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Published: October 14th 2011
This week I’ve been on a sort of tour around schools accompanying one of the Education Officers while he does his monitoring visits. He inspects the general state of the schools and at this time of year makes sure that the teachers have all turned up to where they have been posted. We visited up to 8 schools a day so I feel like I’ve been Ofsted on speed.
One of the things that is worrying me most about my job here is traveling about on the roads. I though the main challenge would be feeling confident riding my motorbike. I’ve realised this week that this is the least of my worries. The roads here can at best be described as bad. In some cases they could barely be described as a sandy path. They meander around the countryside like a river trying to find the best route through the bushes and pot holes the size of small lakes. There are no road signs and no maps and The Gambian's sense of direction seem to be as vague as their timekeeping skills. The thought of traveling on these roads on my own frankly terrifies me. I’ve been reassured though that the Cluster Monitors I’ll be working with will accompany me until I know the roads well which I have been told will be ‘soon, no worries!' Hmmmm, lets see shall we.
VSO warn you that your experience doing a VSO placement will be full of ups and downs. You will probably start off feeling lots of excitement, loving the place and enjoying all the novelty of it. This slowly makes way for a bit of depression as you realise that this is in fact reality for the next year as the novelty soon wears off. Then you finally settle into things and most people tend to enjoy their stay. Other emotions we were warned of were frustrations and annoyances about how the systems work but also happiness and satisfaction. Basically a lot of ups and downs over the course of the year.
I feel like I’ve been through all of these over the course of every afternoon this week. I’ve seen lovely schools all freshly painted, lively happy children and a glimpse of some really positive teaching. I’ve also seen children dressed in what can only be described as rags, filthy classrooms that haven’t been swept for years leaving practically a beach of sand covering the floors, rubbish everywhere and teachers whose main priority seemed to be sitting under a tree in the playground drinking attaya (sweet tea). The worst classroom I saw was a group of about 10 year 1s sitting on their own while their teacher sat outside in the shade under at tree, in a classroom that had old tables stacked up haphazardly in half the classroom and piles of scrap barbed wire lying around. I’d taken a back seat for most of these visits but I told him this wire needed to be removed, now! It was all I could do to stop myself wrapping it around his neck!
Through this experience I keep thinking of that scene in Blackadder the Third where he’s in a cell with The Scarlet Pimpernel who’s just taken some suicide pills by mistake. First you go through denial, then excitement, then fear, then nervousness, then happiness (or something along those lines) then you leap into a corner and die all in the space of a minute. I haven’t quite reached the stage of leaping into the corner and dying yet but you may well find me sat rocking there in a few weeks time!
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Maureen Lennox
non-member comment
ups and downs
Well you know it all sounds a bit scary but you are working with a great organisation who will support you i'm sure. its seems like you are having some doubts but i know you will be rewarded sometime soon.