Field Trip! Distributing School Supplies in the Sang Thong District

(warning, this is kind of lengthy...and it is not exactly new news from me, as it happened two weeks ago now...but I felt it was a trip/story that I should tell about)

The first monday after moving in with my host family (which was two weeks ago by now - yikes im far behind!) Whitney and I were invited to skip language school to go on a little field trip with Wendy (the Program Administrator for MCC Laos) and two other Lao MCC workers to the Sang Thong district. This rural district is just north along the Mekong from Vientiane and consists of 37 villages. MCC has an office in the region that works primarily to train community health workers, although there are a few agricultural programs and a minor role in supporting district education. It was this final activity that we were assisting with on this day trip. For the past few years, MCC has helped out some of the districts poorest schools with school supplies, funded through the MCC Global Family program.

Now, this picture with the water buffalo is not a true reflection of the nature of the trip. For one thing, it does not really show the amazing beauty of the rural, tropical scenery we passed along the way - the quiet Mekong River on the one side, densely forested small hills and valleys on the other. Secondly, it doesn't show any of the little houses or rural communities we passed through on the way (I did take another couple of pictures out the car window, but this was the only one that turned out alright).

But the main issue I have with this picture representing the trip is the road - it's way too flat. We left Vientiane at 6:30am and arrived at the first school three hours later, however, I would guess we hadn't gone more than...oh, i dont know, im really bad with distances, but like, 40 miles. It was the bumpiest, craziest dirt road I have ever been on! I wish I could describe it better than that...when this picture with the water buffalo was taken, it was on one of the very few, very precious moments of peace and smooth, flat dirt road. It really added to the adventure of the day - we were really leaving the city!

Now, this picture here to the left was our first stop - the first school. It was just a local, P1, P2 school (the "P"'s are like grades), so the fact that there were only three small dividing walls in the building was alright - there were only two grades being taught here. But still, it was definitely quite a shock to pull up to this dismal structure and find happy school children inside. They were all quite excited, as you can imagine, to have their school day interruptedd with three foreigners coming to visit! Their excitement mixed with nervousness was an almost palpable emotion in that little classroom, once we had all piled in.

At every school we visited we gave every P1 and P2 student a packet of notebooks and pencils. Some students also received a bigger package that included a school uniform and a few other school supplies. These students were selected based on their need (as established from community income surveys done during the summer). Wendy was telling us that this might be the last year they give away any of these larger packages, at least by this "pick and choose" method. They have been running into the obvious problem of unhappy parents who think - why didn't WE get that stuff? We are struggling too! That's not fair!" etc. Over the past few years they have been doing this program they have found that as much as it helps those who do receive it, it also creates an equal amount of tension in the community and school. Wendy says they are in the process of trying to come up with an alternative. This year is the first time that they have combined the packages with the distribution of notebooks/pencils to all students, so they hope this will help, however, even this is a temporary fix. Next year it is likely they will have to choose only one school in the district (the poorest) and give all the P1 and P2 students the entire contents of the school kit packages. Oh, and each school we went to also received some sports equipment to use at recess! (i thought that was a nice gesture)

(ok, so i feel really silly, but i tried to rotate this picture like three times and just could not get it to upload once it was rotated, so i know it looks silly, but here it is anyway....the picture to the left is a super cute example of Lao culture. Lao people do not wear shoes indoors - not in homes, not in offices, not in schools - even in this concrete floored classroom). So outside of every school we visited you would see piles of the cutest, smallest shoes!!!)

The second school was quite a bit bigger and nicer than the first, and housed several more grades. The best part of this visit was the warm welcome we received: as you can see from this picture, when we pulled up, all the school children were lined up on the hill along both sides of the driveway leading up to the school. Our driver dropped us off and the bottom and we were able to walk up the hill through this "tunnel of welcome" as I guess you could call it. It was fun and rather awkward too! Because that was a lot of times to say "Sabaidee" in a row! and they were all standing with their hands in the greeting position (palms together, fingers pointing up, with the tips right about level with your mouth) and if you were just meeting one of these students, you would be expected to say Sabaidee in return while doing the little hand motion and maybe even a small bow. But can you imagine trying to do this walking up the path that is lined with students on both sides?! it was impossible to properly greet everyone, no matter how slowly you walked! (which was quite slow, I must say). It was quite the experience.

The third school was about equal in size with the second, although not nearly as nice, even though Wendy told me it was a new building. Also, according to Wendy, this was one of the poorest villages in the district. What really struck me most about this school (well, all the schools, really. the top pic is from this third school, the bottom from the second) was the bareness of the classroom. Walking into an American elementary school is always a "sensory overload" experience, at least for me. Not only are there small children everywhere, running around and being...well, small children, the classrooms are also jammed with visual stimulus of every sort - posters, art projects, books, toys - there is hardly an inch of free, unoccupied space in the room! These classrooms were, by comparison, completely deserted. There was, in some cases, literally NOTHING on the walls. Nothing. In one of the schools there was a classroom I saw that had a couple of sad looking posters half hanging, half falling off the wall. But they were just white butcher paper with some Lao script in blue marker. Nothing glossy or even a picture. I think this was the biggest shock to me. I just could not imagine going to school someplace so...barren, and learning with so few extra things - props, visuals, anything! - to help you engage with the material.

At two of the schools I got to help physically hand out the notebook/pencil packets to the children as the teacher called their name off the list to come forward. This was super cute. Whitney got a couple of good pictures of me doing this, but she is not with me right now so I do not have access to them. The most memorable part of this experience was just how small they all were!!! and how cute and excited some of them were. Several girls, after putting their hand together and bowing low, grabbed the notebooks from my hands with great gusto and then hugged them tightly to their chest as they scampered off back to their seats, clearly delighted to have gained this new possession and determined to keep a good hold on it. I just hope they will be able to have the same excitement and enthusiastic ownership over the material they learn and copy into those books over the course of this school year.

Finally, as we were leaving this last (poorest) school, we were overwhelmed with gifts. All the parents had come to us with bags of fresh produce, fruits and vegetables of every kind (most not available in the states). This picture is of us loading their generosity into the back of our truck - look how much there was! This a fantastic way to end the day - a true testament to the nature of giving in development: we try to give them the things we think they need, but the
"poor" always seem to end up giving YOU an overwhelming amount in return, displaying generosity that far exceeds their monetary means.

oh and one final, hilarious sidenote....I saw several very western little kid backpacks at these schools. There was a mickey mouse bag, several barbie bags and several of my personal favorite: the hannah montana bag that said "Barbie" over the picture of hannah! haha!! i laughed so hard - yet, part of me was actually very sad too - that Hannah and Barbie and all these white, blonde faces were the only things that seemed to decorate these children's little plastic backpacks, one of the few pictures they would see at school, it seemed. I don't know. It was funny, but also just seemed...so wrong. (oh and PS - that blue bumper sticker on our truck there is the equivalent of a "don't drink and drive" sticker in Lao)

This final pic I'll leave you with was one I took out the car window as we were leaving the third school. It is a mom walking home with the bag that her child received, carrying it away in that plastic blue sack on her head.