Progress

The electricity poles are coming!

Normally you might find me lamenting the encroachment of technology into the rainforest, but not this time. The people in the villages in this region feel so isolated and forgotten - they're close enough to town that they see the televisions and the newspapers and the fridges, and they want them. And whether that's a good or a bad thing, there are other things they want, which the new road being built and the electricity will bring to them. A link with education, for example - there will be better contact between teachers and the administration, which will hopefully lead to better teachers, once they are being regularly observed. Resources like the internet and English movies and songs can be used in the classroom, improving children's access to the language. It will bring them closer to different people, people who aren't like them, who are darker or lighter or wear funny clothes, or, yes, I admit it, buy food for starving animals (I'm such a weirdo.) And that will change the children, hopefully for the better, perhaps to be more tolerant and aware of other cultures.

Plus it means I get a fridge, and that is awesome.

It's not a done deal though. The poles are being put up at a rapid rate - I drive in on Sunday afternoon, the poles are up 42km from Ranau. By the time I drive back to town on Friday afternoon, they've already stretched to the 65km mark - which is just 3 km shy of my house. Wires are strung between a few of the poles, where the rainforest has been cut back; in other places they're waiting for the men with machetes still. But this pace is due to one thing: elections are coming. Elections are coming, and the men who want to win again are the same men who have been promising this region electricity for years. The poles are going up because they need the votes that cluster along the dusty roadside in this poor backwater. So we get a sudden show of support and awareness, and the poles go up, and at least the first few kilometres will certainly be connected to the power grid in time for elections. 

Those places that aren't connected by then, though, will lose out. Because if the party wins, they will stop the construction so that they can use the electricity issue as an election promise next time. And if they lose the election (which would be a miracle) they'll stop the construction as a punishment. Lose-lose situation for us really. So everyone is rooting for the construction men - I see them everyday outside a different house, being served lunch by a grateful populace. Local teenagers go out with machetes ahead of the crew removing branches and cutting back undergrowth to make it easier for the poles to be put up quickly. 

Malaysia is incredibly corrupt. Transparency International rates it 56th in the world this year. Money comes, it goes, it reappears in the back pocket of a prime minister, nobody does a thing. So when I expressed surprise in my first week here at the fact that electricity had been promised to my region every election for the last twelve years and every promise had been subsequently broken, people just shrugged their shoulders and said "That's Malaysia." Which doesn't stand up under scrutiny, as Singapore, which was part of the same country until recently and has the same people living in it, is the least corrupt place in the world.

At least I'm not in Indonesia, though, the most corrupt place in the world, where a colleague of mine (who is married to an Indonesian woman, and has 2 children) is stopped at immigration every single time he enters the country on his spousal visa, led into a backroom, and asked to pay an "immigration fee".

Orang Putih

So I'm in the classroom, getting ready to observe a lesson, and the teacher begins with writing on the board "Things in Classroom." (Articles are a problem for Malay speakers - they don't have any.) "What can you see?" he asks the children, who respond in a mixture of Dusun and Malay, the teacher translating and writing on the board.

"Eraser!"
"I see table!"
"Pencil!"
"Orang putih!" ("White Person!")

It's always such a boost to the self-esteem to be named as an object in a classroom.

"Orang putih" is a cry I'm becoming familiar with these days. My little house sits on what in this village counts as a major highway - a dirt track that leads to about half the houses from the school. The children are fascinated by me in school; the way I say hello, the way I write in my book, the way I look at their work, all of these are endless sources of laughter and amazement. So how much more interesting is the way I brush my teeth, or eat my breakfast? The neighbourhood children are at my currently-curtainless-but-not-for-long windows from 6am until long after dark, gazing through the windows, giggling if I look at them. In desperation I started to ignore them entirely - and that's when the calls started, as if I were a panda in a zoo - you know, the hordes of visitors staring into the cage, clicking their fingers and calling out "Here! Look here!" in an effort to get the panda focused on their camera lens. Well, my zoo visitors call "White person! White person!" When I ignore it, the calls get louder. One teenager rapped on the glass, but he soon stopped that - a white person might be more interesting than a local, but an angry white person is a hell of a lot scarier...

The house is slowly coming together, with some minor issues. I ordered some furniture, which got delivered by a pair of very dusty men last week, looking between the village and the orang putih with incredulity. My kitchen is still a little unfinished...

I still have no electricity as the generator I bought broke on the very first go. Made in China. I usually make an effort to avoid Chinese products, both because of the politics and the quality, but it's difficult in Malaysia, with its large Chinese population. Chinese products flood the market, and both Chinese and Malay-owned shops are full to bursting with rubbishy, flimsy, rock-bottom-prices tat - it's nearly impossible to buy good quality kitchenware in Ranau, and the first pot I bought cracked - yes, a metal product cracked - the third time I used it... The generator was promptly returned to the shop the next day, where I bullied the poor man into refunding me with threats of the consumer association. At first he refused, and said he would refund me everything except for RM100 (£25 or so), because when he resold it it would have to be as a second-hand product. "Yes," I said. "A second-hand faulty product." But he didn't seem to get the irony. "He very hard woman," he said to my teacher friend (gender-specific pronouns also being absent from Malay.) The next generator I buy is going to be Korean-made, the next pot German, and my new car Japanese.

Yes, I got a new car this week - a great big Isuzu D-Max, the type of twin-cab that's driven by young men who need a big car and bigger speakers to prove themselves. I felt ridiculous picking it up this afternoon, dressed from school in my Malaysian-style sarong skirt and pretty Australian flip-flops (thanks to my little sister Lisa!) I had to climb up into it, and when I sat behind the wheel, I felt like a little girl playing dress-up, only with a car instead of mum's clothes. But at least, unlike my Malaysian baby 4x4, I won't rattle like a pebble in a tin can when I drive out to the schools any more!

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.