Second Week of School, Rain water, Exercise

Patamea, Friday, February 1st- Friday, February 8th, 2013


Currently reading: Why We Run: A Natural History by Bernd Heinrich

Well, I’ve been without water for a full week now. I don’t fully understand why but it has to do with the extreme amount of rain we’ve had the last week or two. It affects the water supply. This is the third time it’s happened since I moved in in December but this is by far the longest I’ve gone without water. Normally it comes back on the same day just a few hours later. I’m pretty sure my neighbors behind me have water back, though, because I think I heard their shower going earlier. When I turn my faucets on all I hear is the hiss of water trying to make its way through the pipes and into my sink but there isn’t enough pressure to push it through. Luckily, living on the school grounds means I have access to the gigantic container they use to collect rain water. It’s not ideal as the rain water is collected after it has pour down the roof of the school building collecting anything that might be on the roof (hint: there are a LOT of birds that hang out around the school). I filter and treat the water before I use it for drinking or cooking which is a bit of a chore involving lugging buckets of water several yards from the container to my house then pouring it into my filter after using a ‘ie lavalava to filter some of the larger chunks and then adding a few drops of bleach to sterilize it. The water then takes an hour or two to filter through so I have to repeat this at least once a day. I take bucket showers, which is actually kind of nice except in the mornings (people generally take several showers a day here) when the water hasn’t had a chance to warm in the sun and the temperature is lower than the normal 80+. But even still, a cold shower isn’t that bad. I mean, I’m living on a tropical island, right? The only real issue is that I don’t really have time to wait for the water to filter in order to wash dishes. So I don’t use treated water to wash dishes right now. It’s better than nothing. I do use antibacterial soap at least.

The second week of school went smoothly. I wasn’t completely clear on where to start with the students because I hadn’t been shown a curriculum, told what topics the teachers had finished with or where they were planning on beginning, nor shown any textbooks that the teachers use. The students don’t really have textbooks here. Normally the teacher will just write things up ahead of time or during class and the students copy it down. This is what many classes consist of and where the students get there “textbooks” from. With this being the case, I revised a literacy assessment from one of my textbooks to use with groups rather than individuals. It wasn’t ideal but it allowed me to gather some information about where the students were as a class and even shed some light on where individuals were at. I had students write their names, current year in school, the English alphabet, the numbers 1 through 20 (digits), and copy a sentence (The boys and girls are going to school). I had them recite the alphabet as a class. Lastly, I had them read basic body parts (head, eyes, nose, mouth, leg, hand) and match the word to a picture for several basic objects (boy, girl, table, chair, car, pencil, book, door, clock). Ideally this would have been done individually with every student but I knew my co-teachers were going to probably pick the groups themselves whether or not I did an assessment. So, I figured I would use a class period to gather as much information as I could to inform my future classes.

It helped a lot but I was still not very clear exactly where the students were with their English and where they needed to go. The students are divided into 3 groups in each year: one low-level, one mid-level, and one high-level. I chose to label the groups “A”, “B”, and “C” rather than the names “weak”, “average”, and “strong” that the teachers wanted to give them (they also regularly refer to students as vaivai, weak or valea, foolish/dumb to their faces). I co-teach 2-3 times per week with each year then meet with each group in each year separately once a week (9 classes). I used these classes to go over basic introductions (“What’s your name?” “My name is ________.”) which was actually needed and informative. I found the groups to be more or less well divided by current English-level although I think it will be a challenge when I try to talk to the teachers about switching students to different levels if need be. My first impression is that once they label a student “weak” or “strong” that label sticks and that is how the student is seen throughout their education. But we’ll see. I didn’t get to meet with all the groups because we had teachers’ meetings during class time a couple of days and then today and entire class was absent and I’m not sure why. All in all I’m happy with how my first week of actual teaching went. I have lots of ideas for where to go and have even found some curriculum books that list the learning objectives term by term, skill by skill (listening, speaking, reading, writing) for each year.

In my free time I’ve organized a fitness competition for the PCVs. Everyone who is participating puts WSD$10 into a pot. They identify their fitness goals for the term making them personally challenging yet attainable. Then we will be keeping track of our progress throughout the term and whoever keeps to their plan the best wins the pot. It’s simple, easy to participate in, and hopefully encourages some healthy lifestyle choices while we’re volunteering. It should be fun! I’ve been using a resistance band and some body-weight exercises I wrote down before coming here 5-6 days a week and running 3-4 days a week. I’m already noticing some changes with energy and weight/muscle so I think I’ll keep to it.

On TV, First Week of School

Patamea; Sunday, January 27th-Thursday, January 31st


Currently reading: Contact by Carl Sagan

So, I was on Samoan TV on Sunday. Part of being a PCV in Samoa means attending church as religion is a huge part of the culture here. It would be very difficult to accomplish much if the members of the community saw a PCV refusing to be involved in religious activities. So I’ve been attending my host family’s church. I’ve also joined the choir and have been going to practices regularly. I have a horrible singing voice but it’s drowned out by the amazing voices of the people around me. Singing is a much larger part of everyday life in Samoa than in the U.S so most (all?) Samoans have amazing singing voices. Now church services in Samoa, in addition to normally happening twice on Sunday (in the morning and afternoon and people usually attend both services), different churches from around Samoa are filmed and played on TV between the other services. So you can go to church all day! Yay! On this particular Sunday, our church was being filmed. So the choir was busy practicing several songs for the filming. The night before we were filmed singing a few of the songs in front of the church. Then the whole service was filmed on Sunday and played later that afternoon. There were even a few close ups of me. It was a pretty unique experience especially for a PCV seeing as though the last time this church had been filmed was in 2000.

My first week of classes as a Peace Corps Volunteer is coming to an end. This has been months, years really, in the coming. Starting school is the culmination of year-long application process, 26+ graduate-level credits, and more than two months of in-country training. However, it hasn’t been quite what I expected.

In my experience as a student and teacher in various contexts, the first week of school is normally rather hectic. Students are searching for their classrooms, teachers are busy printing, handing out syllabi, and previewing the next year of the students’ lives. The hustle inside of American school buildings or in the halls of a Korean hagwon are absent in my village here in Samoa. Instead, the teachers are often found around the meeting room table sipping tea, eating, and talking. The students perform various tasks in and around the school.

For instance, the first day of class, the students picked up “rubbish” around the school yard when they first arrived. Now, you might think that this means that they were picking up wrappers, used cans and bottles, crumpled paper, or other rubbishy items. You would be wrong, though. Rubbish in Samoa is actually dried leaves, mostly from the ubiquitous breadfruit trees. The leaves are about the size of dinner plate (although shaped more leaf-like and less plate-like). They dry out and fall from the trees at the rate of about 5-10 per day and can add up quickly. While the children normally spend the first few minutes of their mornings at home removing the fallen leaves from their yards while leaving what you and I might consider rubbish they are also responsible for this task at school. The rest of the day was spent in the classrooms sweeping, picking up “actual” rubbish, and playing.

The days since that have mostly involved giving the students a simple task of copying introductions off the board while the teachers divided our supplies, set our schedules, and had staff meetings to go over changes for the year (e.g. the new four-term system which will replace the three-term system of years past), rules, and responsibilities. There was also a meeting with most of the parents in the village with the principal, vice principal, and school committee. This meeting took place on a rainy morning during downpour with winds of 25-35 mph. So, when the time came for me to introduce myself to the parents I wasn’t able to hear anything and just sat there as about 50 pairs of eyes hinted that I had missed a cue and was supposed to be doing something. Additionally, I hadn’t known beforehand that I was to introduce myself at this meeting so it was like a surprise within a surprise—a boxed present wrapped and put inside of another wrapped box of surprises!

As I write this, it is Thursday, January 31st. Tomorrow, we are to come in everyday clothes which means an ‘ie lavalava (basically a sarong) around shorts and a shirt rather than the typical school clothes of a puletasi (Samoan-style dress) for women or a button-up shirt and ‘ie faitoga (formal men’s skirt) for men. We’ll be wearing ordinary clothes because the day will be spent pulling weeds, trimming hedges, and general beautification of the schoolyard. Hopefully next week we’ll start classes.

I’m going to be co-teaching with years 4-6 (3-5 in America) on Mondays and Tuesdays. The rest of the week will be spent with smaller groups from within each of these classes teaching literacy. My challenge will be to work towards a sustainable set-up so that the teachers can continue working on English literacy even after I’m gone.

After school tomorrow I’ll be headed to a neighboring village to meet up with three other Volunteers for a night before we head to another nearby village on Saturday to meet up with some more Volunteers to help one of them celebrate their birthday at a resort on the beach. It sounds luxurious, and normally, I assure you, it would be. Unfortunately, this weekend (the majority of the last week) the islands are surrounded by storms clouds and rain. We’re still getting together, though. Many of us are feeling down after the intense high of the honeymoon phase people tend to experience during their first few months in a new culture. I’m sure the rain isn’t helping. It is the rainy season but the Country Director who’s been in-country for 5 years claims this to be the rainiest rainy season he’s experienced here yet. It will be nice to get together.

Nicely decorated pig for the toonai after the filmed service

That's my host dad on the right

Students leaving the school on the first day

This is normally a bone-dry riverbed