Yesterday two little things happened that changed my perspective in little but important ways. Lately, that's been happening more frequently - little things changing my perspective. Both happened within several meters and minutes of each other on my walk home after a late lunch with two teachers. As I was walking the short distance back to school from the nasi padang restaurant, an enthusiastic familiar voice called to me from across the street. I looked up and saw this girl, 15, who runs a clothing store near my school.
She has always been super enthusiastic when talking with me in our sporadic encounters but not in a bule fanaticism sort of way, more so just because that's her character. She positively radiates excitement. I sat down to chat with with her, a younger boy who was just chilling and a couple who runs a pop mie stand next to the girl's open-air clothing store and, even though it was the end of the day and I was tired, I actually wanted to stay for many hours just talking with these relative strangers. They're really enjoyable company. It took a while for the younger boy to warm up to me, maybe because I was dressed in my nice slacks and batik and there were some older men around so he had to be cool, but after I asked them what their favorite films/tv programs were they both really opened up. He loved horror films and knew about Finding Nemo, Dora Emon and she liked Twilight and the terribly cheesy and just all around terrible soaps that they call cinetrons here. But it was something about this girl's attitude, excited and genuine when trying to remember a word in English and talking about all her favorite subjects in school (biology, history and english) that made me really want to try to give her something useful in return. She reminded me of my favorite students at school whose sheer enthusiasm about seemingly EVERYTHING makes me want to transfer some useful knowledge or skills to them, like English practice, scholarship information...etc. Just being an adult figure who actually encourages them to be enthusiastic about school is not enough. I feel so inspired by people like that 15 year old. In fact, meeting people like her make me want to stay in the teaching field longer....
That was small event 1 yesterday. Event no. 2 happened moments later after I took my leave of this exceptional 15-year old girl working at a clothing store, and arrived at my school to retrieve my bicycle. By our school gates I saw a girl standing by herself waiting for public transportation to take her home. I've stopped before and chatted with the students who wait 1, 2, sometimes 3 hours for transportation home, but all too infrequently. It made me feel especially critical about all the teachers who skip out on class or just give their students an assignment from their workbooks, and also bad about every time I have not gone to class for whatever reason. Teacher attendance is a very serious problem in Indonesia and I could write a whole other blog post about it. While it's not cool for teachers to treat their job with such laziness in the first place, it's even worse when you consider that some students' families save a lot of money and the students spend many hours in transit just to go to our rather well-renowned Islamic high school (there are other high demand high schools in Karawang, but our school is respected as one of the best Islamic high schools (Madrasas are regulated by a different ministry, the Ministry of Religious Affairs, than normal high schools because of it's religious curriculum).
Another big problem, which is very much related to teacher absence, is cheating. Really, it's actually entertaining watching the kids try to hide their efforts to cheat from me, as I'm staring them down. I usually wave at them or sit next to the students and that deters them for at least as long as I'm looming over them. Before the test begins they play a form of rock, paper, scissors with their desk mate (two to a desk) to decide which half of the class will leave for the first half of the lesson. This is a method to deter cheating - sitting only one to a desk. The boys are especially funny about cheating. As group 1 was leaving I literally chased several boys who were frantically trying to copy other student's answers before turning their tests in. It was very absurd chasing them down the aisle but my counterpart (the good one!) seemed to take a lassez-faire approach, which was not effective in the least. I thought I saw looks of appreciation from the students who are always badgered for answers at least :/
The big question on my mind these days is.....should I stay or should I go? The deadline to extend for another year is the beginning of January. If I decide to stay with Peace Corps Indonesia for another year I have many other decisions to make. Do I stay here in Karawang and continue my projects or do I take part in the exciting opportunity to be part of the first group of volunteers to go off the island of Java (the other places that have expressed interest in having volunteer English teachers are North Sulawesi, East Nusa Tengara and ). Or, do I leave Indonesia entirely and go....back to America? On to another country to teach English or work on some other skill? Today I am leaning towards staying in Indonesia and moving to another island but tomorrow I will most certainly be of a different mindset and opinion. I suppose only time and the amount of research I do will tell!
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