I came into this project just four months ago.
Everything was new: the buildings: mosques and their call to prayer, temples with the detailing and enormous incense sticks, the monkeys often milling about and of course, the never-ending myriad of mini malls.
There are no prayer calls at four in the morning, or monkeys where I come from.
Here in Malaysia, shops only revealed themselves when their iron gates or solid metal panels were slid out of the way. I am used to windows and did not find my new hometown especially inviting: especially in the off hours.
I couldn’t tell a grocery store from a motorcycle repair shop. When I did step inside I found food packaging very different from home and couldn’t read the labels. Even if I could, many of the products were unfamiliar.
There is no cheese at my local shop, or fresh milk. Even bread is hard to find, never mind sandwich meat.
That’s ‘different’.
The vegetables in the big shops were strange and rather uninviting. The outdoor markets were lovely: a treat we only get during the summer months at home, but I had to search them out.
Back out on the street in rural Malaysia, traffic consists of big overloaded palm oil trucks, motorbikes and scooters all zipping, zagging and floating along in all directions.. never fully committed to just one lane, all on the ‘wrong’ side, (left vs. right) of the dual carriageway on bitumen that had bumps and humps, all in the ‘wrong’ places.
It’s not like that at home.
I couldn’t read the road signs: not even the ones with simple names of places: the combination of letters was just.. wrong.
My passport had been taken from me.
I had no drivers licence.
The food was good, spicy, but quite.. different. Everything seemed to contain something from the muddy waters of the Straight of Malacca. Little sardines were sprinkled on top of many dishes: soup, rice, vegetables.
Fish is not a garnish in Canada.
Noodles are riddled with shrimp: a nice surprise for some but to which I have an anaphylactic reaction.
They often serve fish for breakfast at many of my schools: no porridge or dry cereal with milk. These lovely deep fried crispy critters, with their heads still attached and eyes glaring up at me from a bed of rice are relished by the other teachers, but for me, not so much. I reach for a hot cup of black coffee in the morning when it is available.
3-in-1 is not coffee.
The money had to be converted to make sense. I had to get my mouth around Ringgit.
Open drainage ditches and piles of rubbish in the most unexpected places are still not ‘normal’ to me.
High humidity is not normal to me.
Nor are the huge variety of ants, lizards and dead cockroaches in my kitchen.
When it rains here, it really does pour. Traffic often comes to a complete halt. The roads can be very slick. It rains at home too.. but it’s not the same.
And the air quality, while sometimes clear and lovely, can also be smoky: plantations burning their scrub, or the Indonesian are burning theirs, it makes no difference.
The dirty air sits in my chest and makes me cough.
But I have found the biggest obstacle to be the language, and the way people scatter when I come near, terrified they will have to speak English. It was difficult to get directions to my schools that made sense, and even when I actually arrived at one I struggled to differentiate between the word welcome and the name of my school.
I had no idea what a Guru Besar was, never mind how to spell it. The acronyms made no sense.
I am a stranger in a strange land, but I am here by choice.
I want to be here. I want to share my language, my culture, my love of children and learning with the people here. It is a choice I have made, and not a decision I made lightly.
People look at we mentors, from all over the world: New Zealand, The United States, The U.K, South Africa, and figure we are all the same. We will all get along just fine. But we aren’t, and we don’t.
Culture, worldview, is passed down from generation to generation. My parents, grandparents, great grand parents were all born in the second largest country in the world: a country which today has just over thirty million inhabitants who enjoy clean air, clean water and lots of space.
I am not British. I am not American. I am not from Australia or South Africa. I am Canadian and proudly so. There aren’t that many of us around.
It was lonely when I first arrived and I was on my own as I drove around looking for a place to live, talking to people that didn’t understand me and didn’t know what to do, or say to this alien being.
I was an alien, newly landed in their midst. I had no family, no friends, just my desire to share what I knew with a new culture.
I am still an alien, still lonely.
Most of the mentors here in Malaysia are a long way from ageing parents, family and friends. We are a long way away from the laws of our own country, familiar food and the habits that go with things we know.
And many of us are a long way away from anyone we can connect with. It’s the geographical reality of the job. But we stick with it because we are where we want to be doing what we want to do.
I found a lovely place to call home, installed a hot water pump for the shower and an air con in the bedroom. My haven is now decorated with pictures and familiar items from my past and new things: furniture, appliances and knick-knacks from my new home: Malaysia.
My neighbours no longer stare, but look out for me.
I have met ‘my’ teachers and have collected the Guru Besar’s phone numbers.
I am comfortable on the road.
I, uh.. eat rice in the morning and just skip the fish.
I brew my own coffee at home.
I have adapted.
And, as Dr. Seuss states so eloquently in “What was I scared of,”
“I began to see
That I was just as strange to them
As they were strange to me!”
I have had to get used to children in school uniforms and teachers wrapped up in a variety of layers of loose clothing: some in sports jerseys while others appear to be wearing evening gowns.
My own clothes may be different, but in my world, they are quite decent.
When I visit the schools here, I consciously keep my elbows and knees covered, even though I find nothing indecent about these bony protuberances.
I try to provide the teachers and students I am here to support, with what they need to feel comfortable, safe, confident and competent in their work with me, my language and my culture.
I try to guide them in becoming the best they can be in their role as cultural bridges.
In return I expect to be provided with the support I need to stay confident and strong, so far from what is familiar. I need to hold on to who I am and where I am going, as that is what has brought me here.
I require ‘space’ to do my job: professional respect, freedom to grow and change with my teachers.
So far, the Ministry of Education and SMR have provided us with both the tools and the professional space to do our jobs. I see my teachers growing more confident and enthusiastic every time I visit a school. I see classrooms as happier, busier, more interesting places since our arrival.
I have watched the cleaners at one of my schools learn basic phrases, ‘good morning’ and ‘what are you doing?’ and practice on the students that need it the most.
I have listened as teachers fall over themselves to share success stories of phonic activities that delighted their learners.
I have seen parents sitting, in the back of a classroom, unable to contain themselves and yelling out the answer in a rousing game of Pictionary they were there only to observe.
I have delighted in seeing teachers from different schools getting together at workshops to discuss topics that concern them all: oral exams, classroom routines, lesson plans, without any prodding from me.
We aren’t just teachers, or mentors. This project has proven to be a great facilitator, it allows everyone to examine current practice and compare notes. It allows us all to get excited about what happens in the classrooms.
It has helped us all remember why we got into teaching.
Changes are happening and it is because of our differences, not in spite of them. We are taking the best of a few worlds and coming up with a new way of looking at things.
I believe that as long as the mentors continue to feel supported, the program will stay positive.
As long as the program stays positive, it will continue to help teachers grow and develop their skills.
As long as the teachers are excited about what they are doing and learning, the students will benefit.
And right now, the students I am seeing are doing pretty well!
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