A Week with Two Holidays!

Tuesday, Nov. 1, Kumbalam

Today is a Hindu holiday that is celebrated as a festival of lights. I have heard two stories about what it commemorates. One is that there was a bad king. When someone killed him, the people celebrated because it took them from dark days to days of light. The other story is about a king who had 5 sons by 4 wives. One of the later wives wanted her son to become king and sent the first-born, along with his wife and brother, to the jungle to stay for years. But the people waited until he returned to declare him king. According to this story, the festival celebrates his return.

I started the day doing laundry—sheets, towel, pants, a couple of shirts, and underwear. Then I helped the new English teacher review the English tests and assign points (called ‘marks’ here) to each question. Until the electricity went off, I was changing the heading of each test. No one gave me guidelines or looked at them until I had typed about 50 tests! Now they want changes in formatting, a ridiculous waste of time based on “how it’s been done before.” It’s times like this that frustrate me. My labor may be free, but the results of it shouldn’t be looked at as dispensible and re-doable on a whim! If something is important, I expect people to think and plan ahead so that I have proper guidelines and don’t waste time doing them in ways they won’t accept later.
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We came to Kollam in the afternoon. The boys are attending a basketball camp at the YMCA. They dropped me off at a cyber café. It wasn’t as good as the one in Kundara. The speed connection was about the same. For some reason, I couldn’t send e-mail, however; I got an address line and a subject line, but there was no box for a message. I just posted to my blog and read e-mail. I’ll send e-mail later this week from Kundara.

We went to Joseph’s resort after leaving the YMCA. We arrived just in time for a beautiful sunset. Too bad I didn’t have my camera with me.

There was an Australian couple and their 10-year-old daughter staying at the resort. The girl stayed with our kids dancing, talking singing, etc. Then she took photos of us before we left.

The staff served us tea and banana fritters not long after we arrived. Then they got dinner nearby for us—two types of flat bread, chicken curry, mutton curry, and tomato salad. Afterwards, we had ball-shaped pastries made with coconut and other ingredients and soaked in honey.

Wednesday, Nov. 2, Kumbalam

I’m spending the day finalizing tests. It’s a comp[lex job, since some require teachers to make drawings and return them to me. Keeping track of 1) completed, typed, nothing-else-needed; b) completed, typed, drawings needed; c) proofreading still needed before printing; etc.; categories becomes a major headache, especially since the originals (which I need to prove what they gave me) are also having to be spread out with the various typed categories. I’ll be glad when this task is done!

I also developed guidelines for an incentive program for Joseph to consider for the school. He can’t offer an offical pension program without joining the state program at much greater expense than it costs public schools. But he needs an incentive for teachers to stay here, or they will take public school jobs (even though it means classes sizes of 75-80 instead of 20-25 here) just for the pension plan (and the knowledge that people in government jobs don’t get fired). What I have proposed is two-pronged: 1) a pay scale with regular raises and 2) a pension-like plan where the teachers pay nothing from their salary (because the state won’t allow him to take from them) but the school pays 5% of their salary into a managed investment program each year. It’s NEVER the teachers’ money; it belongs to the investment account. But the account will start paying a monthly stipend (based on amount paid in, years of teaching at St. Joseph, and actuarial tables of life expectancy) anytime after 6 years of teaching have been completed AND 21 years have passed since first taking a job here. (The odd numbers are because there is a big pay raise after Year 1, and the investment contributions don’t start until Year 2.) Anyway, joseph can show the plan to his lawyer and to an investment firm and reivse the plan based on their input. My plan gives him a start toward the process of coming up with a workable plan.

I was so tired after the day at school that I went for a walk in the village. Two elderly men sitting on a porch invited me to join them. Then one of them called out his son-in-law who was visiting there with his wife. We drank orange soda and visited for about 20 minutes. Only the son-in-law spoke English well. He was an interesting person. He is a film director who is doing a documentary on the folk art of a special region in southern India. It's being made for television. It's always nice to talk to people like this, but the conversation always winds down rather fast due to their lack of English and my lack of Malayalam. So I excused myself by telling them I need to return to the hostel to help the kids with their homework (which I did).