23rd
September
It is said that only 2 things in life are
certain, death and taxation. In
Bhutan one can add to that uncertainty.
The last couple of weeks have really
reinforced that. I first heard
from the school principal that we might have a visit from a member of the royal
family around 3 weeks ago, with the visit for maybe 21st September.
Blessed Rainy Day is a national holiday on
22nd September.
And Sakshing Tsetchu apparently normally gives
a 3 day local holiday and although that shows in my copy of the school calendar
for early October, it is actually happening this week. But local holidays cannot be announced
until there is a memo sent from the Geog (local government) office.
It was also National Reading Week last week
and the infant reading competition and Dzonkha reading competition had already
been held, and I had scheduled the English reading competition for classes 4-8
for after classes finished on Saturday.
However, with an impending Royal Visit,
there was certain cleaning up of the school that needed to be done, so it was
that classes would be cancelled, the reading competition would be run, and then
there would be clean up.
Actually, the announcement was erroneous;
the reading competition would be run after period 1.
The reading competition went reasonably
well, apart from some technical hitches with the microphones, then there was
allocation of duties for clean up during extensive discussion between
staff.
Apparently my class were assigned to
cleaning up the Multi Purpose Hall, including washing the floor. I stopped some students from tipping
buckets of water over the floor, and instructed them in how to use a mop to
clean the floor. It seems that
another staff member came along behind me and changed my instructions. I decided I wanted nothing to do with
the creation of a paddling pool to evenly spread the dirt on the floor of the
MPH so went outside to supervise students who were attempting to clean the
table tops with minimal cleaning cloths and to have another conversation with
them about my plans for next year.
I took advantage of permission from the
principal to leave early to get myself to Yangtse and left them to it.
So on Monday it was classes as normal to
start with, apart from disaster drill in period 2, after which it was announced
that there would be no more classes, but there would be clean up. And staff would be provided with lunch,
for reasons for which I was not certain.
I had already allocated duties to various
of my home group for cleaning the classroom during the lunch break, and
provided them with suitable cloths to do so. Since another staff member announced to the boys that they
were to go and help elsewhere, I needed to do some reorganization of
delegations.
Eventually jobs were allocated and I was
able to commandeer the school mop and persuade the girls that sweeping then
mopping was more effective than other configurations of these tasks and that
mopping could better be done by regular washing and squeezing of the mop and regular
changing of the water, threatening
anyone who looked as if they might be about to slosh buckets of water
everywhere inside.
Uncertain of what else I should be looking
after, I delegated some of the girls to also clean floors, tabletops and
windows in the classrooms for the infant classes, and to bully the class 3 boys
who were loitering in their classroom into helping with the cleaning and
general tidying of their room. I
also commandeered any lingering younger children to pick up rubbish, of which
there is always plenty.
I tried to persuade those allocated to
weeding the gardens that this job was better done if weeds were removed to a
more distance place rather than thrown half a meter away.
Lunchtime was uncertain, and the students
told me when I tried to send them for lunch that it was the wrong time. How would I know anything unless the
students tell me! After a while I
wandered down to sit with the staff who were waiting for lunch, and after about
¾ hour it was served. Activity for
after lunch, it transpired (I did need to ask) would be weeding the garden beds
along the main path for half an hour or so then everyone could go. It seems that the boys had already gone
to play football but I tried to persuade some girls to do a halfway decent job
of not only pulling out the weeds but also removing them elsewhere.
Tuesday was a holiday, and a rather
enjoyable special day, Blessed Rainy Day.
I was instructed by my young neighbours in appropriate procedures with
creating flower water to wash my hair and body and was invited to dine with
friends.
Today was the possible Royal Visit. Whether or not there would be normal
classes was uncertain, so at the normal time, I went to class and taught a
rather depleted group of students.
Notice was received before morning tea time
that it was not happening, so the special food that had been prepared was
shared with staff.
Classes continued as normal afterwards, but
everyone was expecting a notice any moment that we would have holidays. We went home for lunch and as I was
walking back to school, I encountered many of the day scholars walking away
from the school. Yes, holiday had
been announced for the rest of the afternoon and tomorrow. Notice had finally been received from
the Geog office.
A longer break would have been good to
enable me to get away for some R&R at Linkhar, but one should be thankful
for small gifts.
Now to work out if I can get to Shakshing
tomorrow to attend part of the Tsetchu.
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