A day in the life of an Indigenous school

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Started at the school this week, am loving it! The school is in an area called Urquisiqui. This place is definitely not in the Lonely Planet! It’s not even a village, it’s just one or two buildings at a junction in the road, and most of the kids live in the surrounding hills in small farms, some of them walking up to an hour to get to school. There’s probably around 50 kids between the ages of 4 and around 14, I guess, although it varies daily as they’re often needed at home to help in the fields. The school has two large classrooms, two smaller ones, a tiny kitchen and a ‘toilet block’, which frankly is a plague waiting to happen, I try to find a quiet corner in the field like the kids do! All this is around a central dirt playground with stunning views over snowcapped mountains, volcanoes and the lush valley below. Every day that I’ve been up there a new mountain has appeared through the clouds, it’s just incredible - the kids just look at us like we’re nuts when we go gooey over the views!

There’s now just four volunteers here. Our day starts at 7.30 when we pile into the back of a pickup truck for the 30min journey up to the community. As soon as we arrive kids barrel over from every direction and crowd round us to shake our hands, excitedly chanting ‘Buenos dias, Buenos dias’! School should start at 8, but it takes a good half an hour to get the kids indoors, calmed down and all facing in the right direction! The first hour or so is supposed to be English, but to be honest this seems to be something that the local teachers tolerate in order to get some teaching assistance with their lessons which is where we’re most useful.

The two large classrooms each have two grades (roughly a year group) with a single local teacher running between the two. In my class, I have around ten 7-8 year olds, and another volunteer, Benjy, is at the other end of the room with the 9-10 year olds. Gladys, the local teacher (who is an utter star!!) presents the lesson, then leaves me to supervise, then goes to the other end to do a different lesson with the older group, which Benjy then covers while she comes back to us. So beyond a token English class at the start of the day (which really isn’t too taxing) I’ve spent most of my time teaching in Spanish, which is really bizarre! Great for my vocab though as there’s lots of reading and comprehension which I stumble through with the help of my trusty pocket dictionary! I'm also getting pretty good at yelling ´Sit down! Be quiet! Listen! Stop it!´ :-) The kids seem to really enjoy school, for many of them it’s a chance to play and just be children for a while, they’re mostly pretty well-behaved although they do tend to get giddy and over-excitable at the slightest thing!

Lunch is at around 11, and is prepared in rotation by the mothers of the kids. Typically they have a bowl of broth, a packet of toasted corn, and a cup of tea. They each have their own tin plates and cups which they carefully carry to a corner of the playground and sit and conscientiously work their way through before washing in the big stone sink. We get a packed lunch from the host families. After about 45 mins lunch break, during which we play volleyball, chase, or just sit and chat with thekids, we go back in for another hour. Then the local teachers leave and we’re left to host a kind of ‘after schools club’ where we play games, help with homework etc, until around 3 when the pickup arrives to take us back down to Otovalo. Once again lots of very formal handshaking and ´Hasta mañana!´s then they chase the pickup down the road.

It's such an amazing experience just being there in the community, have already taken dozens of pics of the kids - they love looking at the camera afterwards to see themselves! It’s quite difficult to experience the poverty though. Was quite saddened, and I’m afraid to say, shocked, when I first got there. It’s too easy to romanticize and imagine a roomful of scrubbed up cherubic faces in slightly tatty clothes, with coats hung on a row of pegs and a neat little rucksack, but the reality is harsh.

They wear the same filthy clothes every day. And it's so cold in the class room, I’m in a fleece and three layers, but they just have thin t-shirts or traditional blouses and maybe a tank top or jumper over. Most of them wear wooly hats to keep warm and little welly boots to keep their feet dry. Their hands are dirty and covered in cuts and sores. Their faces are cracked and red raw from the wind, rain and sun and their noses run continually. The lunchtime meal is probably their only meal of the day. On Friday nearly half the school were out sick with bad colds. One of the volunteers went to visit a sick child from her class. He was in bed with a temperature, in a cold and damp two room ‘wattle and daub’ type house, and the family had no money for medicine. We gave them a couple of paracetomol but that was all we had between us.

And yet they are the sweetest most trusting children you could wish to meet, always laughing and smiling, constantly wanting to be picked up, cuddled, play games with you etc. And they do try hard, they respond really well to the attention, most of them come from large families, so I guess it’s a very different environment for them. Already I’ve got such a soft spot for everyone of the kids in my class, each of them have somehow endeared themselves to me with what they’ve said, done or achieved, it’s just overwhelming!

Sorry, at this point I had started to recount various little stories of the kids etc, but I’m running out of time here, so will do that another day! But I can’t go without briefly mentioning the PE lesson, which was great fun! The school has one trampette and a crashmat, so we all marched down to the field and did ‘jumping off the trampette’ - long jump, high jump (over a stick), forward rolls and backward rolls. Señorita Gladys called out each child´s name in turn and stood there solemnly marking their efforts at jumping, and of course Benjy and I were asked to demonstrate the various different jumps! Then we did ‘throwing a tennis ball down the field’, again Gladys ranking each of them on her clipboard!

Oh, yes, and finally, on Friday afternoon the whole school was treated to the cartoon film ´Pinocchio´, 30 odd kids in a classroom crowded excitedly round a 14¨TV, with assorted locals peering in through the window, incredible to see, and really quite humbling.

OK, still got stacks to tell, but got to dash - today is Palm Sunday and the family have bought some giant palm frondy type structure which we taking to church this evening, then we hang it outside the house and stroke it to stop it raining (or something along those lines…)! Next week is Easter - Semana Santa - which is huge over here, and there´s a big fiesta at the school on Wednesday. All the families in the community are coming and they’ve been asked to bring food, some of which seems to be ‘live’ food such as sheep and pigs, hope they don’t get turned into dead food in front of us :-/

Oh and one very final last thing - remember the alsatian from the last blog? He is apparently ´enamorado´ - the little white poodley rat thing is on heat, which means that poor Nico spends all night every night howling and barking in frustration. For me out in my bedshed in the yard it was just unbearable. On Friday morning after three nights of no sleep and a horny Alsatian scratching at my door I finally broke my polite silence and pleaded with the family to do something. It was also the day that Zoe, the other volunteer in my house left (so sad, had only known her two weeks, but will really miss her, and the other two - Mary and Steff who are adorable, amazing how close you become in these situations), so they´ve moved me into her nice cosy room in the main house, which is a lot more bueno and I get to see a lot more of the family which is better. Yay! There are six family members sharing four beds in the other two rooms though, so I do appreciate how lucky I am.

Right, now I really do have to go! J

Again, still haven’t figured out how to upload pics, have tried, but given up, will have to cut a CD!

More to come soon!

Ciao!
xxx

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Photos

My class!!
This is my class! 'El Tercero'. We are at one end of the classroom and Benjy (in next photo) is at the other).

Benjy's class
At the other end of the room is the fourth level. Note in both pictures how cold it is, Benjy´s wearing gloves, Jo (the previous volunteer) is in a coat, scarf and gloves!

Muy bien!
A couple of the kids from my class, Aida, Edison and Blanca proudly display their work!

Cool dude!
5 yr old John Jairo - ya gotta love him!

Our school!
Some of the kids outside the school, in front of the mural painted by volunteers from GVI

Diana and her little brother
Diana is 5. We'd been reading 'The Little Polar Bear' together when she was called out by her mum. She reappeared with her brother on her back, yes - she's 5!

Playtime!
Kids in the playground on homemade stilts.

Lunchtime!
Some of the littlies sit down for lunch.

Mums at work
Some of the mums washing veggies in the sink. The mums take it in turn to prepare lunch for the whole school, usually there are only two or three present, but for Easter we had a feast and it was all hands to the pump... and sink!

Educativo Fisico!
The PE Lesson! One of a series of not v successful attempts to capture a kid in mid-flight. This is Umberto in mid-running somersault!