May 1 2013,
My little “bush school” is comprised of 3 teachers one of which happens to be the principal. There is a Teacher for a combined class 1 and 2 (Lose who is also the principal), a teacher for class 3 and 4 (Mele), and a teacher for class 5 and 6 (Ella). All females. The class 3-4 and class 5-6 teachers are actually from my village, which for Tonga is very rare because most often the teachers get moved around so much that they hardly ever teach in their same villages. My school is one long, one story structure with 4 classrooms and one resource room/ library that until recently when I was able to get some books donated (if you know of any way or have some books to donate, I have the perfect place!) did not have any books in it. We are privileged enough to have a photocopier machine that is essentially the life blood of the teacher here and I fear the day that the copier runs out of toner. My school has about 70 students, each as wildly energetic and physical as the last. Tongan kids- both the boys and the girls- have a strange need to constantly be hanging on each other or hitting each other. Even though they are the continual cause of frustration they are pretty freaking adorable and make me smile as much as they make me want to send them to do some hard labor for awhile. One of the best parts of my school, is that one of the classrooms is used as the kindergarten (kiniti) a few times a week, and I would challenge any other nation’s kids to be as cute as a 3 year old Tongan kid, not only is their general physical appearance one that could be plastered all over Gerber ads, but hearing them speak Tongan is one of my new favorite things in the world.
As of last week we are down to two teachers at my school. This is a transcript of the text I received to notify me of the new change:
"Hi sifa au mele can you please tell Lose im in hospital coz im giving birth
Apparently Mele couldn't come to school because she her baby and- now she is on maternity leave for 3 months. What happens in this situation you may wonder? A substitute maybe? No, in a small outer village school in Tonga what simply happens is the other teachers absorb the class until leave is over, so as of now When I am teaching English, Ella is teaching the other class, I teach longer and help teach math/ babysit when necessary. All this really means is, the kids are harder to handle because they are less supervised (hit less) than normal. The kicker is that Ella is also pregnant and will go on her leave about the time Mele gets back…
this is Naki a.k.a. Amanaki- he doesn't actually go to school because he is too young but there isn't day care here so he just hangs out all day while Ella (his mom but really his aunt teaches)- Naki is one of my favorite kids
Toni (in the green) is in my class 4 and he has the best dimples and the most expressive face
these little guys are in class 1 and 2 so I don't actually teach them
oh how they love being phtographed
the little guy is Misi he is in the kiniti he is pretty awesome, the other one is Selamaia and he is my favorite kid in class 2
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