they send someone out to a different place to get it for you. Now that’s what I call service!)

The most exciting thing I’ve done this week is learn how to make chapattis. It would be fair to say that up to this point our diet has been ‘pleasant’ – you know, good but not over exciting. Mike makes us porridge every morning (he’s up at 5.30am so needs something to do!), lunch doesn’t happen until we get back from school at about 3.30pm and is usually a sandwich or toast with Marmite, and dinner has been good but fairly limited. One of my favourite dinners so far has been omelette and chips! We have also gone vegetarian when we have done our own cooking, having seen the state of the ‘butchers’ and not having the desire to see a chicken butchered before our eyes – wimps! So it was with much enthusiasm that I had my cooking lesson from Salva (our attendant’s) daughter whose name I think is Shakila, though I may be wrong. She is delightful and was very patient with me and we laughed a lot as we tried to converse in a mixture of broken Urdu and broken English. As well as teaching me how to make chapattis, she also tried to teach me some new words and found my inability to make certain sounds very funny. I’m sure I was saying what she told me but obviously not! The next challenge will be to learn to make a good dhal (just for you Rach!).

One thing I am having trouble with is trying to decipher the rather ambiguous replies to questions from colleagues. When asking people if they would like a cup of tea more often than not I get the reply “thank you” accompanied by a waggling of the head and a wave of the hand. Now, does thank you mean no thank you or is it a thank you in advance of bringing tea? And the head waggle is neither a nod to say yes nor a shake to say no. Confusing. I have gone with the approach that it is better to make it (and they then feel obliged to drink it) rather than not make it and cause offence. This response is common to other questions too, not just with offering tea. Everyone around me continues to be friendly, helpful and curious. If I need anything I just have to ask and someone does it for me. This sounds great, and don’t get me wrong it really is, but it does mean I’m not learning how to do things for myself. For example I asked where I could buy a card for our internet connection and instantly someone was dispatched to make the purchase for me. Obviously I was very grateful as it saved me the time and trouble of having to do it myself, but next time I need one I’ll have to ask again as I still don’t know where to go. Maybe I’ll get used to asking people to do such things for me but it isn’t a very English approach! I also find it odd that people in Pakistan place so much emphasis on what degree you have and which university you got it from. People have often been introduced to us using their name first followed immediately by their qualification. It’s amazing how many people out here have Masters degrees (?!). Four men have asked me what my degree is in and which university I got it from. So far I have resisted the temptation to say I have a degree in quantum physics from Oxford but maybe …!

I received my first Christmas card yesterday (thanks Pam & Ray, very organised!) and it’s funny to think that Christmas is less than a month away. Obviously out here there is no Christmas music in shops, no commercials for overpriced toys and no glut of seasonal food in the supermarkets. Add to this the fact that the daytime temperature is still about 20°C and it would be very easy for the festive season to slip by without realising. However we have made arrangements to host Christmas here and celebrate with the other volunteers who arrived in Pakistan with us. Not entirely sure where we are going to get a turkey from or how we are going to cook lunch for 8 on one electric ring and 2 gas rings (no oven!). At least we have a full dinner service to use – including gravy boat!

Well that’s all for this week. I have put some photos of rural schools on Facebook which are a larger size than I can put on this blog (it has taken a bloomin’ long time to upload them though!). If you are interested you can see them at:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=63426&l=f7336&id=626567720

Have a good week. Drop me a line if you can – it’s always good to hear from you!

Lots of love and big hugs. K xx