I've been informed that my school wants to terminate their contract with Peace Corps. My first question was, now or after my service finishes? Luckily, it's after my service ends (though I know they wouldn't be heart broken if I decided to pack and leave tomorrow). Unfortunately, I wasn't surprised when one of my teachers told me this. My school is very politically divided and I've known for a long time that my presence at school wasn't all that welcome by some teachers. This news would have been more upsetting if I had planned on extending my service to finish out a full second year of teaching in my village, but I had already mostly decided against that. I could write a lot more about this but 1) I lack the energy to detail it all out and 2) an example may be better.
Example:
Last Tuesday, my school had an impromptu teachers' meeting to discuss the possibility of closing school Wednesday to Friday because it was so cold. The decision reached was that school would shut down for the rest of the week and reopen Monday. This is what my counterpart (my Ukrainian partner teacher) told me. So Wednesday I stayed home and did whatever. Same thing on Thursday. Except when I see my landlady, she asks me, "Why aren't you at school?!" I explain that we don't have school because it's so cold. She says no, she's fairly certain they reversed that decision and school is open again. Then she proceeds to ask me a bunch of questions about why I wasn't at school, and didn't someone call me and tell me about this, and it took a few minutes for her to understand that, no, in fact, no one called me to tell me I should show up for work. And now it looks like I decided to skip school to twiddle my thumbs in the warmth of my house. Great.
The responsibility of calling or texting me, in English or Ukrainian, belongs to my counterpart. Things like this happen all the time. She rarely tells me anything or interacts with me in any way if she can avoid it, which often leads to me being out of the loop about what's happening at my school. Personally, I think she doesn't want to interact with me because she doesn't know English very well (which honestly isn't all that relevant). That's also why she doesn't want another American, because rumor has it she's afraid PC will find out she doesn't speak English well. [Side note: PC doesn't care at all. Volunteers are placed at schools where the host organization expresses the desire to host a volunteer, English ability doesn't factor.]
Also, I've been told that because I don't pay special attention to the children and grandchildren of "important people" at school, this has caused some of these people to be very angry with me. Mostly I find this funny, because I've never seen a roster, often don't know kids' last names, and have no way of knowing who is related to who. Not that it would matter, because I do the American thing of paying equal attention to my students. It's a radical teaching tactic, I know.
The title of this blog post was inspired by the thought that my village isn't exactly a tourist destination. I'm the first American here, and if my school wants to sever ties with PC, then it'll probably be a very long time before another one passes through. My counterpart will probably work at my school for another 30 years or so, and if she continues to be politically well connected, then there will probably not be another PCV there until she retires, if she doesn't want another one.
Mostly, this makes me sad for my students.
I know I haven't written a substantial blog post in awhile. I hope this makes up for it.
Sometimes I come home and google images of kittens. Can you blame me?
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