5.25am
Bev, Jeff and Tracy leave to catch their flights home. Georgia heads off to join the tent hospital and she is certainly looking forward to having a little more male interaction.
By 6.15am, everyone has gone (Thuan and Jake have gone to the refugee camp) which means I can relax, sort my stuff out and plan my lessons. The only sounds that can be heard are the local animals and the children in the classrooms waiting for school to start. The bell has just rung which means it is now 8am. Time for the national anthem, the raising of the flag and the start of the school day. .
This week I have to keep my promise to the translators:
Print photos and make them into a scrap book.
Photocopy my Creole text book or source new ones for each of them.
I would be perfectly happy right now if I didn’t have a searing pain in my chest. It’s much more like something is stuck in my throat and it’s incredibly painful and making me feel very sick. I have no idea what this could be. It’s stuck just below my throat and is becoming increasing uncomfortable. I try to swallow hard to release the alien item. This has no effect so I try to make myself sick, still no success. I start to feel incredibly light headed and nauseous and head to my tent as I am unable to do anything else apart from lie down. The discomfort continues and I lie motionless hoping it will end soon.
The new group seem a little strange (something I am sure my predecessors felt) but, they at least possess the motivation and eagerness that I think is required to make this kind of set up work. They get straight to fixing the playground and do a fantastic job of the horsey spring toy contraption. Two of the girls are sisters and are both very pretty and have very shiny and clean – something I haven’t been for a while (although I am secretly loving my unclean tom-boy look. It makes such a refreshing change to the superficial industry that I work in.) They also seem to have the kind of skin that doesn’t go purple from overheating –I bet, unlike me, they don’t suffer from pulsating head syndrome in the heat. If I have to say one more time “no I am not burning, I just go bright red from over-heating”….
Jake and Thuan arrive home late after the afternoon downpour lasted a little longer than usual today. I immediately rush to open the gate when I hear their voices outside and they both greet me with exhausted faces but with eyes and smiles that brighten up the moonlight sky and I automatically beam back at them. “Hi honey, I’m home” they both manage as I usher them inside, eager to find out about their day. In case I have not mentioned this earlier, the boys have been working at a 50,000 strong refugee camp in PAP. They get picked up every morning at 6am and get returned to me approx. 12 hours later.
“There was a body in the camp this morning” Thuan calmly states.
“A dead one or one that had been murdered?” I quickly respond.
As he takes a lengthy draw from his cigarette, I am told “Oh, a murdered one.”
“How?”
“Shot”
“OMG really??”
“Yip, shot is the head” he cackles.
Thuan has a zillion beautiful qualities but I think everyone’s favourite is his cackle. He doesn’t just laugh, he cackles with such childish glee that you can’t help but to join in, or at least break into a huge grin yourself.
Tomorrow will be the first day that I won’t pester them to take me with them. I normally beg and beg them to let me join them and they always insist that the camp is no place for me. How dare they! Do they know me? Fearless, brave, confident…….. naïve, female – ok, I start to see where they are coming from. They always insist that not only should I not go to a place like that anyway, but that even if I did, they would be unable to do their jobs properly for constantly worrying about me and my safety. I suspect that they make this caring remark as a way of politely getting me to stop hassling them. Nonetheless, this will be the last time that I ask to accompany them to the refugee camp.
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