Bula everyone!!!

So here I am at the end of my 6th week in Fiji already!! I can't believe how time is disappearing, and I know I am also well overdure on my next update so thought I better catch you all up with life in the South Pacific!!

It caertainly has been an eventful 3 weeks to say the least, for a start there have been some amazing weekend trips to say the least- personally I think all teachers should be able to spend their weekends laying on a beautiful island in the sun- we would all be far less stressed during the week, that's for sure!!!

I had an amazing trip to the island of Modriki- otherwise known by the locals as 'Tom Hanks Island' where... you've guessed it....the film 'Castaway' was filmed!! It is a beautiful, uninhabited island at the mouth of the Yasawas with gorgeous turquoise seas and white sand- we took our trip there on a sailing boat which was great fun and then were able to jump off the front of the boat and swim to the island!! We were only allowed a few hours on the island and then returned to the sailing boat for a gorgeous bbq lunch followed by more diving off the boat to swim and another quick island visit before sailing home.

The following weekend involved a trip to Octopus Island Resort in the Yasawas- an island at the bottom of the Yasawas which is so beautiful- I tell you what, paradise certainly hasn't got old yet!! When we arrived on the island (following a 2 and a half hour boat trip) we were greated with cocktails and then spent the day lazing in the sun, mixed up with some snorkelling and swimming and a gorgeous lunch in between of roast pumpkin, which I am becoming quite parital to!!! Again, just what the doctor ordered after a busy week in school!!

So the following weekend we were lucky to have a bank holiday on the Monday- to celebrate Fiji day...the 44th anniversary of when they gained their independence from the Brits!! My roommate and I decided the 3 day weekend was an opportunity not to be missed and so booked ourselves a lovely weekend getaway at Oarsman's Bay Lodge in the Yasawas, leaving Saturday and returning Monday. Now this place really has to be seen to be believed.... but I shall try and set the scene. We sailed for 4 and a half hours on the Yasawa Flyer and then anchored up in the middle of the most clear, bright turquoise waters I have ever seen- I really felt like I was in a dream, it was so beautiful it didn't seem it could be real. But thankfully it was!!! A little motor boat then pulled up alongside our vessel and we climbed across into it and zoomed off through these waters to reach our home for the next 3 days. So we pulled up on the beach of an island, pretty much in the middle of nowhere, we were greated by a host of fijians in flowery shirts signing welcome songs and presented with freshly squeezed mango juice!! We settled into our little cabin, right on the beach and then went for lunch... not only did we find that the food was amazing... but the icing on the cake- there were just 12 of us staying there for the weekend! And the weekend really did turn out to be just paradise...literally. I spent a great majority of it switching between laying in my hammock and swimming or snorkelling in the crystal blue waters, on an island, in the middle of nowhere, with literally an empty beach!! Can't be bad!! I managed to (pretty much) read the whole of the book which my good friend Catherine from America had recommended I take away with me- 'Eat, pray, love.' And I have to say what a fantastic recommendation (thank you :-))- added the perfect final touch to being in paradise. **By the way, Emma Smith, if you are reading this (and you better be!!!) you have to go and buy this book immediately and read it cover to cover!!** The book left me feeling extremely lucky and appreciative of everything I have, I felt so calm and relaxed....and just very content :-) Which I have managed to hold on to all of this week. There was just one experience which almost managed to break me out of this mood during the weekend...I was attacked by a parrot fish!! A rather persistant one at that too!! Don't laugh...it was quite scary!!!! I was out snorkelling along the reef, which I must add was out of this world.... I saw fish of every colour, shape, size you can imagine, I really have seen nothing so beautiful...even all of my snorkelling in Fiji previously didn't compare to this. Until.... a parrot fish swam into me, I thought nothing of it, until he did it again, and again, and again..... charging into me, hitting my leg and my hand several times!! It was quite a surreal experience to say the least!! However I had to count myself lucky; when I was chatting to another girl staying on the island that evening who showed me a bite on her finger caused by a parrot fish when she was snorkelling that day. Two other people then joined in the conversation having had similar experiences the same day too....clearly this fish didn't take too kindly to having snorkellers in his back yard!!!!! Still not quite enough to ruin my weekend of paradise however.....and this place really is the definition of the word... and just incase you weren't convinced... the whole thing, including boat trip, accomodation, activities and all meals cost us just less than 150 pounds!!

So...this weekend is going to be island free, and has started off with an extremely bizarre experience. 14 of us this morning were loaded into 2 open back trucks (or taxis as the locals prefer to call them!!) and headed off towards the mountains to the Sobato hot springs for a...........mud bath!!! And it literally was just that. We all got into a pool of mud, a hilarious experience and then basically had to cover our whole bodies in thick mud and sit out in the sun while it dried!! I have some brilliant photos of this... has to be seen to be believed!! Once it was dry we then went into the hot spring pool and washed it off- apparently very good for the skin!! We shall see!!!!

Now.... I aplogize for those of you reading this at home in the middle of winter..... but if you compare my last few weekends with the last few weeks at school you may hate me a little less.........just a little!!!!!

So having been at the school for just over 3 weeks I was starting to get a bit of a strange feel about the place if I am honest. When I first arrived and witnessed some of the ways the teachers acted I was trying to make excuses for them and put it all down to cultural differences, but I actually was starting to question this again. For a start, there were a number of occasions when the headmaster was absent... and the teacher I was working with told me in all hilarity that he was hungover again!! Bearing in mind that he teaches a class in the school and is the only person with keys to my classroom, i was beginning to struggle to see the funny side. There were also other things which were starting to worry me.... one was the fact that the teacher I worked next door to just simply was not teaching the children... a number of times I would pass by or pop in and the children were sat copying great chunks of writing from the board with the teacher nowhere in sight. Bearing in mind that a number of that class come to me for reading support.... and so were unable to read any of what they were copying, it clearly was just a way to keep them quiet while she sat about and did nothing. Now I quite happily have embraced the laid back Fijian culture, but this to be honest was just plain lazy. I also saw some other worrying things, the teacher had a cup on her desk which I had often seen children putting pennies into, they had told me it was so they could have a treat at Christmas time. However, one lunchtime I watched the teacher take money from it and wander off into town, coming back later with lunch.... for herself!! Bearing in mind that some of these children don't always have lunch themselves I was pretty disgusted. A couple of days later the teacher started asking me lots of questions about how much money I had paid to get to Fiji and also sent a child to my classroom to ask to borrow my phone. To be honest I was starting to feel very uncomfortable at the school and so I went to the volunteer office to chat to the desk manager who was very shocked and told me it would be best if I moved at the beginning of the next week to another school. I was really pleased about this as it meant I just had to last 2 more days there.................but the next 2 days changed everything in ways I just wasn't expecting.

I met Eleanoa.

I arrived at school the next morning to find my classroom and the teachers' next door locked. Then a voice from upstairs was calling me, Eleanoa, she explained that the teacher and also the headmaster were away (hungover!) and she had classes 3,4,5,6,7 & 8 all with her upstairs. So I went up to help her.

I will just stop for a minute to describe Eleanoa, she is a large Fijian lady, very elegant, always in traditional flowered dress with a hibiscous flower behind her right ear who speaks in a very melodic tone. I had only really talked to her briefly at the school to say hello or goodbye as she seemed to keep away from all the other teachers, but I had decided quite early on that I liked her.

At break time, Eleanoa came up to me and said "Sarah, why have you lost your smile? It is making me sad." I was quite surprised that she had noticed, but she told me she has been watching me and is worried about me. I didn't really know what to say, but I tried to explain that I was just finding school hard as it was so different to home and that the other teachers downstairs were quite hard to work with. She just gave me a very knowing look and said "yes this is a very hard school." She looked sad when she said this so I started to chat to her and realised that if anyone has lost their smile it was her not me. She told me how she had been at the school 8 years (since the opening) and it had been a great place to work. She described how she taught class 5 and had 35 kids in her class, it sounded like a really happy, community school. But 4 years ago the management changed, and with it the school. She now teaches class 5 and 6 together (a total of 12 kids), the school numbers went from 300 to 80 and that gradually lots of the teachers left. I asked why and she told us that there is no money to pay them. She explained that she often goes 2 to 3 months without being paid, and while the other teachers leave or don't turn up for work, she knows she has to stay for the children, without her they have no one. She said that God gave her the gift to teach and that she must stay and help these children, with or without pay. Now I have met some good and kind people in my life before, but this was a whole new level. She told me how upset she feels when she knows the other teachers and the headmaster just go out drinking and come in hungover or lie that they are ill, and she has complained to the management a number of times but nothing seems to happen. She told me that the teacher next dppr to me had borrowed money from her numerous times, claiming she had no food in the house and then gone out and drank it all away. She also told me how last Christmas the teacher had collected 70 dollars from the children for a Christmas treat, and then brought 1 pizza for the whole class to share. I commented that I thought the same was going on this year. She also told me about the headmaster doing similar things with money from the children. I was really sad to hear what was happening to these innocent children and also such a kind, good woman. She explained that the school used to receive sponsorship from an Australian and also and American school but gradually it all stopped. I asked why and she said because they realised that the money wasn't getting to the school. I didn't understand.... and she pointed to the church nextdoor... the church manages the school and all money goes to the church management to then be distributed to the school. I have been to the church a couple of times since arriving and it is beautifully decorated, has a high-tech sound system, carved wooden pews etc..........I will leave you to come to your own conclusions there. She then told me that because of the money issues the church struggle to get teachers to work there and that as they are not run by the government, they are in no position to help, it is down solely to the church, and the teacher I have been working nextdoor to is actually not even qualified! I told her I was not surprised and she asked me to tell her some of what I had seen going on in the classroom. She was shocked and asked me if I could help her that morning to do an assessment of the class to actually see how behind they were...... and we were both shocked with what we found, it was devastating to see how little any of these children had learnt or knew. So we took our results straight to the manger in the church who said he would deal with it.........I am afraid to say we are yet to see how.

So after chatting with Eleanoa and doing the assessments she looked at me and said, "I know it is hard, but you are the only help I have here." Needless to say I went back to the desk officer that evening and told them to withdraw my request to change schools. I chatted a great deal with them and told them everything, they were very supportive and told me they would take me into school the next day to chat with the management. They told the management what a bad experience I had been having at the school, (I should mention that I am the only volunteer teacher left at the school at present as others have found it too hard) and said that they would be monitoring from now on very closely and that no other help would be sent to the school at present. We agreed together that I would stay and help only on the basis that I worked upstairs alongside Eleanoa, focussing on the children who can't read from classes across the school. I was happy with this, and the desk officer told me how grateful he was that I had offered to stay at the school, as this really was the school which needed it the most.

I was still very upset about the situation at the school and had a long chat with my roommate that night. She is older and slightly wiser than me, and she said that with all the best intentions, there really was nothing I could do to save the school and change the management situation in the short time I was here, and that what I needed to do was just pick 1 problem and try to work on that instead of try and take on the whole worlds!! She was right, and funnily enough Eleanoa had a similar conversation with me the following morning, she said she was realising that she could not save the school, but she could just do her best. So we both decided that we would aim to help one problem together- the children in the school who have not been taught and cannot read, and also that we would make sure we tried to have as much fun as possible until I left!!!

I decided that the other problem I wanted to work on was to try and help Eleanoa. I would catch her at times and she looked so tired and worried, so I talked to her about it. This woman really is amazing, she works all week at school, often taking 6 or more classes and has a total of 11 extended family members all living under her roof..... so weekends are far from a break too. So I told her she needed a break.......and she agreed! She went to the manager and told him she would be having the next 2 days off and I would have her class. And that is what we did!! We had a great couple of days, I had brought very limited resources with me due to weight restrictions, but what I did have with me was a small Paddington Bear and also 2 stories where he visits London. So I shared these with the children, which they loved, we learnt all about London (they could not comprehend the fact that I had never met the Queen!!!) and then they all made their own books about Paddington Bear visiting Fiji!!! Minus his duffle coat of course!!!!

And so we have continued, I work next door to Eleanoa's classroom and I have small groups from across the school who come and work with me on their reading. We are working to try and help these children as much as we can, and we are also having lots of fun!! We are quite the team!! Yesterday we actually ended up with the whole school as no teachers at all came in, so we had classes 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 between us........and it was great!!! We muddled through, gave them extra long break and lunch times and the day was rounded off with a whole school game of wink murder!!! I played it with some of the kids once and they have been obsessed ever since.

I had a long chat with Eleanoa that lunchtime about the school and she was telling me how it breaks her heart to see what has happened to the school since the change in management. I told her I understood more than she realised and went on to share my story of the past year at school. At the end she told me that she thinks God has brought us together to help each other as we have so many shared experiences and the same passion for teaching......and maybe she is right :-)

What I do know is that things worked out for me ok in the end and I know they will for Eleanoa too, she is such a good person and good always wins eventually.

So yet again, here I am learning lessons I never even knew I needed to learn on my Fiji Adventure.

Stay tuned.......................