Week 29 - Visitors

This week I will definitely not be nominated by my children as teacher of the week! Detentions have been handed out left right and centre, including Esther, which was a really hard call. As her sponsor it really hurts me to hand out a detention, but rules are rules, and at school I have to be so careful to not blur the boundary as her teacher and sponsor. If I find the boundary situation difficult, I can only imagine how she must feel, as a 10-year-old knowing we are friends and sisters, but also student and teacher. I spoke to a friend recently whose mother was their teacher at school and they confirmed my thought about the situation for Esther – the long and short of it: it’s difficult.

My weekend hit a great high point on Thursday and Saturday, where some familiar faces found me in Jaffna! Tas, one of my oldest friends from secondary school in Hertford is here in Sri Lanka with some of her university pals doing their elective in Ragama Teaching Hospital near Colombo. They decided this weekend to come up to Jaffna, to see what’s exciting about this place, why I love it so much and it gave me a fantastic opportunity to bring new people to come to know and see what The Dust Project and Paalam Project achieve together!

On Thursday evening, I met the four of them for dinner at The Valampuri, and we enjoyed traditional Jaffna food: pittu, string hoppers and sordi, rice and curry. Excellent food, friendship and English conversations. I spent all of Saturday with Tas, Shaun, Nicole and Emma, and we did all the touristy things available to do in Jaffna. We headed to the market, the fort, ice cream and the Nallur Temple. About all there is to do in Jaffna. After this, we managed to fit all five of us in the tuk to Irupalai, and then wandered around the village.

My Sunday included something rather different this week, I was asked by Jenny Amma to visit an old man from our church in hospital, with another youth member (Jane). We spent time by his bedside, speaking to his wife and praying for them. Recently he has had several heart attacks, and as a result has three days ago had another severe one, which ended with him in CCU, on a ventilator and requiring a pace maker to be fitted. We also were asked to go and see a Hindu lady, on the same ward, by a Canadian church member of NLM, which was not a successful visit – before we could even introduce ourselves, she asked us to leave! It seems she doesn’t “like our Jesus”.

My week ended with another hectic, yet thoroughly enjoyable day at school, organising my classroom, working out my photocopying needs, handing out detentions at school (yes, I’m the teacher the children fear!), and stressing the importance of inclusion, friendship and kindness to my class. We have just recently had a new child join our learning centre, and there have been arguments and disagreements; I am still in the process of working out who is causing the issues or if they are all stemming from the same people. My evenings have also been focussed on school work, doing Paalam Project jobs for Karen and Angel as well as bits and pieces for The Dust Project.

As I have been asked to take charge of Reena and her studies, it is now my responsibility to oversee her dictation, homework and ensuring she is studying hard in the evenings. The culture here in Sri Lanka baffles me regarding schooling: the parents ship their children off to school at 7am, with the school day ending at 2pm, rushing them home to quickly eat and then taking them off for additional tuition, buying study books for them to complete every day after school until it is time for them to eat dinner. Some of these children are studying for well over 12 hours of the day! The problem with this, although the children are clever, they as a result begin to lack lots of social skills, including being able to talk with others, use their imaginations or consider other people. One of my attempts here in Jaffna has been to encourage my class students to dive into arts and crafts, drama etc. instead of spending so much time in front of their books and memorising information, although it has not gone down well with the parents.