De Perros y Limones

Be Careful What You Wish For

I have made a financial contribution to our situation!  After 14 months of not earning any money, I have, finally, been able to make a little bit of cash.  A few weeks ago the school asked me to cover for the Elementary school PE teacher for four mornings as she was on a swimming course.  I leapt at the chance to rediscover what it is like to teach young children something other than football – I’ve been coaching for a few weeks now.

It’s exhausting.  Sonalee thought it was hilarious on one day  as I led my Kindergarden class back from their gym session where we learned to move like animals such as elephants and tigers.  I had forgotten the look of pure wonder that the little ones have when they see this tall scary man in front of them for the first time and ask ‘Why are you so tall?’  My stock answer is, of course, that my mummy and daddy stretched me when I was a baby. 

What?  It might be true.

The week after this experience,  it was time to take grade 8 children to the Atlas Mountains on their annual trip away for five days.  My god, it was hard.  There were lots of ‘issues’ to do with behaviour, more so than all of us new teachers were expecting and of course you’re in for the whole 24/7 for the week.  Added to the fact that I was missing Sonalee’s 50th birthday, well it made the whole trip less wonderful than it should have been.

Village in the sky

And this is a shame since there were so many aspects of the trip that were beautiful – the scenery was spectacular, interesting – we were in a Berber region with their own language and customs and entertaining – Berber music is so much fun to behold.  And the food.  Wow, the food.  Absolutely amazing hospitality from the guesthouse owners, guides and workers. 

  • Our guide, Hassan

We stayed in a village that is the stopping-off point for hiking up one of the highest peaks in the Atlas Mountains.  It was where, a few years ago, two young Scandinavian women were brutally murdered by some warped men who had sought out westerners to kill in the name of their god.  It was an event that shook the local populace to the core because they rely on tourists for the bulk of their economy and they would never dream of harming what is, essentially, a cash cow for them.

It also shocked the Moroccan government who have made a big play of characterising their country as one of the most stable in Africa.  The sentences passed out to the poorly educated murderers reflect the government’s determination to keep extremism away from their borders. 

As our guides explained, farming is an important part of the economy in their region but it is tourism from Europeans that keeps the village expanding and keeps the metaphorical wolf from the door.  Because the village is poor.  Not  dirt-poor but far from the riches that our students take for granted.  The village has no roads inside it so mules and donkeys do the, well, donkey work.  There are hundreds of them.  The seemingly million strong population of cats keep the rats at bay and the rug sellers try to extort  as much cash from tourists as possible – striking a deal with them is some of the hardest haggling I’ve ever done.

attentive kids at the local school

It’s also a traditional/conservative area where the men are most definitely in charge.   Or think they are.  Men and women alike take part in the back-breaking tasks of farming in a mountainous area, as do quite a lot of kids when school is over.  The elementary school has expanded and, whilst not compulsory, is considered a way to improve lives.  Most of the girls don’t go to secondary education because they have to travel and that involves risks for them.   What to do?  Many boys don’t either but for different reasons;  they are needed for the building of more houses and lodges and to learn the ropes as guides. 

  • Our visit to the local school to teach English

The work ethic of the villagers is impressive.  Longs hours and long days with no or little time off.  A self-determination to improve with the help of quite a lot of small NGO’s.  Not the charities who produce slick adverts on tv and who then send ridiculously paid consultants to various countries to produce yet more slick statistics to show how they are doing a wonderful job so send us more money.  My cynical attitude to the big charities has its roots in my time in Sri Lanka.  It would be fair to say that I am most definitely not a fan of them and I don’t think you would be either if you found out just how much of their money goes nowhere. 

Enough of my cynicism!   Let me re-iterate just how much respect I have for the endeavours for the people I met on my week away.  They don’t want charity, they don’t want to rely on a government to give them something for nothing.  They just want to get on with it and to be given the tools to do so. 

The day after I returned it was time to celebrate my wife’s 50th birthday.  What better way to do this than a staff trip to a vineyard two hours away?  Once there we were encouraged to drink (not merely taste) the product and to eat tons of free food.  We were also invited to take a tour of the very professional and successful business but we decided that it would only interfere with the drinking, eating and, after a while, the singing and dancing on tables. 

Hiking country

When we got back to school we felt it prudent to leave the car and get the bus back.  It was on the bus that Sonalee and I were standing when a young man offered my spouse a seat.  She was mortified.  She had only been 50 for 4 days and already youngsters were giving up their seat for her.  We eventually decided it was gallantry from the young man and not sympathy for an elder.

morning walks on our beach

Of course it was.

So there we were on Sunday evening, feeling thoroughly knackered and  getting ready for Sonalee’s own trip to the Atlas Mountains with the grade 11 students when she gets a text at ten in the evening;  Would Paul be able to cover your classes for the week because the normal cover teacher has cancelled?  Er, yeah!  Okay.

Monday morning found me doing several things I’ve never done before;-

  1. Teach English to teenagers
  2. Teach in a High School
  3. Teach World War One Poetry
  4. Teach in  my wife’s classroom
  5. Teach following whilst following my wife’s lesson plans

All this after deliberating whether to iron a shirt for work – of course I didn’t’, why change a habit of a lifetime when you know creases eventually work themselves out?  Was I nervous?  God, yes.  Especially after I’d had to drive half an hour Sonalee to work for 7 in the morning, drive back  half an hour to feed the dogs and cat and then get ready to drive back half an hour to be ‘Miss A’ for the week.  Miss A is what Sonalee prefers as a moniker.  I refuse to be Mr A.  Or Mr B.  No way.  Mr Paul has been fine for eight years, it will be fine now.

Actually, I needn’t have been nervous.  The kids were great, the lessons were easy to follow because my wife is supremely organised and I found out, once again,  that I really like teaching.  I think I’m quite good at it.  I hope I’m quite good at it.  I told the kids that if they didn’t do good work then I would get it in the neck at home and that if that happened then I would spread that pain onto them at some point.

They got the lessons.

Sonalee loved her trip to a different part of the Atlas Mountains that I had been to.  She missed me terribly.  And who could blame her?  No, honestly, she did.  I missed her, naturally.  I was also slightly punchdrunk at returning to full time teaching and coaching – it’s so tiring!

And on the Friday, when I walked into school there was a little brown kitten at the security gate who had probably been dumped there the night before. Poor little thing.  I reasoned with the onlookers and fellow teachers that Sonalee would want him/her if she saw him.  We miss Tango.  We miss him loads.  Monte misses him too.  And Bindi as well.  The house just doesn’t seem so complete without him.  Monte needs a companion and Sonalee misses a naughty ball of fur with sharp claws that complains loudly.

A Berber shrine to a revered holy man

Anyway, Sonalee returned home and the next day we went to Spain.  More precisely we went to Spain in Morocco.  We travelled 4 hours to the enclave of Ceuta, queued for 3 hours to get in, shopped in a zombie-like state for 2 hours, travelled back for another 4 hours just to get  the car registered in my name and not on Sonalee’s passport – she is off to Brussels next week and you can’t leave the country without a car that is registered in your name.  The word Palaver was invented for such a bureaucratic nightmare. 

It was weird being back in Spain for even such a  short time.  It was also a reminder that we do miss home a bit.  We did manage to stock up on baked beans and really good cheddar and Cava but we were to be enormously disappointed that we couldn’t find any HP sauce.  What to do?   The most embarrassing aspect of the trip was when we were coming back into Morocco and one of the officials spoke to us in French and Spanish.  The look of incredulity was something to behold;  You hold Spanish driving licenses, you drive a Spanish car, you are coming from Spain, you are going  to a French speaking country and you can’t bloody well speak either language properly? 

Hmm.  We really need to sort that out.

By the way, we now have a new cat.  But you knew that would happen, didn’t you?  I’ve named him/her ‘Scaryclaw’ because it is a really cool name but, for some reason, Sonalee is not convinced. 

Scaryclaw!

Hasta Luego

Paul

PS:  This tune is one that was on Radio 6 (on the internet web thing) as we travelled to the Spanish equivalent of Gibraltar.  It is astonishingly brilliant and you forget sometimes just how good it is.  It’s a track that gives you goosebumps from a band that provides a soundtrack to many lives.

Bindi, chilling in the Autumn sun

Paul

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