Photos and the Peace sign

Yesterday evening my peaceful homestay was invaded by a bus load of guests arriving for a wedding in the village. Apparently I am invited to the wedding although I don’t who it is but that doesn’t seem to matter as I’m discovering! It is a Muslim wedding which apparently, so I’m told, is not as interesting as a Dusun wedding which involves many interesting traditions and lots of rice wine! I’m thinking I may escape to the mountains rather than being the random orang putih who is continually asked ‘Where you from?”. It still amazes me though how friendly and welcoming people are here. I went to get my morning coffee and they insisted that they share their breakfast with me.

 So another week over and this week I had to attend the Ministry of Education’s training for the introduction of the new curriculum in the Ranau area. The official four day training was reduced to two and half days and there seemed to be fewer teachers at the end of the day than at the beginning when we signed in! However it was interesting and when the presenter started to speak in English he was asked to speak in Malay as not everyone could understand him- he did express surprise being among English teachers but I myself have only attended English training courses spoken in French, so was very grateful whenever English was actually spoken. Much of the material that we watched was from the Ministry od Education and it struck me again how distant peninsula Malaysia is from the realities of Sabah and Sarawak – one of the clips was “Are you a teacher of the 21^st century?” – do you use internet, twitter, Facebook, etc in the classroom? Well as several of the teachers pointed out they not only don’t have internet access, they don’t have computers and many of the schools don’t have electricity or running water. As the next general election approaches, the Government suddenly remembers that Sabah and Sarawak hold a high number of parliamentary seats and there is sudden activity to surface the roads and attempt to bring electricity and water to the rural districts. Didn’t the same thing happen before the last election?

             The travelling dental team came to one school this week and I was very impressed as to how an ordinary classroom was converted to a dentist’s surgery with four dentists checking and working on the children’s teeth with generators going. We were all allowed to stare and wander around and I didn’t see one child making any fuss. While in a class yesterday one of the girls jumped up as she found a big mouse in her desk! One of the boys ran over and caught the mouse, it then bit him and he dropped it and then the mouse was running around the classroom with some of us screaming hysterically. Another boy caught it again and then threw it outside after we’d all had a look at it and then we continued as if nothing had happened! Whenever anyone produces a camera everyone makes the Peace sign- it apparently means they are happy and I think I just have to accept that!

Year 6 Scouts "camping" in the school grounds last night.