Ups & Downs

Since departing from Islamabad on Saturday, it has been a journey of emotional highs and lows.  It was hard enough saying goodbye to the other volunteers who had been a great source of support over the two weeks (yes, I cried!) but I was even more upset to say goodbye to Gulzar from the VSO office, possibly the nicest and most helpful man ever!  Mike and I, together with our mountain of luggage, were accompanied by the president of the NGO we are working for (AKRA), who had come to collect us.  The journey to Renala Khurd where we are staying took over 8 hours, interrupted by a blown tyre on the motorway!  Driving through the changing landscape, it was easy to see why people had told us that Islamabad isn’t the real Pakistan.  Smart, newly built houses gave way to much poorer areas of mud brick houses crammed together on the outskirts of town, and this in turn gave way to vast areas of dry, rocky wilderness, interrupted only by the occasional cultivated field.  Where do the people who tend these fields live?!  I must admit that, looking at all the dust, dereliction and poverty (as seen through my ‘Western’ eyes) I did begin to wonder what on earth I was doing here.

We arrived at our abode earlier than expected which did cause a mild panic and the correct people were summoned to greet us.  It’s always really difficult in these situations, when you have had a long journey and all you want to do is unpack, have a shower and sleep but your hosts want to make you feel welcome and go to a lot of trouble.  We did our best!  The set up here is that we are actually staying in the guest house for the farm.  There are four guest rooms in total, and each room is huge, with a sitting area and en-suite bathroom.  There is also a large hall, sitting and dining room, kitchen and veranda.  It may be that the other rooms will be used by other visitors during our stay but essentially we have the place to ourselves.  There is an attendant who looks after the bungalow so we don’t need to do any cleaning and we would have had a cook if we hadn’t insisted that we were happy to cook for ourselves.  This may prove to be rather a rash decision as we then checked out the kitchen facilities – interesting!  We also have an armed guard at night!!

The people we have met here couldn’t have been more friendly or helpful.  In the first couple of days we were taken to the ‘club’ for the workers who live on site and given a tour of the chocolate factory (we were allowed to taste the produce as we went round too!).  We were taken to the farm shop (which interestingly doesn’t sell fresh fruit or veg!) and were set up with wireless internet connection.  We have had offers of lifts into Lahore and advice on where to go for a good holiday in the summer.  When we walk around the site people say hello and smile, and the security guards even salute us. 

On our first real day at ‘work’ we met our local colleagues in the office we will be based in at the girls’ high school in the village of Sher Ghar (someone missing a racehorse?!).  The three teacher trainers are very good fun, speak good English and made us feel most welcome.  We had to attend a special assembly where we sat on the stage and were introduced to the staff and students.  Mike earned himself a promotion as he was introduced as Sir Mike which made us giggle a lot!  We then had to stand up and address the students.  This was rather daunting but I did use a little bit of basic Urdu.  We then had to help with the awarding of sashes to the elected class coordinator in each class and pose for photos.  It was then off to the boys’ high school down the road for a similar exercise, where Mike gave a stirring speech that any UN representative would have been proud of!

On Wednesday we accompanied the three teacher trainers on their inspection of two of the village schools in the district.  Each school in the district is visited monthly to monitor their progress (you thought OFSTED inspections were bad!).  This proved to be a real eye opener.  At the first school I was immediately amazed to see a class being taught outside on the floor.  A tour of the school revealed tiny classrooms with bare brick walls, no windows and no light except for what came in through the door (I’m not sure if there were light fittings but there is rarely electricity so that’s kind of irrelevant).  There was nothing vaguely resembling a display and not all classes had blackboards.  The children sat on the floor, working silently in tatty notebooks perched on their knees or on the floor.  Equally amazing was the speed with which chairs were gathered by a couple of children for us to sit on and that seemingly out of nowhere bottles of Pepsi appeared, which would have been paid for by one of the teachers.  The teachers were friendly and smiled a lot, no mean feat considering the conditions they were working in and the fact that they are only paid £8 a month (this salary is applicable to all the village schools in the district.  Some are paid even less). 

At the second school, three classes were held outside because there was no building to accommodate them.  This, we were told, was the best village school in the district.  The community was very active and had joined together to build the school themselves.  The tragedy was that I could see no difference between this and the last school.  I cried.

I feel very humbled and ashamed of all the times I complained at school when things weren’t ‘just so’ – my interactive white board not working, not enough glue sticks for children to have one each etc.  I honestly wouldn’t know where to begin trying to teach in these conditions and the teachers have my full respect for the work they do, even if their methods seem alien to the way I have been trained to teach.  The thing that is so hard to understand is the government’s lack of priority for education.  This is no place for me to make a political rant and I certainly don’t pretend to know all the facts, but only 2.3% of the country’s GDP is spent on education.  Pakistan has signed up to the Millennium Development Goals so has effectively agreed to raise this to 7% by 2015.  However they now say they won’t be able to meet this and have asked for the deadline to be extended to 2030.  In Okara District the government built schools in every village, yet over 300 of these buildings remain empty because there are no teachers and no money to finance them.  AKRA has leased some of these schools, trained teachers who live in the villages, pay the teachers wages, pay scholarships for the very poor children (there is no such thing as free education here, even in the poorest of villages) and do what they can to help the teachers.  The leases they agreed with the government were for 10 years.  However, after 4 years and a change of government, they have been given notice on some of their schools and will have to move out of these buildings, meaning there will be no schools in these villages.  AKRA are trying to find ways of building their own schools, so if anyone wants to buy a school in Pakistan for £4,000 let me know!!! 

The kids are amazing too.  They speak Punjabi at home as their local language then when they arrive in nursery class they are taught Urdu and English which continues throughout their schooling.  In Yr 8 they start learning Arabic, which is the language the Koran is written in.  So by the age of 12 they have received education in four different languages.  A Yr 2 class (age 6) I sat with had learnt all their tables up to x12.  A Yr 4 class were adding mixed fraction, finding the common denominator!

On a high note, travelling home from school on the bus with some of the other teachers proved to be rather a raucous affair and flies in the face of the belief that Pakistani women are subdued and restrained.  The ladies had been chatting noisily about clothes and shoes, like all ladies do, when the girl next to me (whom I had considered to be the most demure of the lot) pointed out of the window and asked me what ‘that’ was in English.  Given that we were travelling quite fast at the time I wasn’t too sure what it was exactly that she was pointing to.  I could see a wall and some buildings.  “House?”  I answered hopefully.  But no, that wasn’t it.  A quick discussion with her colleagues followed and she came out with rather a shocking English word.  I explained that this was a really bad word in England and that what she wanted to say was cow dung!  Hence my first English lesson in Pakistan was about cow dung.  They explained that in Pakistan it was used for fuel and some people even smoke it – did I want to try?!  Much hilarity and a certain amount of bonding, though not quite in the way I had expected.

Today (Thursday) we got down to a bit more of the nitty gritty of our job and trying to tie down exactly what it is that they want us to do.  We have established that there is a government curriculum that is followed.  The government produce workbooks for each class (Yr1 – 5) in each subject (maths, Urdu, English, science, social studies and Islamia) and teachers work through the workbook with the children.  They need to cover each of the lessons before the end of the school year.  They then seem to do a month of revision and 2 weeks of teacher set tests in each subject (Yr 5 do government set tests).  The focus very much seems to be on the passing of tests.  One of our tasks it to write a long term plan for each of the subjects, looking for cross curricular links and not necessarily sticking to the order that topics are set out in the books.  We have asked for copies of the books in English as the ones in the office are in Urdu script – we aren’t that advanced yet!  Mike and I have lots of ideas as to what we’d like to do but obviously we are here to do what our local colleagues would like us to do, so the direction we take will be directed by them.  There are so many things that need ‘fixing’ that it is hard to know where to start and one year certainly wouldn’t be long enough.  However we are pleased that some degree of work has started, even if it is only in the ideas and planning stage.

Another breakthrough today when we made our first buying trip into the town outside the security of the farm gates.  We had to go and buy fruit and veg for dinner and had been directed to the right market area for such a purchase.  The produce was beautifully laid out on mats on the ground by the many sellers and we wandered around, attracting rather a lot of curious, but not unfriendly, attention. We decided that one stall had all the things we wanted and thus commenced our requests.  Now I know my Urdu isn’t great but I can manage to ask for a kilo of potatoes or similar with the aid of pointing, and can ask how much things are.  However we seemed to have picked a seller who didn’t speak Urdu (Punjabi is the local language) and found ourselves engaged in rather confusing and hilarious exchanges.  We ended up with half a kilo of garlic (no danger of being bitten by vampires in this house!) and, not knowing how much the total came to, I peeled 10 rupee notes out of my purse until I had given him the required 140 rupees.  By this time quite a crowd had gathered to watch – nothing like a bit of free entertainment!

Well once again I have rambled on.  Thank you to all of you who have posted replies to previous blogs, sent emails, posted Facebook messages, been in touch on Skype or sent parcels.  All contact with you is much appreciated and I look forward to your news, no matter how mundane you may feel it is!  Don’t forget that you can look at photos too, although I don’t think you can make them any bigger to view – sorry Kate!

Lots of love and big hugs to all.

K xx

I think I should include some sort of disclaimer to the effect of “all the views expressed in my blogs are entirely my own and not a reflection of the views of VSO” – just in case!