Blog - March 2012
Half way through my gap year.
Hey Everyone. Cant believe its March already, pretty scary how time flies. I have now been in Mauritius for over 5 months and i am still loving every minute of my experience. I will be back in Inverurie soon so need to make the time i have left :(, sorry guys but i just cant imagine coming home!! It seems like only yesterday i was raising my funds to get here and now its March already! Anyway i will tell you what has been going on over the past few months.
Since my operation we have still all been having small boils and abcesses which is really annoying swell as painful. Our doctor over here has been so kind letting us off with expensive appointment fees and such like! Right now she has decided to put us on a course of anti biotics for 2 weeks for all 4 of us living in the house because she reckons we keep re infecting each other!! It has been a really burden for us and everyone here is confused on why we are getting these things, most people put it down to our weak scottish immune systems! We think the problem originated from my workplace as the girls there are often complaining about boils, theres not much we can do about it. Enough about that though, you probably didn't want to hear!
Work is good but can sometimes be frustrating and hard, which obviously i expected. Not going to tell you that everyday is amazing, i am going to tell you the truth. At the start of January which is the start of the school year here in Mauritius, we had a small class of around 6 or 7 girls ranging from 7- 14. They were all meant to go to school but the office staff hadn't sorted it out in time which is such a shame. Those who were able were becoming frustrated with us asking why they had to stay at home. We structured a school day within the shelter which included Maths,English,French,Art,Cooking etc. Originally i was given a social work project but now it has turned into full time Teaching, i am fine with that but could of done with the specific training. The teaching is easy stuff, a few of the girls have trouble recognising numbers and knowing how to write numbers so i can say its quite a challenged. The same problem in English also, not knowing how to write or recognise letters of the alphabet. One girl has been through the school for 13 years but they let her go this year because of her lack of intrest and ability to do the work which to me is terrible, they need to keep trying with her. I am finding it hard to get through to her, at the age of 13 i am totally shocked by the understanding of numbers and letters. The other girls are around 7 -10 and they have been luck enough to go to school this week which i am happy because i can see them progressing far as they are being sent before its too late. So after maybe 6 weeks of having that group we were changed a day before our project trust manager came, ahhh! Things like that is what annoys me, the staff need to sit down and discuss what they wish us to be doing. So now we have girls from the age of 13-18, teaching them various projects, right now is Marine life and pollution within that. Many of the girls do not want to work and wish to sleep all day, so motivating them is a challenged. We also don't have a classroom so we are disturbed a lot by other girls in the shelter and the young babies. We try and teach maths and english from 9am-12pm and in the afternoon do something fun like art or cooking. Right now we are focussing on Mauritius Independence day which is on the 12 of March and is taken rather seriously!! the girls now left in the shelter are those who are sitting for the CPE examination and those who refuse to go to school. It has been really weird seeing all the young ones go to school and nursery. Some of the girls who stay home are difficult with us and sometimes very rude to us, it is hard for them to understand that i cannot always be their friends but their teacher too. In January a few of the older girls turned 18, so legally they can return home, 2 girls left which was great but they left behind 2 other girls who were there friends, these two found it very difficult without them and decided one night they would run away, very sad again and now they are in a worse shelter with around 100 children. It is sad when things like this happens.
Last week we had Nick Rowland our desk officer from project trust visit, to see how we are getting on. It went really well! He visited shelter and had a nice lunch and saw us in action, although the kids acted really loud and behaved badly it wasn't too bad!! He said he was happy with us and so was our boss Sheela. While Nick was here there was a function at the British High Commisioners for potential NGEO's to come forward and potentially have volunteers in the years to come. It was a really good evening and we met many worthy charities which would really benefit from having Project Trust Volunteers. Also very sad to think new volunteers will be coming soon :(! I do hope Mauritius stays open as a project but it is a really expensive country for volunteers to be living in and the projects would need to have accommodation rather than a flat, which is totally unique to project trust this year as many volunteers live in their projects. We also had a really nice day out ( taking advantage of nicks car ) we went down the west of the island into the black river gorge national park, we visited Victoria waterfall, Chamarel where they have 7 different types of soil, all different colours. We also drove along the coast of Le Morne which was beautiful, saw a lady having wedding pictures taken on the beach, thats how stunning it was. My tan is still going strong!
In January we also experienced our first stage 3 tropical cyclone! It meant that everyone had to stay indoors and everything was sealed down! to be fair it just felt like a wet scottish day! Still an experience though. First one in 4 years for Mauritius. As for our plans to go to the other Islands surrounding Mauritius it is not looking good! Really expensive and with all of us hoping to do more travelling when we return to the UK we all feel like we would prefer to save our money. I am planning to take a week off in April after the girls at the shelter have had their holidays. In that time i will probably get around the island a bit more. Also before i leave in July i will take 2 weeks off to do scuba diving and such like. Really looking forward to my last 4 months in Mauritius and hopefully it doesn't seem like its flying by!
As for me, im fine embracing all the experiences and changing everyday.
Hope everyone is well and Uni applying isn't too stressful, i hope some of you really consider a gap year!
Daisy
