Recapping the first months of our life here in Samoa is taking longer than I anticipate and frankly I just can’t be arsed writing week by week. I’m lazy that’s the long and short of it! From now on it will be a combination of hours, days and weeks in a very lose time line of events or if anything outstandingly interesting happens I shall endeavour to record it for time immemorial.
Phew! Now that I have that out of the way I can relax and get to writing. Let’s start with home schooling. Now there are going to be many people about there that love home schooling their children and that is cool WOOO more power to you, I actually love the idea of home schooling. However, my children did not love it as much as me, in fact I would come close to saying that they disliked it very much. Ok, I should clarify why my children disliked home schooling so much – they had unrealistic ideas of what home schooling entailed (which is largely my fault because as a mother everything is my fault). They have been so institutionalised by mainstream schooling that the concept of unstructured emergent learning was flipping their brains “but mummy we need to have lessons! When are we doing math?” they were also under the impression that every day we would go out and “do something exciting”. This was meant to be enjoyable, this was meant to be a journey of learning and discovery that we would take together not a constant battle. To ease the transition into home schooling I decide to structure some ‘lessons’ loosely based on what the girls have been working on in their previous school. This too was a challenge (I refuse to call it a failure because I am sure they learnt something while I was teaching them). Apparently my teaching style is so drastically different to their previous teachers that they found it impossible to complete any task that I set for them. I am also their mother so that meant that when they were hungry, thirsty, tired, sore, uncomfortable, had an itch on some part of their body they had to go into great detail about it and expected me to fix it for them. By this time, it was hard to say who disliked who more, I think we were even Stevens. I get to the point where I am not coping with this situation and rightly or wrongly I decide it is imperative that the girls get in to school, if only so that they can make friends and socialise with someone other than me. There is really no other way to describe what happened next other than ... I lost my shit. I am not going to go into great detail here because frankly I am not entirely proud of my lack of resilience or ability to cope with the situation, in fact I still think about it now and go over how things could have gone differently. Here is the breakdown of events:
I’m going to skip the phone conversation I had with my husband after I looked at that list. It wasn’t a conversation as such more of a loud rant which people in his office may or may not have overheard, especially the copious amounts of swearing. Like I said not a proud moment. I edged perilously close to a full on mental breakdown over this issue. My main concern was how was I going to teach my children for potentially three years and what did this mean for my own teaching career here? The thought of packing my bags and taking my children back to Australia had entered my mind, obviously that didn’t happen because here we are. A step in the right direction? The girls got in to a school! Oh happy day! Oh happy day come on everyone hands in the air it’s time to celebrate isn’t it? We have mixed feelings about this. It’s not an expat school, although there are some Palagi (pronounced palangi and is the Samoan word for White or Foreign person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palagi) at the school, so regarding our wanting the girls to integrate into the Samoan community that is a step in the right direction. However, it is a religious school and the husband and I aren’t really into the whole Christian dogma thing. In fact, you could say we have a pretty critical view of religion in general and so do the girls. "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people" – Karl Marx This is going to be very interesting. You know that feeling you get, in the pit of your stomach when you start a new job? Like you are about to vomit? I can only imagine it was 100 times worse for the girls. Their vice-like grip on my hands was unbelievable (I should get them to open up those gherkin jars), and quickly followed were the tears. The children in their respective classes were unbelievably friendly, nothing I have ever seen and the teachers quickly scooped the girls up in their arms and proceeded to hug and cuddle them – again something you would never see in an Australian school. But the fear remained. Moving to a new country as an adult is one thing. Exciting and scary at the same time; making small and exciting discoveries that generally over ride the frustration of navigating tedious government agency lines, unusual foods and language barriers, all these experiences are usually capped off with copious amounts of alcohol (oh the days before children). Children on the other hand, they don’t have all the tools to cope with the change and the worst of it all, they didn’t get a say in this change. Putting my children through this stress makes me wonder ... is it worth it? 5 weeks on and the girls have adapted amazingly, I didn’t give them enough credit for their ability to adapt to change. Don’t get me wrong, there are still nights when my youngest is in tears because she doesn’t want to go to school, but in general they are happy if not somewhat confused and bemused by the religious elements at school – if only they could remember their times tables like the hymns they belt out! I might have to start writing catchy math and literacy tunes. Best question my eldest daughter had after school “how do they know if you have been good enough to get into Heaven? I mean is there a card you have and they swipe it before they let you in and it shows you how much good you have earned?” Not sure if she was being serious or sarcastic. During this period of emotional turmoil, the husband had to go away for work. This is not the first time he has had to travel for work, in his previous position he was required to travel so not an issue and we knew this was an important part of his position here. However, this time was different, this time he was required to be away for over 3 weeks due to a freaky coincidence of a couple of people being away on home leave and therefore leaving the husband being the only person in his department qualified to attend. Fucking awesome, no really I was totally and utterly over the moon by the thought of being home alone in a foreign country with no support network and two children. We had only been here just on 2 months, and here I was abandoned! I know I wasn’t abandoned, but that is how it bloody well felt. I was and still am trying to navigate and learn the lay of the land, understand the culture, make friends, transition the girls in to a new school, and look for work. Now we are home alone and not in a fun Macaulay Culkin kinda way. Suffice to say I was an absolute BITCH before he left because I was angry. I know I shouldn’t have been and it really wasn’t a great demonstration for my children but what are you going to do about it eh? The first night I think I spent dozing in and out of consciousness, waking at every noise and checking the locks on every door and I put the girls’ night light in the kitchen for ... well just because I didn’t like the dark. My god it is pitch black outside! I forgot how dark it is when you don’t have light pollution messing up the environment – beautiful in the right circumstances just not when we are home alone and I am feeling ultra-vulnerable. For the first time since moving here I was actually happy to have the neighbours’ dogs on our street patrolling because I knew that if anyone they didn’t know walked down our street they would have at em! Ok there was one night when they barked and howled all friggin night and the next morning we all looked like zombies, our eyes were literally hanging out of our heads – at one point during the morning, my youngest grabbed my cup of coffee, took a massive whiff and said: “that’s a good cup of joe!” oh how we laughed. Those 3 weeks were an emotional rollercoaster – there was crying, laughing, yelling, shouting, insomnia, paranoia, more crying, more laughing – you get the picture. It also didn’t help that the husband was often uncontactable by phone or internet so I felt very alone. Thankfully, I had my sestra and my parents back in Australia to talk to, they were and still are an amazing source of support for me – the fact that they haven’t told me to shut the fuck up with my whinging already is a minor miracle, maybe there is a god? Marx, K. 1976. Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Collected Works, v. 3. New York.
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