Schools

There’s a school in Northern Bali that receives support from the travel company that ran our tour group. As part of the package we get to visit the school.

On our way there we encountered a town full of marching children. They were practicing for an upcoming competition in which each class will try to march in perfect synchronization and shout cheers.

It isn’t just kids. Groups all the way up to office workers get involved. For many weeks ahead of time the already busy streets will be shared with these marchers.

On top of adding to the traffic simply from marching, the traffic will increase from all the people who go to those streets to watch. No effort is made to block or divert traffic, but most drivers are respectful of the marchers.

We ran into these randomly scattered marching groups several times in the course of a few days.

Up until this point in the trip we had discussed a preschool with the Moslems of Jakarta, and stopped to talk to some middle school girls in uniform at the temples, but had not actually gone into any schools.

The school welcomed us resoundingly. The students lined up on either side of the entry and in the courtyard and sang to us as we entered. They clearly expected to have their pictures taken. In fact, they demanded it. Then they wanted to look at the image of themselves in the cameras and phones.

We were taken to the principal’s office where we discussed the school and forked over the gifts we had brought.

Most people had candy. I, of course, had mechanical pencils and notebooks. Others brought children’s books. It turns out the books in English were particularly useful to the school as it helped them teach English to the students.

The school had been around for many years when the company first learned about them. At that point there wasn’t a bathroom or lunchroom. If a student needed to use the bathroom, he or she either had to go home, or out into the field to do their business.

The first thing the touring company did was build a bathroom. They are currently working on the lunchroom, though there are not plans to provide meals.

At first the students were afraid of the tourists who came to visit. They would hide. Now they treat i

t as a holiday.

This is the only school in the village. It only covers elementary levels. Students who want to continue through high school or beyond must commute to the nearest city an hour away. Many of the villagers don’t bother. Some of the kids who had graduated and gone on to college later became teachers at the school.

After we visited with the vice principal, we were taken to a classroom. Each of us sat next to a student. They did their best to t

alk to us in English.

I went straight to the back of the room as that’s where I always preferred to be when I was little. Two little boys seated there taught me to count in Indonesian.

The teacher and tour guides handed out the odd looking instruments to one of the boys is holding here. They are made of lengths of bamboo threaded on doweling and framed in wood. When you turn it over, the bamboo clanks, producing a single note. Each person had one that made a different note. Then the teacher had us each play our single note one after another to make the sound Do Ra Me.

Of course we had to have another photo op before we left. From the school we went on a walking tour of the village. I glanced back as we walked away to see a student or two still lingering. What cuties.