SPORTS DAY!

18th April 2008

John and I are in serious need of counselling!

To-day was sports day and trials for the district sports!Oh my god - Paul, Dennis and Anne you would have turned in your grave and I think it'll take a few glasses of wine for us to get over it!

Briefing was at 8am.3 people were in the staffroom in addition to John and I at that time.Panic had set in as the photocopier was locked up so the programme hadn't been printed (thinking ahead just doesn't happen here).By 8.20 half the staff had sauntered in and had a briefing of sorts which included a warning by the deputy that 'this was a normal working day and no member of staff was to run away and a roll call would be carried out frequently during the day'.

Two classes were despatched to mark out the field (it couldn't be done the night before because 'marking out the field' involved putting bamboo sticks and tape down to mark out the track, javelin, shot put and discus.) Forget a mowed field with lovely white lines, the field was just short of a ploughed field and more like a meadow with varying lengths of grass, bare patches and holes (it is usually used for rugby).Reminiscent of a third class rugby club's third team pitch in the 1970s, which doubled as a cow meadow.

Whole school trooped through the town to the public sports field. No teachers in sight, and the school was organised into marching lines by prefects.Two hours later, the sports began.It took that long for everything to be marked out and for those two hours, non-competitors were sitting on the grass in the blazing sun waiting for events to start.

John by default was starting the track events (no one else turned up to help at the start) - we madly offered out services.He had no gun, no whistle, no nothing and was reduced to 'ready, steady go clap'!False starts were heralded by 'hey - get back here'!Forget Adidas running shoes, bare feet was the order of the day.But heck could some of those guys shift. These were supposed to be the heats, but I am sure one guy ran three times, I think he was trying very hard to find a heat he could win, so he would go through to the finals!

For my sins, I was managing the javelin!! O my god!When I got there one of the teachers was telling the pupils to practise.We had 2 javelins, one without a point.This teacher was making them throw the wrong way on the javelin sector, right into the path of the discus throwers and any other random person wandering across the field!I sorted that out and to my horror realised that at least half of these pupils had never held a javelin in their hand before!It was horrendous.After the first throw, a helpful student collected the javelin and chucked it back at the waiting participants - death was rearing it's head every moment!At one point, a student's little sister wandered across the throwing area and she would have been all of 2 years old!It was pitiful, as many of these young people had such raw talent that with a bit of coaching (mainly in how to hold the damn thing!) they could be championship material.The ultimate, was a senior girl, throwing the javelin dressed in a skirt and wearing flip flops!My one worry was that all the students, and there were many, who I had to disqualify for overstepping the line, might take it into their head to take revenge - I may have to go into hiding!

The 800 metres was a farce, as no-one kept to their lanes and folk kept cutting corners.Thank goodness a relay wasn't attempted, as that really would have been a joke, as the sticks holding down the lane tapes kept getting knocked over and the lanes became non-existent, so change-over boxes would have been a jumble of broken tapes.To our great relief, the whole thing was abandoned before the finals because of rain, although it now means we have to go through the whole fiasco again for the finals!

But all was not lost, on our way home (traumatised) there were two parcels waiting for us at the post office - goody boxes from Lisa.At last, John has got his brown sauce and not only that, but chocolate was also enclosed, along with decent corned beef and tuna!!So the week-end menu will be omelette on Saturday followed by John's favourite corned beef hash on Sunday (which is not my favourite, but maybe I can smother it in brown sauce?). It's Friday night and we've survived another week, actually it's been quite a good week.We've submitted our observations and recommendations from our initial baseline monitoring exercise to the headteacher and he's still speaking to us! (it was pretty dire - e.g our findings were that of the 22 lessons observed ,25% did not have a teacher in the class).Not only that, but our VSO country Education boss, to whom we mailed our findings, was so impressed with our work that he is going to use it as a template for other volunteers, so we were pleased with ourselves.

Next week we are doing our first in-service training with the whole staff - 'what makes an effective teacher'and 'Outcome based education.'I think it might be a training session like they've never experienced before - fingers crossed it works, as we're taking quite a risk as we're asking them to think and be creative- Yikes!

On a sad note.The other evening, the oldest daughter next door was sitting in the front of the house in the evening (her family had all gone on holiday and she had been left to look after the house - she's 18 but looks anything between 18 and 40) She was picking what looked like weeds from the ditch.I went over to talk to her and discovered she had no food in the house.I had a tuna pasta bake in the oven and invited her to join us, which she did very shyly.I was afraid she might not like the food, but she had seconds, so I think she did.She told us that the only cooking utensil she had was one pot in which she cooked everything over an open fire, no oven in the house.She, as the oldest daughter, goes to school part time and is responsible for cooking for the whole family every day as well as looking after the 4 other children, cleaning and doing the washing.She has no life at all.The food consists of greens, boiled with coconut milk, bananas, sometimes some meat, (eg the chicken I witnessed being slaughtered) in this one pot.She's never in her life had pudding or cake! She wants to go to nursing college, but I think there's fat chance of that.Very sad. She wants me to check her English essays, but they haven't materialised so far.

The latest dastardly trick John has played is that he said I could ring the children (?) at the week-end, only if I let him have the chair - blackmail or what! We're still speaking despite everything - lack of sleep being a major issue, as the wretched dogs really are unspeakably noisy in the night!But the students are a delight and that makes up for everything!

Love to all

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