school closing, complete with cute uniforms and lots of flowers

22 November 2014

Firstly I’m going to say: HAPPY SIX MONTH BIRTHDAY SMOL LAURA! Woo hoooo today my namesake turns six months old and is cute, happy and healthy as ever. She just started eating solid human food, can turn herself over on her stomach and is on her way to sitting up. She is still the perfect baby only crying when she is hungry or needs a new diaper and smiles and laughs all the time. Some of her favorite things are being held over my head like she’s flying and the sound of a person whistling. The latter I have just recently discovered. If she’s upset we just start whistling and she is happy again. So simple!

Tis the season for school closings in Vanuatu. The school year officially ends on November 27^th but some classes are already finished and closed until February. On 13 November Class 8 finished their exams (which determine which secondary school they will go on to next year) and had their closing ceremony. Thinking back on graduation in the U.S. a lot of attention is focused on the work of individual students—we receive presents and praise congratulating us on completing one more step in the path towards a successful future. In Vanuatu the students are praised for their hard work as well, but there is an arguably stronger emphasis on the work done by the teachers.

After the headmaster and teachers took time thanking the students and parents for their work and support throughout the school year, each student came up to the front to shake hands with each teacher and present them with a small gift of thanks. Some students gave plates, cups and bowls, others gave colorful fabrics or hand-woven mats or fans. I had no idea that any of this was happening until that day and since my work doesn’t focus much on class 8 students I was surprised and so thankful when a received gifts along with the other teachers. It is also tradition to shake baby powder on the shoulders of someone you’re thanking or congratulating so by the end of the ceremony I was covered in sweet smelling frangepani leis (in bislama they’re called salu salus), calico and babypowder. One girl gave me a woven fan so luckily I had that to cool myself off as the layers were making me sweat like crazy!

After the students finished sharing their gifts we all had a huge, delicious meal of rice with various soups with vegetables, chicken and fish. Eating a big meal together at the end of a celebration is also tradition so with so many school closings and marriages throughout the months of November and December one must watch their rice intake!

A little update on my work at the school—switching over to working with small groups in the library has really helped my ability to focus on individual students and have the time to work with everyone on their individual levels. Some classes come in and we do one on one reading, others do group reading. Sometimes we play matching games with rhymes or beginning/ending sounds and some classes are reading plays aloud.

I have talked to the headmaster about how we can build up the library and he agreed to talk to the school board about buying paint for both the inside and outside of the building as well as something to put down on the floor. He also gave me the okay to discard old, damaged our outdated books. A lot of the books we have came from Australia and some are as old as the 1950s. Luckily there are some possibilities in the works for new books so I’m going through all the ones we have now to make space for new books. We’re going to sell all of the discarded books at the closing ceremony for year 1-7 next week to make a little money to put towards a library fund. The books will be sold cheaply so the fund will be small but I just need enough for materials for repairing books and maybe the beginning of the library renovation funding. The headmaster and I also decided that it would be a good idea for the school to hire a librarian from the community who I will help to train to look after the books, help students when they come to the library and ensure that the library still functions after I leave. We are going to advertise a position for a volunteer librarian for the first six months of the school year. If the person chosen completes their duties (mainly, shows up when they’re supposed to), the school will decide on a small salary for the librarian in the future.

I have also been preparing to paint a large world map on the outside wall of the library. The World Map Project is a project done by Peace Corps Volunteers all around the world and a really helpful tool especially in Vanuatu because these tiny island get lost easily on most world maps. I have painted the background a really sweet blue/green color and traced the outline of the world map using one of the teacher’s projectors. I used a map who’s middle is Australia to draw more focus on the Pacific. Off to the side I’m also going to draw a big map of Vanuatu as well as a large map of Malekula so everyone can see were their village lies in relation to the rest of the world. I might also have to draw a larger map of Martha’s Vineyard but we’ll see about that. When Pete gets here in December we’re going to work on the map so that he can leave his mark at my school as well!

The next exciting end of school year event was the Kinde (pre-school) graduation. Every Friday that I was in my village (not in town eating ice cream/going to the bank) I was lucky enough to get to hang out with the cute kiddos at Matanvat Kinde along with their two rockstar teachers. There are about 25 kids (depending on the day) ages 3-6 that go to Matanvat Kinde where they are fortunate enough to have two really awesome teachers who play games with them, sing songs, do silly dances and create fun activities for the kids to use to learn numbers, letters, patterns, shapes, colors and more. Kinde Fridays are the best days of my week because before I’m even remotely close to the front gate of the school I can hear the kids screaming my name. Not that I don’t feel love from the kids at the primary school, they just don’t give me quite the warm welcome that the kinde students do.

When I get to kinde on Fridays I have the kids start off by saying “Good morning, my name is ____.” After they introduce themselves I give them a sticker (this is where all my care package stickers are going!). After that I usually have a custom story to read to them or another book that I just translate into bislama while I read. A couple months ago, after receiving a beautiful care package from Kathy Ferland with multiple Shel Silverstien books included, I read them The Giving Tree. I remember reading the Giving Tree many times as a child but its funny to think about just how differently our brains process information depending on how old we are. As I was reading the story I kept thinking to myself, “wow, this is an even more beautiful story that I remembered,” but soon enough I was actually choking back tears and getting really, really awkward just crying in front of the kids and teachers. Luckily I was able to control myself enough to get through it because the discussion that followed was even more impressive than my lack of ability to control my emotions while reading. I asked questions about the relationship between the little boy and the tree, how they could see the emotions of the characters change throughout the story and in the end, a few extra smart ones understood the importance of taking care of your friends and not spoiling them. The teachers also loved the book so I think reading the Giving Tree will have to become an annual occurrence over at kinde.