Mass Consumption

Ramadan finished today. At 6am the usual morning call to prayer came, but it was much longer than usual, celebrating the fact that finally today most of the nation was still asleep, and not frantically stuffing the last mouthful in before the sun rose, dreading another day without food. By 7:30, when I was having breakfast, the streets were already filling with children dressed in their finery - beautiful, bright, silken shirts and skirts, and little hats and headscarves.

The whole of Ranau seemed to be on the move. At 11am we joined them, driving to a nearby relative of our host. They were camped out on their verandah, an impressive music system blaring traditional songs, a long table bending to the pressure of a thousand different dishes - steamed coconut rice, satay chicken, beef curry, steamed beans and local spinach, stuffed quails' eggs and pumpkin in coconut cream, tiny pineapple tarts, chocolate peanuts and sweet potato cakes. Chairs were arranged around the edge of the verandah and some small bottoms were moved onto a mat to make space for us in the best seats, right by the cake table. We greeted everyone else in the traditional manner, shaking hands and then lifting the right hand to the heart, murmuring "Selamat Hari Raya" to welcome the end of fasting and wish our hosts a happy holiday. As we sat and munched, there was a continual stream of visitors from around the village - many of them were ancient elders, their skin so lined that their faces seemed to be caving in on themselves, tottering in on their own, often in well-washed, well-worn clothing. No matter how ragged, though, they were greeted with courtesy and respect by the couple whose house it was, who lifted the visitor's trembling hand to their foreheads to show the ultimate respect and then guided them to the food. 

Meanwhile, a computer was set up and a couple of karaoke microphones appeared. But when the eldest son took the microphone, it was clear that this was no ordinary cringy karaoke. He sang a traditional Hari Raya song in a deep and soulful voice, and then handed over to his little sister and her cousin - slightly unnerving to watch two slight girls in their modest Muslim clothing singing "her lips, her lips, I could kiss them all day if she'd let me; Her laugh, her laugh, she hates it but I think it's so sexy..." I'm fairly certain they weren't the audience Bruno Mars had in mind, but the pronunciation was almost perfect, and if it's a way into English for them, who am I to judge? The whole family eventually had a go, and many of them outsang the English-speaking singers - if only all karaoke singers were so good...

I read that food purchases rise dramatically during Ramadan, presumably because people are shopping on empty stomachs, and everything looks good, but the biggest and most dramatic rise is just before Hari Raya. I guess it's like Christmas - even down to the fairy lights that decorate houses, and the food hampers sold in supermarkets. Everybody wants to gorge, and impress their guests, and have a good time, and that has an impact on the shopping trolleys...

English in the Village

I visited my most remote school on Wednesday. Karagasan is right at the end of the road, the last point, stuck out on a beige limb on the map of Sabah. Past here, the road becomes a track wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side, branching off to tiny villages and farms. Most of the students board at the school - 35 girls, 34 boys, all squeezed into two small rooms from Sunday night to Friday afternoon. There's no electricity, apart from a little solar power that's used for the headmaster's office, where there's a single printer and laptop for staff to use, although the classrooms have all been equipped with useless lights and fans.

One of my teachers here tells me "What's the point in teaching these students English?" I can see his point (but only a little!) when I watch his class on animals and their sounds, and only one student has ever seen a horse. Also, the curriculum tells him to teach chicken ("chick chick") and hen ("cluck cluck")... There's also no pig in the curriculum, although most of these Christian children have pigs at home.

The children chant after him "HORSE! COW! HEN!" then it's time to match the animals and their sounds in the workbooks. I wonder around the classroom to have a look, but none of the children seem able to carry out the task. It turns out that only 8 of the 35 students are able to read - and this is Year Two. All eight readers went to preschool, which naturally gives them an advantage, but the other 27 somehow managed to get through the whole of Year One without learning to read. Why? "Because we don't have time to teach them, we have to get through the curriculum." Blaming the government seems to me to be avoiding the point that teachers only teach for around 2 or 3 hours a day, and, on average, spend ten minutes preparing. Surely in the other 4 hours of the teaching day an educator can find a free period or two to teach their students to read?

The highlight of the lesson is singing Old MacDonald Had A Farm - the students get so enthusiastic about belting out this song that we end up doing seven verses!

Elephants in the jungle

I had a slightly surreal moment this week, when a teacher invited me to break the fast at her home. Her husband works at the school as well, and when I said "I'd love to, but are you sure you have the time to cook with such short notice?" she looked at him and laughed. "She has lots of time in the afternoon," he said. "But when the sun goes down, and there's no electricity, and nothing else to do, that's when she's busy!" "Nothing to do but make more babies!" Su screamed with laughter. The surreality came from her appearance: a floor-length baju kurung (the Malaysian national dress - a long blouse over a skirt) and her hair scraped back under a tight headscarf, she's the Good Muslim Wife epitomised, and yet here she was making jokes about sex in a room full of male colleagues! Then she leaned over to me, patted my knee, and said "Well, Emily isn't married yet, so she has no idea what we're talking about..." and I had to smile and blush and mumble that yes indeed, I had no idea what she was talking about...

The berbuka puasa was, as usual, gluttonous - Su is an excellent cook. All the teachers were there and I got handed several beautiful, fat babies to coo over and practise English with (turns out the Malaysian for "Woodiwoodiwoo!" is "Woodiwoodiwoo!") Su's daughter Ca (you say it Cha) was also present, but extremely shy, and it took a lot to get her looking at me. She brought out her Maths book to practise sums with her mother - Su thought she was pretty poor at Maths, but I felt that getting a 5-year-old to answer 7+8= correctly was pretty impressive...

The next day, I was reading in my room, when a scratching came at the door. I looked up nervously: the day before I'd had to chase a rat out of the kitchen. The scratching came again. Then a corner of the black plastic that's taped to the bottom of the door to keep out scorpions was lifted, and I figured a rat probably wasn't smart enough to evolve fingers, so I opened the door. A nervous face gazed up at me from the floor where she was still clutching the plastic: Ca had come to visit. I sat outside with her on the verandah armed with paper and coloured pencils, and we drew trees and cats, girls and boys, suns and butterflies, and she named each one in careful, round script, a different colour for each letter. I couldn't believe how fast she picked up and remembered each word. To test her, we went for a walk through the campus. I marched ahead and she marched behind. Every now again I'd stop, and every time she would bump into me. I'd point at a tree and say "What's that?" and she'd shout "Tree!" and then we'd carry on. At some point we were joined by a gaggle of giggling girls, and a friendly but slightly slow boy from Year 6, and they all giggled and shouted their way through everything I could possibly point at. I pointed at the jungle and said "Elephant!" And they all shouted it back at me. I looked confused, and said "Elephant?", making a trunk with my arm and pointing into the jungle. They all fell about laughing and denying that elephants lived in their jungle.

The next day, a little girl saw me in the school. She came running up, her arm hanging from her nose, shouting "Elephant! Elephant!" 

My job here is done.