World Teachers Day

Hot Sunday midday, and I’m sitting under the fan on its highest setting, wishing it would do more than blow hot air around the room. The temperatures in Bomana have soared this last week and its becoming impossible to do more than lie around the house in the afternoons, longing for a pool.

It’s been quite a week this week, but I’m getting tired of sitting at a computer (seeing as I’m doing so much of it at school – with a whole lot more of it coming up – in one week’s time that’s the only job I’ll have) so I haven’t been e-ing much. This was the first week back after hols, but it already feels like that break was a month or two ago – and that Em and Lin were 6 months ago.

It was World Teachers Day on Wednesday, and being PNG we postponed it til Friday – and strangely, for a world teaching day, all classes were cancelled. A weird kind of logic set down by the Education Office – but it did mean that we had time for a concert put on by the students in the afternoon. They had been practising items during the week, and the concert itself was a mix of dances and songs, poems being read aloud, and some drama items – including a great sketch by the 11 Purples linking all the subject areas and saying why they were important for life skills (including a great moment when one of our new vice captains came out dressed in a nun’s habit, posing as Miss Religion – a huge cheer!), and a game of “teacher head” (instead of celebrity head) where 3 girls had to guess which teacher they were. Lots of laughs as they asked their questions and the whole assembly roared out a yes or no response. The poems read out for the different teachers were lovely, and my Henry read out a poem for me (written by Norma Jean) that would have had me crying if she didn’t already have me in stitches with her mode of delivery – a very sentimental poem that started with me being described as the sun that rises in the east (yes, we’d just finished a unit of work on Romeo and Juliet) and lots of nice things designed to make me tear up – but the effect was changed somewhat by Henry pausing in the middle of it to give a very loud sniff (not because she was crying, just because she needed to!) and sending the audience into peals of laughter, added to later by her almost getting confused as to what direction the sun was now setting in, later in the poem. Lucky, I say, because I could disguise the water welling as tears of laughter rather than tears of sadness that it was all coming to an end, and that they wanted to share such nice thoughts about me with everyone. (I’m now officially called “the rising sun” by Lady Andrew, whereas I’m calling her Icecream Lady because her Yellows also read out a touching tribute to her, ending with the line “But Mrs Andrew, we’re still waiting for our icecream…”)

The funniest of the lot, though, was the student impersonations of teachers. The first one was a ‘guess who’, with a Grade 12 girl doing a fabulous impression of her Business Studies teacher that had everyone crying with laughter. Then later in the show there was a teacher parade, with a bunch of girls coming out dressed as different teachers and giving a ‘famous quote’. It was so funny to see the way that they portrayed people – which habits or dress or way of speaking they’d picked up on. My favourites were Sister Pauline (one of our student nuns) coming out as Sister Catherine – an Australian nun newly arrived at Mville this year – all she had to do was walk out and put up her umbrella and we all knew immediately who she was! – and the same girl dressed in the white habit, pretending this time to be Sister Angela. She was last (or supposed to be) and I was so glad they were brave enough to include her in the line-up because of course she got the biggest laugh, taking the microphone to tell the girls that they had to put their heads down and study hard this term, only to interrupt herself by breaking into a huge cry of “Kill that dog!” (which Angela invariably yells whenever she sees one of the mangy mutts running around the place, regardless of whatever she or anyone else had been in the middle of saying). Even better that Angela stayed to watch the whole thing and thus saw herself – she’d been itching to get back to her work throughout the whole performance, and was muttering to me sitting next to her about how she wished they’d hurry up and get on with it. She was laughing as much as anyone, and I’m sure she was quietly chuffed that her portrayal got the biggest response.

Then they had a cake for us, and sang Happy Teachers Day, and we all got hugs and cards and well wishes as the day drew to a close.

Can you imagine that happening in Australia?

God I’m going to miss teaching in PNG, where the girls are just so happy to be at school and to be getting an education – and where teachers have so much respect. It’s a lovely place to work, and you really feel appreciated.