CABBAGE WATCHING

28th September 2008

This is a new phenomenon!From our front window we can see our neighbour's garden, which is full of very healthy looking cabbages (see photo).It runs alongside the path leading to the school and the road.So, cabbage watching is undertaken by all and sundry first thing in the morning, and I mean first thing, ie before 6am, during the evenings and at week-ends. It has been known for a teacher to be spied leaving the classroom during a maths lesson to deliver an incantation to the cabbage patch, between fractions and long division!Could this be a form of pest control?The progress of the cabbages attracts the concerns of the community and many hours are spent around the cabbage patch discussing it's merits, admiring the size, shape, colour and growth spurts of these vegetables.Never has a brassica been so lovingly and persistently nurtured. Is this a school or a training ground for future Alan Titmarshes and Charlie Dimmocks, rather that the future generation of PNG?It would appear more attention is given to the ruddy cabbages than to the forthcoming examinations being anxiously prepared for by the students.

The other major occupation involves 'go roun, roun, come back'.This consists of wandering into town, or anywhere else for that matter, as long as 'wandering' takes place, which has to be undertaken very slowly.It involves hanging around a bit and meandering back, with no end result or particular purpose, other than chewing some betel nut on the way, indulging in awesome projectile spitting, an art which has been perfected over the ages and shaking hands with anyone and everyone encountered.It can occur at any time during the day, it matters not whether a class is waiting to be taught, a meeting to be attended or books to be marked.It serves to fill the interminable, endless, fruitless hours, when there is nothing to do as a result of only having to teach the occasional lesson!!Many teachers arrive to school late, leave early, often don't teach the classes they're supposed to and then complain about how busy they are - aaarrrrrgh!We have helped them to engender reports for the end of the year, which involves computer generated wording and requires the subject teachers to sign them and fill in a number for each pupil.When this was patiently explained, the comment was that this amount of extra work is going to kill us!!! Dear teachers amongst you - do you remember the days (and nights) of writing hundreds of reports by hand and if you were a year head, hundreds more?

Another puzzling phenomenon is the fact that whatever John and/or I suggest, put forward, draw up, offer as an idea or put forward a paper for consideration, it is accepted immediately, without question or challenge. This is somewhat disconcerting and unsafe, so we have devised a plan.We are currently putting together drawings to rearrange the administration block in an attempt to improve administrative efficiency.The administration block houses the three prize monkeys and the two administrative staff.We're going to present plans to the senior staff next week and we thought we'd omit a door or two and see if they a) notice and b) dare to question it!!

I'm waiting for a staff meeting to begin - agenda? What's that?It was due to start at 2.40pm (it's now 3pm) and there are no signs of imminent activity, only one teacher playing games on the computer and another unidentified dude lying full length on the settee asleep!No-one else has appeared to join John and I.It's 3pm - students have all gone home ages ago (the school day is 7.45 - 4.06pm!), the place is usually dead by midday.When we consider the relentless pressure experienced by teachers in the UK, this set up is unbelievable.Why don't students revolt?Why don't parents complain?Why don't the education authorities take a stand?

At the end of term 3 we felt we were making some progress, but now, at the beginning of term 4, nothing seems to have changed.We have become rather despondent and are desperately casting around to find ways we haven't yet tried to illicit change and find ways of dispelling the general lethargy which appears to permeate the school day - weapons of mass disruption are the only things which currently spring to mind!!!We are now off to an Executive meeting, where Mr Notaclue will not have remembered what day it is, so probably won't turn up. Mr Weakness is out of the country and Mr Incompetent will have no minutes of the last meeting, won't have remembered what we talked about or what was decided and will probably have to leave early to look at his timetable to see when he's due to go home!!

On a different note, the strawberry jam was a huge success.John managed to bribe the Home Economics teacher to make covers for our chairs (see photos - nice covers eh?!!!) with a pot of jam, which she said she'd had for her breakfast - not the whole pot I hope!!I'm sure those of you who know or who have taught with John, will recollect him being a past master at charming the dinner ladies in school, so he got a big helping at lunch times - well this was the tack he used with the Home Ec. teacher!!It worked a treat!! I didn't tell you how we did our measurements for the jam.We got a pen, (family please note - no paper required on this occasion!) a plank of wood, which we balanced on the pen.Then we had 1Kg bag of sugar, which we balanced on one end and on the other a plastic pot which we filled with kgs of strawberries. Ingenious eh?! Too many of them, so guess where they ended up - John was doing the measuring!!The attempts at shortbread have improved since we brought back some caster sugar from UK, but still not as good as they should be.Maarten has given us a recipe for pizza base, as we are able to get dried yeast here. So we've made a couple of great pizzas as we found some ham in the butchery that hadn't turned green, so that, with fresh pineapple and cheese - yummy!The supermarket has started to stock cheese now, even parmesan, so civilisation is beginning to make its mark. The latest attempt, which is in the oven as we speak, is a carrot cake.Measurements have been guessed, baking powder substituted for bicarb of soda and the oven temperature of our little gas camping stove is anybody's guess, so if it's edible it'll be a miracle!

On Friday there was a drugs awareness day in Kundiawa, an attempt to bring home the dangers of smoking marijuana and brewing steam (local beer).It promised to be a day of haranguing for the students and of course no lessons, so we took off to Goroka.John has a verruca on his foot and we needed some treatment (try explaining to a pharmacist in Tok Pisin what a verrucca is!) plus some supplies.The PMV ride as always was great, with the usual stunning scenery, interesting occurrences on the way, baggerrup roads and hours to wait while the bus fills up before we can go. We stocked up on mayonnaise, beef stock cubes, tinned tomatoes and stumbled upon some half decent looking pork fillet, which we snapped up in the hope it wouldn't cook by the time we got home!We then had lunch in a hotel 'The Bird of Paradise'.The only edible item on the menu apart from pizza was chicken burger and chips!Not the most delectable, but we enjoyed it.The other options were some dodgy looking stew (meat of indeterminable origin) and a vindaloo curry!!! We decided to play safe!

The weather here is unusually wet at odd times during the day, but lovely sunshine otherwise.We envy you the onset of autumn - enjoy!

The smells indicate the cake is done and John's dribbling, so I will go and see what the damage is.

Love from us both

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