Testing Times

Mouse tally: 64

We were away for 5 days in Thimphu for another one of my regular visits to the eye doctor. Upon our return we noticed several of our little friends scurrying around and suspicious holes in several food packages. Luckily we had stocked up on peanut butter in the capital and so I wasted no time in baiting the traps. We caught 5 mice in 24 hours. Fido must think Christmas has come early. (I know you think he must be a Buddhist dog but he assures me he is multi-denominational.)

There are only two terms in the school year in Bhutan. Right now we are coming towards the end of Term 1. It is exam time and all students (including kindergarten) must sit an exam for each subject. The school has a very strict policy on exams and students cannot even sit an exam unless they have an attendance rate of at least 90%. Perhaps this is why my class attendance is so good (all students were eligible to sit the tests). There is very little absence at all; it is rare for even one student to be away.  The same cannot be said for the classes I have taught back home where some students have very poor attendance indeed and many parents keep children home on their birthdays.

You may wonder what the big deal is - What does it matter if they miss or fail a test? Well, actually the tests are very high-stakes indeed; quite simply, if a student fails the tests or their continuous assessment (which includes an element of homework), then they do not pass the year. If they do not pass the year, they have to repeat it.

Now, frankly, I do like some elements of this. Some students back home simply aren’t motivated to study hard because there are no consequences for failure. If a child doesn’t do his homework, it is very hard to discipline them. Now, I know there are all sorts of studies about how homework is a bad idea. I don’t believe in piling on the homework but I do think it has some merit, and things such as learning times tables or practising telling time are ideal activities to practise at home rather than having endless drills in class time.

Of course, there is a very real down-side to this policy, and that is - some kids simply cannot pass the tests even though they work hard. When you first come to teach in Bhutan you wonder why some kids are so much older looking than others in their class - the answer is simple - they are so much older! In Class 5, where most students are aged 10 or 11 years, there are two boys who are 16 years old. When I discuss this with my colleagues, I say, What about the damage to their self esteem? Don’t you think they feel embarrassed sitting in a class with children so much younger than themselves? I’m invariably greeted by blank looks. They in turn are bemused by the Australian system. Many teachers I have spoken to have asked me if my children will have to repeat the grades they have missed in Australia through being in Bhutan. I point out that we are actually home-schooling them, and they seem to be doing quite well – there would be no point whatsoever in making them repeat the year.  

I know I shouldn’t brag but Amelie (grade 2) has just finished reading the last of the Harry Potter books, and yes she does understand them.  I know this because she won’t stop talking about them – she’s even learnt most of the words to the Sorting Hat song from book 7: The Deathly Hallows. She also took a Harry Potter quiz on her Kindle and got only one question wrong.  Whoops! Digressing again!

Standing outside the Barber Shop in Thimphu

On one of my earlier trips to Thimphu, I got talking to a young man in the barber’s. He (rather forwardly) asked me how old I am. I told him, (but not you dear reader) and in response, I asked him the same question. He told me he was 24; so I asked him what he does for a living. He answered that he was still at school in grade 12. Imagine still being at school at the age of 24! One of the young teachers I have become quite pally with told me that when he began teaching, several of his students were older than him.

This barber was like Edward Scissorhands, snip snip, so fast!

Thomas got his first haircut by someone other than his Mum!

 

Short back and sides, very Bhutanese.

So basically, I think that the Bhutanese system is much too strict and students with learning difficulties should move to the next grade along with their peers, rather than suffer the indignity of being the only kid in primary school with stubble. In the West, teachers have to juggle the needs of all sorts of different learners; I’ve taught kids with autism, Aspergers syndrome, Down’s syndrome, cerebral palsy, ADHD and all sorts of undiagnosed behaviour disorders. I’m not pretending it’s easy - it isn’t. But the alternative, to exclude difficult-to-teach kids, leaves them marginalised and left-behind.

I’m not the man I used to be! (Alternative title: Bog Blog)

Mouse tally: now 57. Even though we’ve been blocking up their little hidey-holes with duct tape....we still hear the occasional squeak. Number 57 was caught at night-time in our bedroom. I was blissfully asleep but poor Mickey’s death throes woke up Justine who wasn’t game to get out of bed. She only just remembered around 11pm the following evening. Poor Mickey was as stiff as a board by the time I got to him.

Now, I thought of prefacing this post with a PG warning. It does contain content that some readers may find distasteful. However, upon reflection, I thought about most of the children’s books published these days e.g. “The Day My Bum Went Psycho,” and “Farty Facts” - just Google children’s bum books and count them! Therefore, instead, this blog comes with an adult warning, kids will be fine with it but grown-ups of a delicate constitution may choose to read no further.

Of course, anyone heading to the Indian sub-continent would always be wise to take precautions with what they eat and drink. I’m happy to say that since we arrived in Bumthang, the Divers have had no significant gastro problems to report.....until now. 


We routinely boil and filter all our water. I’m not sure if our tap water is treated in any way but when it rains our water turns brown – not just a tint, I mean brown. It got so bad that we had to put the tap water into a ‘settling tank’ to allow much of the silt to sink to the bottom; we’d then scoop up the cleaner water for boiling.

Saturday night was a good one, the school warden Mr Lobsho had recently become a father and to celebrate a baby shower was arranged in the school hall. The food was buffet style and I must admit to breaking my ‘no pork in Bhutan’ rule. Beer too was on offer and the Bhutanese cannot stand to look at a glass that is less than full, therefore every time I so-much as sipped my beer, it was promptly topped-up and I quickly lost all track of how much I’d drunk.
On Sunday, when I awoke I didn’t feel too good at all. I initially dismissed it as having become a complete light-weight through rarely drinking beer these days and thought I’d be fine after a good-hearty breakfast......big mistake.

I rapidly went downhill and effectively took up residence in the smallest room of the house where I spent most of Sunday in a sitting position but, just to avoid getting bored, there was a bit of ‘big white telephone’ action too. I fully expected that a good night’s sleep would work its miracle and I’d be right as rain in the morning..... but I was wrong.

The next day things seemed to be even worse, I could hear my stomach bubbling and fizzing away like an Alka Seltzer (something I wished I’d had) I got heartburn and headaches to add to the previous day’s symptoms.  Maybe it wasn’t the pork, maybe it was the rain that wasn’t so right after all.

On Tuesday I was no better and headed off to the nearby Basic Health Unit. I was feeling quite weak by this stage and although the distance was barely 200metres it felt like a marathon to me, so Justine asked our landlord to drive me. When I got downstairs he told me he had lent his car to someone and so asked a neighbour to drive me there instead. I’d seen this neighbour around but I had never spoken to him before – nonetheless, he happily drove me there and insisted on waiting for me so that he could drive me back.
 
The BHU very thoughtfully have a board on the wall listing the top ten ailments they deal with from month to month. Diarrhoea (there....I’ve said it!) is number one, so I felt I should be in safe hands. The BHU is staffed by nurses rather than doctors but they are able to prescribe medicines and do all sorts of stuff that their western counterparts aren’t allowed to do. Another great thing is, they give you the meds you need there and then in a snap-lock bag with the dosage details shown in symbols rather than words. I imagine this is because many of the older generation simply didn’t get any schooling at all. All of this is completely free of charge. Now, it may not exactly be “Grays Anatomy” but it makes you wonder why a country as poor as Bhutan can provide such a service yet so many rich western countries can’t even come close.
 
They don’t take stool samples or any of that malarke, they simply give you antibiotics for the two most likely causes of the problem and send you on your way. I’m very happy to report that the meds worked their magic almost immediately; the bubbling and fizzing stopped and I was soon able to utilize some of the other seats in the house.
 
Of course, being a very small village, it was no surprise that of the two nurses that treated me, one was married to a colleague, the other was the father of one of the girls in my class - Pema. I’m glad I wasn’t at the BHU for anything embarrassing!
On the way out, I spied a pair of bathroom scales.
“Can I see how much I weigh?” I asked.
“Sure, go ahead,” said Pema’s Dad........ “72 kilos, the same as me!” he exclaimed.
“Yes, but I’m normally around 80kilos I replied.
I think my regular Bhutan weight is about 78 kilos so it was quite a shock to think that I’d lost around 6 kilos in little over two days.
 
Not surprisingly, when I awoke on Wednesday and got out of bed.... I got straight back in again, the sudden weight loss had weakened me and although I could now confidently stray more than ten metres from the nearest lavatory, I wasn’t sure I could walk it.
 
Thankfully as I write this (very current) blog post I’m feeling much better and confidently expect to be at school tomorrow. The toilets at school are of the ‘hole-in-the-ground’ variety and I simply cannot (and frankly don’t want to) imagine how people with a chronic case of the runs can cope with them. So, three cheers for western toilets!
(I wonder what photos I’ll put in this blog post.....)

We couldn't read the Dzongkha on this poster at school but with a diet high in lentils, we used our own imagination!

 

Saturday in Samtengang

Mouse tally still 54. Not sure if they’re outsmarting me or just dead.

Seeing as there’s no mouse story to relate, I thought I’d introduce the regular ‘Interesting Facts About Bhutan’ slot.

So here’s today’s Interesting Facts About Bhutan’

·         Television was only introduced in Bhutan in 1999

·         At first the wrestling channel was banned (but sadly they seem to have relaxed that one)

·         MTV is still banned

·         It is illegal to sell tobacco products in Bhutan. A woman recently went to jail for 5 years for selling cigarettes in her shop.

Source: Lonely Planet, Bhutan, 2007

This is another one of those long overdue posts. As mentioned before, I often have to go the the capital Thimphu to get my eye looked at. Well, the last time I went, Justine and the kids came too. We stopped off in Samtengang to visit our fellow BCF volunteer teachers Vicky and Ian.

The journey to Samtengang with our fantastic driver Mr Subba

Samtengang is about 4 hours drive from Thimphu and about one hour’s drive off the main (East-West) road. It’s amazing how much the climate changes as you move around (and up and down) and we were very pleased to enjoy the warm weather Samtengang had to offer.

Of course, being Saturday Vicky and Ian had to teach and of course being lazy, we stayed at their house while they went off and taught. We did however make it to Ian’s school in time to help out with a bit of alfresco reading. Ian’s school unlike mine is part of the United Nations World Food Program. This means that many students are enrolled at the school because of the promise of two meals a day. Incredibly, Ian pointed out shanty-style shacks and told me that young children live alone in them because they live too close to school to be boarders but too far away to walk to school every day. Their parents might visit at the weekend with clean clothes and a few supplies.

Saturday morning buddy reading program

Later, when Vicky took us on a tour of her school, I spotted a young woman playing volleyball in shorts. Nothing amazing about that you might think but I couldn’t help but remark that hers were the first female legs I had seen since coming to Bhutan (other than Justine’s of course). If you look at the photos of females in our pictures you will see that their Kira goes all the way to the ground; knees, shins, ankles very rarely see the light of day.

After school, Vicky and Ian took us on a walk to a nearby village where the houses are made of rammed earth. Basically, the walls are made with thick clayish mud. Teams of women fill wooden frames with the mud and then ram it down with wooden presses to compact it. They then leave it to dry out before returning to add the next layer. The ‘earth’ is simply dug out of a nearby cliff face and so it has to be one of the most environmentally friendly ways of building a house. These are no ‘mud huts’ either. They are huge, beautiful houses and it’s great to see a centuries old technique still alive and well.

According to the Lonely Planet, “the pounders are usually teams of women, who sing and dance as they beat the walls. Although Bhutanese women are usually shy and modest with outsiders, they traditionally loosen their inhibitions and exchange ribald comments with men as they perform their pounding.”

The village whose name I’ve forgotten (sorry) looks absolutely amazing. You feel like you’ve stepped back in time to medieval days or perhaps stumbled onto a film set. It is also impossibly beautiful. Check out Amelie in the hollow tree that’s straight out of a fairy tale.

If you’re ever in Bhutan and wondering if you should take the detour to Samtengang, do it, you won’t regret it.

Walking around the chorten 3 times is considered auspicious

Teenage girl carrying mud for new house construction

Communal toilet - as the sign says, "Use it Properly"

The uphill trek back to Vicky and Ian's place

Thomas found a horn