An Appeal

I work in some beautiful schools in rural Sabah. The teachers are committed, the children are bright and starry-eyed, the grounds are invariably a wonderland of ponds and flowers and orchids.

There's just one thing that gets me down: the libraries. The libraries - although cared for by the teachers -are full of cheap books that are way above the heads of most of the students, illustrated with dated depictions of life in the 1970s which don't support the actual text, usually falling apart through intensive use and/or the general mould-inducing climate of Borneo. Some schools have a box of books donated by the New Zealand government a couple of decades ago - these would not now be used in New Zealand, and there's no reason my schools should have to settle for lower quality books than those used in our own countries. Some books are so moralistic that they do not encourage reading for pleasure.

So.

I'm asking you to please consider contributing a book or two to one of my schools. I am here for another 6 months, and all books received will be distributed fairly* amongst the five schools I work with. I will also give support to the teachers in using these books, and make sure that they don't end up being cosseted in a box in the librarian's office, and never given to the children - which has happened in the past, when donors demanded that the books be kept in excellent condition (what beloved children's book is ever in an excellent condition?!)

There are a few ways that you can donate books.

1. You can send me a gift certificate for Fishpond, Amazon UK or Better World Books. You can buy gift cards for as little as you like - any amount will help us, even if it's just £1. The certificate codes will be distributed amongst the schools, and teachers will be able to choose high quality books for themselves.
2. You can buy a specific book from Amazon, Book Depository (free delivery to Malaysia), Better World Books, or Thrift Books (or another site of your choice) and request shipping directly to me. Please let me know if you need an address. We have created a wishlist here, although of course you are not restricted to buying only these books!
3. You can buy books in charity shops or bookshops, or through Amazon's second-hand offers, or raid your old and no-longer-used bookshelf, and send them to us - I will provide you with an address, and distribute the books to the schools.
4. If you are interested in supporting local Malaysian writers and illustrators, you can buy books through Silverfish Books - we love anything by Yusof Gajah, Margaret Lim, and Jainal Amambing.

If you would like to buy or donate books directly (rather than buying a gift certificate), please see the list below of authors that would go down well with the ESL learners in my schools. We would love you to put your name inside the front cover, to let schools know who the book was donated by. The children here are fascinated by foreign children - if your children are sending a book, please feel free to include a photo of them reading the book, to give our students a sense of connection to the previous owners. You could also do this if you are a teacher, and your class sends a book.

What do you get back? We guarantee you a warm feeling in your heart! We also promise, if you send us your e-mail address with your donation, to send you some photos of the kids enjoying your books.

Our Desirable Authors (not a complete list!)

• Eric Carle
• Bill Martin, Jr.
• Julia Donaldson
• Yusof Gajah
• Janet & Allen Ahlberg
• Oliver Jeffers
• Nick Sharrett
• Margaret Lim
• Raymond Briggs
• Jill Murphy
• Rod Campbell
• David Wiesner (wordless books)
• Valerie Thomas
• Lucy Cousins (Maisy series)
• Lift the Flap Fairy Tales (Macmillan publishers)
• Books from Macmillan's Children's Readers series
• Any books with simple, repetitive language and bright pictures

Please do not send:

• Books without pictures: very few primary school children are able to read these, in my schools. If you would like to donate these, please let me know and I will provide you with the address of a local high school who would appreciate them.
• Older books with lots of old-fashioned text (we already have plenty of these!)
• Books with pigs as main characters - these are very unpopular, even with non-Muslim children.
• Religious books - for obvious reasons.
• Ladybird books - these are available in Malaysia quite cheaply.

Contacting me

Please e-mail me if you would like to donate.

Or, you could leave a comment below.

*The Power of Reading Programme

One of my schools has already been accepted to the Power of Reading Programme, and won't be receiving any books from this appeal, unless there is a large response (fingers crossed!) You can find out more about the incredible impact this programme is having on schools in Borneo in the video below - this impact is the reason I want the rest of my schools to benefit from floods of great books :)

The Power of Reading

Each of my five schools has a library. For 3 of the schools, that's about as much as can be said for them. There is a room that's called a library, which contains some books. It's nothing like the sacred place that was the Harare Municipal Library for me growing up. There are books, but because the children have mostly never seen a book before arriving at school, they are stuffed onto shelves in whatever way was most convenient for the student before he raced off to class. There are books, but they are falling apart. There are books, which were written in Kuala Lumpur for kids with the benefit of a private English-medium education, or which were donated by the New Zealand government in 1975, when their schoolkids thought they were outdated. There are dense, yellowing, moralist tales. There are books. And yet there aren't.

There are not books that the children want to read over and over again - there's no Hungry Caterpillar, or Brown Bear, or even the beautifully illustrated fairytales written by local authors that I bought on my trip to Kuala Lumpur. There are no bright pictures that help non-English speakers to understand the text. There's no understanding of what a seven-year-old or ten-year-old child looks for in a storybook.

And this is a shame, because what I see every morning is little ones dumping their bags in the classroom and rushing off to the library for the twenty-minute open reading session. It seems to stop by Year 3, but the older ones peek over my shoulder at whatever book I open up in school, or at my Kindle, and murmur the words to themselves. There is still this fascination with books, even without having the literature-rich background I was lucky enough to be born into. 

What the libraries do have is luminous walls.

Malinsau Primary School Library

In Malinsau, the library is brand new - when I arrived last year, it was locked to students because it was unsafe, but the librarian has done wonders with a spot of purple paint and some polystyrene letters. He's made it as welcoming as he can with the limited funds he has access to, but there's only so far it can stretch; the one bookshelf has been filled with every book he can find, and a few teachers' guides, and it's still not enough for the children.

But all this is about to change. Last week I was frantically busy with three proposals, one for each of the three schools with the least library resources. The British Council is funding just 15 schools in the Project in Sabah through a Power of Reading programme - basically a book flood, in which the school is 'flooded' with up to a thousand high quality storybooks aimed at the first three years of primary school. It's been very successful in raising literacy levels in rural schools all over the world, including South Africa, so there are very high hopes for this neglected corner of Malaysia, particularly my little cluster of schools, where only one in twenty students passed their final Year 6 national English exams last year.

I've had to guide all my mentees, headteachers, librarians, remedial teachers, and District Language Officer through statements of support, in-depth discussions, photography, mind-mapping, planning and even building - whatever it takes to get onto that list of 15 schools. In one school, we started building reading corners in the classrooms; after the initial discussion in which I described the project to the teachers and headmaster, the lovely head went off, called the caretaker with his machete, and disappeared into the bush at the back of the school to harvest some bamboo. They were hard at work building the first structure that very afternoon. 

The caretaker checks on his child-friendly tools.

The Year 3 students try on the frame for size.

Nearly done.

I had a laugh with the GB and caretaker about his machete, kept constantly at his side in a handmade wooden sheath. In Europe he'd be arrested for putting children in danger; in Sabah, kids are taught how to wield machetes safely from toddlerhood, a necessity for a life in which they are likely to need that awareness.

So yes, basically we did what needed to be done. 15 places for Sabah, from 300 schools on my Project - not an easy task. The proposals are in, and now all that we can do is wait to see what the board and the State Education Office say. I'm crossing all my fingers and toes, and so are some very excited little girls and boys. And now I hope you're crossing yours too :)

Luang Prabang the Second

Luang Prabang is an odd town. Sometimes you can feel that there's nothing in it but tourists and people working for tourists. But then you wander a little, and you get off (gasp!) the Sisavangvong Road, and you stumble on a street full of Laotian boys singing karaoke...

My hotel was quite a way from the main tourist street, and the lane in front of it was occupied not by chic French cafés or backpackers wearing Phuket t-shirts, but by a couple of tiny, dark houses where the inhabitants lived towards the back of a large ground floor room and sold essentials from a glass case at the front. To buy a drink, I stood at the door and called inside "Sabaidee! Hello! Sabaidee!" for about five minutes, until the lady heard me from her bed, then came to charge me smiling for the can I already had in my hand.

While my friend did the tourist route for her first time, I simply wandered about the streets, drinking coffee, watching people, and, yes, shopping. I found one tiny shop with a cat on the doorstep and a weaver within, and couldn't resist buying my cousin's birthday present from there.

One day, I dropped into the library.I admit, my main reason was entirely selfish: I was wilting in the 32-degree heat, and there was a little cafe attached to the side of the building. But once I'd downed my cold drink, I got talking to a volunteer at the door who suggested that if I had nothing better to do, I might like to step into their back room, where at that very moment their afternoon conversation club was running. I did indeed have nothing better to do, so I let myself be guided into the room, where around 20 foreigners were chatting to Lao counterparts. I was assigned to a young monk, Phoung, which I was thrilled about. I'm not a religious person, but if I were seeking an answer to life, I think Buddhism would probably be the route I'd choose. Yet I know next to nothing about the lives of the thousands of saffron-clad men who'd populated my train window scenery since southern Thailand. 


Phoung was extremely chatty - perhaps the most driven student of English I've ever met - and so I just let him talk for the next hour about his life in the monastery. Actually a novice, he was just 16, and had come to the monastery in Luang Prabang from his rural village at just 12. So young, I though, but then I know people who went to boarding school at 5, and this seems, in many ways, quite similar to a religious school in the west. He's up at 5am for chanting, then he goes on the walk for morning alms-giving before spending time with an older monk who tutors him in religious and secular matters. Later he does chores - that morning he'd been painting the temple, and then, because it was a full moon, he'd been called to shave the abbot's hair off - he would have his own head shaved later that afternoon. After that it's lunchtime, and then he's free for 2 hours - this is the time everyday when he comes to the library to practise his English with tourists. When that's over, he returns to the temple to carry out religious duties and to wash before the evening chanting. Later in the evening there's time to attend his English course with an American volunteer before bed at 11:30. Replace the chants with mass or chapel, and it's very close to any Christian boarding school in the west. At 18, they are given the choice of taking vows and becoming full monks, or making their way into the world. Phoung wanted to be an IT technician.

After a while, we were all evicted from the library but outside I sat a little longer to chat with the librarian, Phoung and his friend, and a Swiss woman, Jutta, who recently left her job and instead of finding a new one packed up and moved to Laos, intending to start up English classes for women (boy, do I wish I was her.) She's ended up having a lot to do with the temples, though, and knew Phoung well. She invited me to visit one of the temples she works with, explaining on the way that today was a full moon. That meant shaved heads, but also some rather special drumming. We sat with a novice called Keo just outside a small pavilion on the temple grounds. Other novices came jogging up, some running hands over heads shaved moments ago. They gathered inside the pavilion and one started the beat with the huge, hanging drum. Others joined in at the sides with smaller drums and cymbals. 

The afternoon heat - even at 4pm - meant that every minute or so, sweat streaming off his head, the drumming novice would make eye contact with another novice who would take up the mallet and continue, without missing a beat. It was pretty hypnotic stuff, and before I realised it, 20 minutes had gone by and the novices were slowing down, pausing, stopping for good.

Or at least until the next special day - a full moon, half moon, new moon, old moon, time for blessing... the novice sitting with us said with a laugh, "Many festival days for Buddhists!"

Jutta and I went into the temple next, where, thanks to the full moon again, buckets of water had been brought by villagers to be blessed. The hall was full of women sitting on their heels, soles of their feet carefully pointing away from the golden Buddha statues at the front. The monks came in - not the novices this time - and sat in a semi-circle at the front just before a line of the only four men in the hall. They held a piece of string as they chanted; my eyes naturally followed the string along its course, through the clasped hands of the monks, around the buckets of water, through a small circlet of marigolds, and out through the window, where it was looped around a brand new pick-up and motorbike - obviously two of the men had been doing well recently... The chanting rose and fell, and as I sat on my heels I quickly learnt to do as the other women did, leaning forward and swiftly slipping my feet from side to side. Several times I wasn't fast enough and my feet fell heavily asleep. The chanting was faintly soporific and went on for nearly 90 minutes (to Jutta's surprise, who attends it regularly, despite being an atheist) but the women certainly didn't just sit in reverence; they joined in from time to time, quietly spoke to neighbours, placated children, and came and went from the hall as needed. Towards the end a teenage boy came in on his knees and handed out cups of sweet, icy tamarind juice, and my neighbour, who had been grinning at me and Jutta and setting us right when our hands drooped or we didn't move in time, forced one into my hands, saying "You welcome! Drink!" The men started to pass forward gifts to the monks - banana leaves wrapped into cones and decorated with marigolds and cash. With more novices and monks owning mobile phones, apparently, money is becoming a more welcome gift than the traditional food and clothing. 

Right at the end, a monk gathered together all the buckets of water - they would remain in the temple overnight and during the morning chanting, then the villagers would be taking them home to sprinkle around their houses and thus keep their families safe from spirits a little longer.

Outside the temple I said goodbye to Jutta, but with every intention of seeing her again here before she leaves - each day I spend in this little town makes me love it more. It's terrible that so many people never see past the shiny veneer of tourism; Jutta and I were the only foreigners in the temple, and although there were a few other tourists at the drumming, they didn't hang around, just got up close, took their photos and left. I asked Jutta and Keo what they thought of all these tourists; Jutta told me that they're mostly intensely shy young men, embarrassed by attentive paparazzi. Keo said he'd had tourists at the almsgiving pushing their cameras into the line of monks and using the flash; the day before, a woman had said loudly, "Well, I think they all look like beggars - they don't even have the respect to wear shoes." He told me that he and many others don't like non-Buddhist foreigners to take part in the almsgiving, although discreet photos are okay, and  I promised to pass it on, while flushing at the memory of my last trip to Luang Prabang, when I allowed myself to be easily bullied into offering food. So this is me passing it on: should you ever go to Laos, watch the almsgiving, and enjoy an ancient cultural tradition, but don't treat them like they're in a petting zoo, and there for your entertainment. Okay. Lecture over. Learn from my mistakes.

So the next morning, I was woken at 5:45am as on every other day, by the temple bells. When I lived in Coimbra, Portugal, my house was opposite a Catholic cathedral that tolled the bells early every morning - I have to say, I do kind of prefer the Buddhist version. I blearily came out onto the balcony, and down below me saw the women waiting to offer rice from their traditional baskets. 

Bearing in mind the friendly pleas of the novice, I didn't join the hotel staff who were also making offerings, but I did crouch next to the gate (being careful to keep my head below theirs) and take a few photos. I was rewarded by a big smile from one of the monks (they are the ones with both shoulders covered), and was left feeling slightly less of a sponging tourist! 

It was on my last evening, the night of the full moon drumming, that I went for a walk through the town at 10pm, unable to sleep. Probably because of the 11:30 curfew, there was barely a soul out. The full moon made it all a bit eerie and I was turning back for the hotel, and that was when I passed the street full of karaoke singers. It's a remarkable town, this Luang Prabang of mine.

Screamfest

I discovered today why my teachers scream and shout in the classroom. I went to the first day of a three-day training session for the new curriculum for Year 2 teachers. In the Listening & Speaking workshop, one of the games the trainer suggested was "Student Scream." The instructions: "Students choose a phrase and then can scream it at the other groups until it's the other one's turn."

The trainer backs this up by saying "The louder you shout it, the more you'll remember it."

That's going to be the front page quote on my next report on Malaysian teaching practice.

On the other hand...

You know that sense of irritation when the moment you give up on a bus and start walking, two turn up and pass you gaily as you walk? Or, more pertinently, you complain of an itch in the throat, but the moment you see a doctor, it goes away? That's a little how I felt today, when my manager came to assess the situation in my cluster and make a decision about whether it should be included in the program, and suddenly all the problems I had on Tuesday magically disappeared. Suddenly, I was able to move into teacher's accommodation at one school temporarily, and equally as suddenly, a little two-storey cottage at the gate of the most central school became available. The Boss was suddenly helpful and understanding. 24-hour power (from the school's solar panels) suddenly became available, and the landlord of my little cottage suddenly understood the need for an inside bathroom. Internet suddenly became a possibility, albeit very slow, expensive internet.


Suddenly my life looked rosier.


It's still a very remote area with very little infrastructure, and it'll take me about 2 hours to reach town (which I plan to visit every weekend initially), but with power, a couple of rainwater tanks, a fridge and some internet, I'm quite excited to get started! I'm just waiting for a 4x4 to be serviced and delivered, and then I'm off. Just look at my new home (bearing in mind that there's still a bit of work to be done!).

It was also great to have a chat with my manager about the programme - it really is such an exciting and positive thing to be involved with, and fits in well with a lot of my ideas about life. We won't be teaching English while we're here, but are "mentors" (120 of us, in Sabah and Sarawak) and will be encouraging teachers to think more deeply about their teaching practice. I like it because, unlike many other programmes I've heard of, we don't go marching in there and say "Right, all of you sit and listen to me tell you about how great the UK education system is, and this is what you've got to do in your classroom, right, now go!" It's very much about observing the Malaysian situation, and then getting teachers to work with their colleagues and their communities to make changes in the school and the classroom that benefit everyone, and which come from the grassroots level. There's a lot of support, but also a lot of autonomy over how we go about this. The big idea is that because the teachers themselves will be considering and deciding on the changes to be made, when we leave in 2013, the effect will continue, with those teachers helping other teachers and continuing to teach reflectively. The information that has already been gathered through observation and qualitative research could power a hundred post-grad theses, and I really wish I was doing a Masters so I could make use of this incredible opportunity!

Paddling

So I feel a little like I've just hit the ground running. And the ground didn't even slow down with the impact. 10 hours in school on Monday for 2.5 hours of teaching, 11 hours on Tuesday, and I still ended up taking work home with me to plan for my classes on Wednesday. Friday was technically my day off - and that "technically" is placed there strategically so that you may know that "day off" is a theoretical term.

I have some lovely classes - two tiny 5-year-olds who babble at me in Portuguese about everything except the flashcard I'm holding up for them; three 8-year-olds who taught me how to say "maça" because I made it very clear that I didn't know what an apple was really called; a class of retired men who lived through the colonial wars (and the Portuguese colonial wars were devastating) and a revolution, but still listen politely to my thoughts on living in their country, and invite me out for coffee.

There's been a lot of coffee in my life. I need it. Really. There's a great, very simple cafe around the corner from the school where the waiter doesn't patiently listen to my painful Portuguese and then reply in English, but patiently listens to my Portuguese and then pretends he knows what I ordered. Usually he gets it right, but I think he's just got my favourites memorised.


I'm settling into my new place, which is a little flat (in the picture below it's in the middle of the big block, second from top, with an open balcony) just north of the city centre.


I share with Maria, who's a little younger than me but is doing very grown-up things that involve research labs and medical degrees and white coats, and Luisa, who is crazy. In her words. She's pretty awesome, lived in Angola before independence, came home, divorced her husband in Catholic Portugal, and lived to tell the tale sitting beside her well-adjusted daughter in a lounge littered with African statues and paintings. I also share the flat with Nala, who's crazier than Luisa, but can't natter away about it while chain-smoking, because she's a cat.


Once I get the hang of not spending 5 hours planning for an 80-minute class, I promise to tell you stories about Cascais. Just you wait till I get me a life...

Persevering

Well, I got the social security number. It near about killed me. I got talking to a guy from Angola while sitting outside waiting for my turn (I got there an hour before it opened, and was 48th in the third queue...) and he was very kind; him being the number before me, we went into the office together and he helped to translate when my "Slowly please!" didn't work on the official. It took another two trips to Finanças and one to my new Portuguese bank, but by 4pm I was through. I'm now the proud owner of 8 official pieces of paper which state my right to work here, which amazes me, as every EU citizen has the right to work in any EU nation anyway. But.

At least while waiting for my number to be called, I had time to wander around the area. It's quite amazing. Cascais itself is a popular seaside holiday for tourists from all over Europe; down by the seafront, the shops all sell postcards and green-and-red teatowels, and if you speak to someone in Portuguese, they answer in English. But here, just two (steep) blocks from the centre, it's quiet and traditional, and the voices in the streets are all clearly swallowing their words. Properly Lusophone.

The next day I started a three-day induction at my new school. All the teachers are undertaking some workshops run by the British Council, which is great, and very interesting. The other teachers (1 new, 3 veteran) are very friendly, and, astoundingly, all have British and Irish accents - I'm the only colonial there. The school is in a prime position near the fishermen's marina and in the very centre of town. It's the white building on the right:


Inside, there are 7 brightly-painted classrooms off a central reception.


I start actual classes on Monday with a group of 5 year olds - as terrifying as they are cute, believe me. I've never taught kids as young, but my director is great and will be walking me through it on Monday morning. I gather from the lesson plans that should you be wandering down the road that afternoon, and happen to pause by my open window, you will be able to hear me doing something I never do in front of any sane adult: singing!

My Week In ESL Hell

Every once in a while, a bunch of kids arrives at English Village so special, so unique, that they will never be forgotten. A day spent with these awe-inspiring students leads even the most dedicated teacher home to cry quietly in his apartment and call "Mummy!" in his sleep. Teachers dropping like flies - sickness, exhaustion, sudden calls from home that mean they cannot come to work that day... Such is the life we have led this week with the amazing, the jaw-dropping, the fantastic Suju Middle School.

Starting on Monday with the Survival English lesson - where I discovered my class didn't know how to ask somebody's name. A cheery "how's it going?" met with 26 blank faces - but the more formal "How are you?" still only raised a mediocre "I am fine" from about 5 students. I don't have an issue with low students - if their attitude is right, I can adjust lessons and language to suit them.

On Tuesday, my first student was dragged kicking and screaming "But it's not fair!" (in Korean, naturally) to the Head Teacher's office for some Korean-style discipline (writing letters for an hour while sitting in the most uncomfortable position at the teacher's disposal) for talking repeatedly in class and ignoring his teacher. By the end of the day, my class was the class teachers were groaning about when they saw their name on the schedule to teach them.

On Wednesday three students sexually harassed one of my friends, touching themselves and calling her over. I lost all 3 to the Head Teachers for the rest of that day, and most of the next one. Teaching another class Science, I refused to allow two groups to take part in the experiment after their appalling behaviour, and was harassed for ten minutes by outraged girls who couldn't understand that their parents' payment to EV didn't guarantee them luxurious treatment, but perhaps should be a reason for working hard to justify the sacrifice made in their low-income homes.

On Thursday I arrived in my class - on my own, my co-teacher being 'sick' - to find 5 girls sobbing uncontrollably in the bathroom and refusing to be in the same classroom as the boys, who had commented on their periods and called a slightly chubby girl a fat pig. The Korean counsellor talked to them in Korean for my entire lesson, discovering that the girls had retaliated in equal fashion. They spent the evening writing apology letters instead of watching a movie.

On Friday my Korean co-teacher lectured them in Korean for 30 minutes - and an angry tirade in Korean scares even me, so harsh a language is it - while I stood over two boys standing against the wall outside with their hands above their heads. We refused to give prizes to the kids with the most stickers and instead chose 3 students who we felt had at least tried (and were probably being bullied for it). Taking the boys to the Concert Hall for closing ceremony, I had to call over a head teacher to shout at a boy (the main protagonist of the week) for swearing at me in both Korean and English.

Closing Ceremony finally began, and the MC - one of my coteachers - congratulated the school on being the most incredible school in our 3-year history, noting that he could see many of the teachers actually had tears in their eyes. The pleasure that can be taken in taking the piss out of people without them understanding a word is hard to quantify.

There were more than tears in my eyes as I saw the kids off that afternoon, and the staff gathering for the meeting were clearly overjoyed! Next week another school is coming from the same place - I'm giving it one day before I decide whether or not to call in sick for the other four.

My Military Service

This Thursday I started teaching the Korean Military. English Village supplies teachers to military bases around Seoul, but it's evening work and can translate into a very long day of feet-abuse, so my colleague asked if anyone would take over from him. I've been feeling a little stagnant teaching the same lesson week after week to unruly teenagers so decided to take it on for the remaining few weeks of the contract.

My coteachers and I were picked up by two young soldiers who greeted us all warmly and politely laughed at my mature South African ex-military coteacher's marine jokes (Marius is a lovely man! Really!) for the duration of the 40 minute drive to the base, west of Seoul. When we arrived we were taken straight to the messroom for dinner - Leigh, having had experience, politely took a tiny portion of rice and tuna, avoiding the rest of the offerings, while I let myself be persuaded to take some kimchi broth - it was truly military food (even served on metal trays), although I managed to finish the rice and tuna. Next time I know to eat something in my 10 minutes between finishing EV teaching and leaving for military.

During dinner, we turned to talking about conscientious objectors with Marius ("soft pansies") and Maria, the only Korean among us ("any sane person would object to war"). It was fascinating. Maria, a Christian (and Korean Christians are more devoted than most), works within her church group with (according to her) the 33 political objectors - the only 33 in Korea who have not objected because of religious reasons (most are Jehovah's Witnesses). She tells me Korea has the most objectors in the world. The worst thing is that here, you cannot object to war and then ask for an admin job so you can at least do your duty to your country - you are thrown straight into jail, and it is a criminal offence, which means that when you get out, as a 20-something, you have a criminal record and are barred from any public service jobs.

Many of Maria's friends were half way through their military duty when war was declared on Iraq, and objected not to fighting, but to fighting in a foreign country for the USA - which interests me in a nation at war with its brothers and families, who were summarily divided by the ceasefire in 1953.

After dinner we were escorted to the barracks where Leigh and Cait set up in one enormous lecture room, and Marius and I in a little outdoor temporary shed, a little PC-Bang (internet cafe) by the looks of it. We taught one class for 50 minutes, then swapped with each other and taught another class for 50 minutes. What a pleasure it was to teach instead of spending all my time disciplining teenagers!