Tag Archives: Education

Happy pool days

Posted on August 30, 2012 | Leave a comment

I’m going to paint you a picture. But first wait. I have to wipe the sunscreen off my computer screen.

OK…turquoise swimming pool. Check.

Freshly planted rice paddies. Check.

Green juice delivered to my sun lounger from the NEW coconut and juice warung 10 seconds from my front door. Check.

Fully charged Kindle. Check.

Music. Check.

While we were away in England our lovely landlady decided to put a swimming pool in our garden. Actually she decided this before we left but it was only finished while were away. It turns out it takes a reaaaaaalllllyyyyyyy long time to build a pool. In fact here’s a maths conundrum for you…

How long does it take twelve workmen working with just one wheelbarrow to make a swimming pool?

Three months. Yes. Three months. But partly this is I think because every time I glanced out the window they were all asleep under the bale. They managed to heft about two wheelbarrow loads of dirt a day. But I’m not complaining, because it’s not like I could dig a hole in hard ground in this weather. I’d give up after the first dull thwack of the spade against earth.

John and I didn’t really want a pool. We questioned the environmental cost and just the cost. But our landlady insisted and paid for it. So hell, now we have a pool and it’s totally transformed my life. Not that I’ve been in it yet mind. It’s far too cold for that. I have to be scorched to a crisp, dripping in sweat and gasping before I’ll get in a pool, unless it’s heated. I am a wuss when it comes to the cold. Any kind of cold. Ask anyone who knows me. In July when we went back to the UK I was wearing thermals. My body goes into shock if you put a fan in my face. On airplanes I have to ask for extra blankets and socks.

Anyway, it’s transformed my life because now I can sit outside in a patch of morning sun dipping my toes in while drinking my coffee. I can sit out here and write while my laptop slowly melts, instead of sitting at my desk inside feeling a little like I’m in prison (albeit one with room service and a hotline to all my favourite restaurants).

Alula spends every waking moment in it and has perfected her mermaid swim (‘mummy, do you know why there are waves in the sea? It’s because of the mermaids swimming.’ I don’t have the heart to tell her that it’s actually to do with the gravitational pull of the moon. There’s time for that.) I also had to teach her that it’s not OK to pee in our pool.

It’s an awesome babysitter too. Alula’s sixth birthday was a Princess Pool party. My friends pop around with their kids and we sit on the sunloungers drinking coconuts and watching them swim.

There will be no skinny-dipping though. The last time we tried to get some privacy and locked the gate, the gardener leapt over the wall.

 

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Green School Bali

Posted on September 30, 2011 | 1 Comment

Alula has started at a new school. Some of you may have heard of it. It’s called Green School and it’s sort of famous because it’s a) built all out of bamboo (even the toilets) b) Al Gore visited once and so did Ben & Jerry (you can tell which one made me more excited) c) it’s the world’s first eco school or something (I’m not actually sure) but what I do know is that once you see it you kind of come away wowed and wishing that you could be five again with really cool parents who moved you to Bali and were hippy enough to not really care much about the curriculum but who thought that skipping around a giant crystal in the jungle and learning songs about Mother Earth was the way forward (I exaggerate – the curriculum is actually British and the school motto is not ‘Do not follow the Guru, you are the Guru’ though I think it should be because that would be awesome).

It’s like Swiss Family Robinson crossed with Mallory Towers crossed with I’m a celebrity get me out of here crossed with an Ashram . See you’re nodding right? Cool huh? You want to be five again with me as your mother I can tell.

The irony is however that most the parents send their kids to Green School in huge 8-seater chauffeur driven people-carriers. The place is off grid, recycles student poo, grows its own food and uses banana leaves as lunch plates – just to put the car thing into context. I’m one of only a few mums who actually does the school run and definitely the only one who does it in a four seater tin can. Which also makes me guilty of being a hypocrite too but bear in mind Alula’s just turned 5 and I want to be the one to take her to school and I want to be there when she comes out to give her a hug and listen to the teacher tell me what stubborn, willful, challenging new behaviour she’s exhibited that day.

I don’t think that would be fair on a driver to have to relay to me.

Also I’m not about to cycle her to school given its 15 miles of lorry laden madness, broken up tarmac and having to avoid the potholes and splatted dogs.

And I’m lazy, you know that.

By the way, I’m using the I form rather than the we in that paragraph because John is currently in London where he is working because someone has to pay for all this crystal skipping, mother earth bamboo schooling taught by Ben & Jerry. Next week we will revert to we again. Actually we will revert to HE because frankly I’m tired of the school run especially as my ipod won’t synch spotify so I’ve had to listen to the same album by Snow Patrol about five million times (I know embarrassing right?) which I’d still rather do than listen to the free Learn Indonesian podcasts I downloaded, tired too of sitting gripping the sides of the bench waiting for Alula to walk out her classroom feeling a heady mixture of fear and angst as I scan the teachers’ faces, tired of having to wait for her to drink her slushy before we can leave…the list continues. John can take over for a while and errr, I’ll do something useful, like earn the money to pay the fees. Somehow. Or maybe I’ll just go for massages.

Here are some pictures of the school anyway:

The toilets are made from bamboo. There is one for weeing and one for pooing. This means you can sit next to each other and chat whilst vacating your bowels so long as the other person is only weeing. If you poo in the wee toiled I think you’d have to reach in and pick it out. It is quite a challenging set up for a five year old who hasn’t yet mastered pelvic floor control (not saying I have either) to switch between loos without emptying bowels on the floor in between them.

This is Alula’s classroom. It rocks huh?


The is the heart of school. That’s what it’s called. I didn’t just make it up.

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The Green School

Posted on April 18, 2010 | 1 Comment

Al Gore is visiting later this month. Richard Branson popped by for tea a few weeks ago. The dude from Ben & Jerry’s ran an ice cream-making workshop a month or so ago. So you know, they’re used to visiting dignitaries. We fit in well.

The Green School in Bali – it kind of defies description. Imagine a giant bamboo cathedral/Swiss Family Robinson style edifice.  In the midst of jungle. Now picture a giant Marimba ensemble in the middle of the building. Now add in 130 children dancing to the sound. With parents joining in. Imagine if you will girls dancing in the tropical storm, three year olds holding hands with fourteen year olds. Imagine the vibration of feet thundering in time with the rain and wooping normally only heard when Twihards catch a glimpse of Robert Pattinson.

Yeah, there was a moment where I thought maybe the teachers had slipped some LSD into the milk round.  Where it felt like a giant evangelical church experience crossed with that bit in Avatar where all the Na’vi are swaying and chanting. And then I was just swept away by it all, kicked off my flip flops and joined in. You can’t fight joy like that.

After the music stopped I walked straight over to the admissions guy and asked him who we made the registration cheque out to. We hadn’t even seen the classrooms, had barely scanned the curriculum, but if I had got to go to a school made entirely of bamboo where I could  dance in the rain and learn to grow rice, where Al Gore dropped by to say hello and Mr. Jerry made  me ice cream I wouldn’t have spent so much time faking sick notes and forging my mum’s signature on them.

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Are we bad parents?

Posted on March 25, 2010 | Leave a comment

They row canoes across the beach searching for tigers and fairies called Happy. They climb mountains and make princess castles in the sand.  In the meantime we sit, drink vodka limcas and pay the nearest five year old five rupees to watch they don’t drown.

Does that make us bad parents?

I keep asking this question a lot lately. When I first paid a visit to the German run (free play rules) nursery I sat gingerly on the packed earth floor and thought, ‘hmmm, this is nice, rustic – but lovely…my GOD the children are FILTHY.’ Then I picked up Alula after her first day and it gave filthy a new name. I almost didn’t recognise her under the grime. I guess that’s what happens when you combine free running snot with free play in the dirt. Every day reminds me of that scene in Aliens when Sigourney Weaver finds that girl Newt and tries to clean her up. ‘There’s a girl underneath there,’ I say as Alula streaks naked through the house screaming like the shower is the mother alien come to get her and lay its eggs in her brain.

Does that make us bad parents?

Then we were invited to our Tuktuk driver’s house for lunch – a strange, awkward affair under a corrugated iron roof, Lula playing on their plywood bed whilst we ate off a plastic table and tried to make small talk about Hindu gods and Hindi music – neither of which I know anything about – and his kids were trotted out, pristine, polite, perfect. Hair oiled, parted just so, white shirts pressed, handkerchiefs safety pinned in triangles to their shirts, huge white smiles. I looked at Lula, filthy and barefoot, wild and singing to herself about fairies and thought ‘what must they be thinking of me?’

So I asked Cami, my waxer/masseuse, how come Indian kids are so clean and polite. And she said it’s because their parents beat them.

So now I don’t feel so bad.

Alula and Noah hang out in booze alley

kids play adults drink beer

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Warm crabs, dead cats

Posted on February 9, 2010 | Leave a comment

The Tupperware of crabs is warm in my hand. I am warm in the taxi. It is nearly midnight and the taxi (fecking surprise here) is lost. So lost that I think I might just try looking for the hatch and perhaps Sawyer to keep me company.  I am sick of taxi drivers waggling their heads and telling me yes, they know where they are going and then getting lost. If I empted the warm crab curry over his head I wonder what would happen. But I just wonder about it because I’ve read Shantaram and I don’t want to go to prison in India.

I know, you’re wondering why I am holding a Tupperware container of warm crabs in the back of a taxi at midnight in Bombay whilst we cruise the now emptying streets asking strangers the way to Pali Naka. Well so the hell do I.

I went earlier in the evening to meet one of the unLTD India award winners. She then took us home and fed us an eight course meal with crabs as le piece de resistance. This is my doggy bag on my overstuffed lap. Anyway she runs a programme that provides support to the night schools in Mumbai. These night schools are basically for young people from the slums like Dharavi who work all day and who then come at night to study to get their High School Equivalency (like GCSEs). With this certificate they can increase their chances of getting more highly paid work. Or just work. So we went to one of the night schools in a building so worn out it looked like it needed putting out of its misery.

And all the kids were bent over their work, scribbling away (actually they were momentarily bent over their work and then they were one and all staring at the weird white girl come a visting) and I felt so depressed all of a sudden. There were  fluorescent lights and crumbling walls and I knew that the kids had already worked a twelve hour day and were staring at me wondering what overprivileged planet I came from. And I was wondering the same thing to0 (white girl has eyes opened in India – it’s like a headline from the Onion).

Then we passed by hundreds of shacks on the way there. From two storey solid ones, to corrugated iron and plastic ones down to cardboard and tarpaulins stretched over the pavement to just people lying sleeping on sheets of newspaper. To finally people just lying stretched out on the pavement. And then we saw a kitten so newborn it was still covered in mucus. And it tumbled onto the pavement mewling and then fell under a car.

And now in a cab with my crabs. Lost. It all feels a bit much.

Guess that’s India for you.

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It’s about the byebee Jeesah innit?

Posted on January 9, 2010 | 1 Comment

I was watching Eastenders yesterday and between that and the snow it seems obvious that the reasons are lining up to remind me why we are leaving. Like an image of the Virgin Mary appearing in a potato. An unexpected reminder to keep the faith because our next life is going to be nothing short of celestially amazing.

In real life, I bet half the actors in Eastenders  sound like Keira Knightley. Or me. But they have to put on an east end accent. Why do the casting people do this? They could just give the jobs to actors who speak with an east end accent normally. Like my daughter.

Lula says Baby Jeeza like this – byebee Jeesah. That’s baby Jesus to you and me.

The other day she actually said ‘innit.’ (it’s the byebee Jeesah innit).

I’m not dead. But if I was, I’d be spinning in my grave. As it is I spend my day walking around after her correcting her grammar and accent. ‘It’s not Liedee, it’s lady. Lula, it’s not yeah, it’s yes. It’s cake, not Kaike.’

I know this sounds like I am a pushy mother and a snob and I’m going to deny this. At least the former. If I was a pushy mother I wouldn’t be dragging my child off travelling in a tutu but would be ferrying her religiously to ballet lessons, piano classes and Montessori. But I am a snob. I think everyone is a snob.  Secretly.  But even if you deny that (Can you? Can you really?) you can’t deny that being able to speak like Keira pays dividends. I’m forever being asked to do a reading at weddings.  And I used to be able to get paid very good money for doing nothing but saying ‘Good morning’ down the phone. Seriously, that’s all I said, it wasn’t some posh girl sex line for people who like a bit of Jane Seymour (you know who you are). You see – it has its uses talking posh.

So I’m working on thawing out the vowels in alula’s voice and introducing some ‘t’s and am wondering whether it’s worth the effort. ‘It’s not YOUR way – it’s MY way!’ she yells when I correct her. And she’s right really, she can speak any goddam way she pleases, so long as she says please and thank you.

But I am hoping some Australian rubs off on her. Because Summer Bay is way more appealing a place than Albert Square for me to perfect my pushy mother routine.

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Poverty and bursting a big pink bubble

Posted on December 9, 2009 | 2 Comments

‘I want a magazine!’ She demands as soon as we swish through the doors of Sainsburys. I push on past the cbeebies magazines with their cellophaned child magnet landfill toys.

‘I want a lemon,’ she says next pointing at the melons.

‘I want moreganix!,’ she says whilst trying to grab six pink packets of Organix in her arms as we wheel past.

‘I want buttons.’

‘Yeah, well I want to win the lottery and have a nanny and an ocado delivery every day – sometimes life just doesn’t work out the way we want it to,’ I say wearily.

‘It’s not fair.’

‘Well life’s not fair my sweet.’

But I WANT buttons.’

‘I want a child who doesn’t say I WANT all the time and who actually bothers to say please. And if you stand up once more in the trolley we’re going to walk out of this supermarket with nothing, we’ll put the moreganix right back. In fact we’ll put everything back.  And you’ll never eat another chocolate button ever again, ever.’

‘NOOOOOOOOOo’

When we’re in the car and Lula is eating her moreganix contentedly I say to her, ‘You know, you’ve really got to stop asking for things all the time. This incessant ‘I want, I want’ it’s just so spoilt.’

‘No, it’s not.’

‘Er, actually, yes it is.’

It’s pantomime season in the car, ‘Oh no it isn’t.’

I hate panto. ‘You know, really you’re a very lucky girl.’

‘Why?’

Why? Because you’ve got me as a mother I think.

‘Because you have a pink bedroom and a mummy who buys you organix and rents you sleeping beauty on demand and a daddy who reads you bedtime stories and puts up with you jumping on his nuts every morning (I don’t say that last  bit) and there are a lot of children out there who don’t even have enough to eat let alone free reign in blockbuster. Some don’t even have mummies and daddies.’

Have I gone too far? As soon as I say the words I regret it.

‘Why don’t they have mummies and daddies?’ She asks in wonderment.

I think about HIV and Aids and Malaria and the fact that almost 99% of maternal deaths happen in developing countries and think perhaps that’s all a bit much for a three year old to comprehend. We haven’t done death yet.

How do you explain why some people are born rich and some are born poor? Why some are born in countries that give you decent healthcare and to households with three televisions and the same number of computers whilst other children are born and live in slums and are given no opportunities to do anything – let alone choose which overpriced organic corn snacks they want.

I can’t even explain to her why daddy doesn’t have boobies or why she can’t open every window of her advent calendar at once. These are BIG topics. About capitalism, inequality, corrupt pharmaceutical companies and governments, injustice, sexism and death. I struggle to understand the lack of fairness in the world myself.

I figure that I can’t tell her about all these things because how could she possibly understand a world where every child doesn’t get a princess story at bedtime or have a fairy called Happy looking out for them.

‘Well, because like I said, life isn’t fair,’ I begin, reversing out of my parking space, ‘when we’re in India and Asia you’ll see that.’

Sometimes I think we’ve bitten off more than we can chew.

But if it comes down to staying and reinforcing her world view that food grows magically in Sainsbury’s, and is paid for by a piece of plastic that mummy happens to keep in her wallet or vagabonding the world and showing her a less pink view of it, I think we’re doing the right thing. I want to burst that big pink bubble.

Gently mind.

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Why? Why? Why?

Posted on September 18, 2009 | 1 Comment

A lot of people keep asking us why – what inspired us to do this trip?

About six months ago I wrote my reasons on some Post-Its and stuck them on our bedroom wall next to a pinboard that I covered in pictures of white beaches, turreted chateaux, hammocks and clippings from the guardian travel section. Oh and this postcard.

La Majorite c'est vous

Here are my reasons:
Reasons for a new life (in the sun)

There were several things that poked me along the way. It took ten months from niggling half-formed ‘got to do something’ thoughts, to resignation letters and flight bookings. Here are my main prodders.

1. We are sitting on a plane flying back from Mexico. It is early Feb 2009. There is a man behind me whose naked, tattooed gut is pressing against the back of my chair. I look around the plane and think of jumping out the emergency exit. And this is not a response to ten hours on a flight with a toddler. This is more to do with the horror of coming back to Britain after two sun drenched weeks road tripping up the Mayan coast. That was when I first had thoughts along the lines of ‘why are we living this life in London that allows us a couple of exotic holidays a year when we could be doing it full time?’

The idea parked for a while until…

2. We speak to Rich, John’s brother. He runs several social enterprises from Mumbai and is generally inspiring. He tells us to just do it. I feel like I’m in a Nike ad.

3. I read Tim Ferriss’ The 4-hour Work Week and fall in love with the concept of not working ever again.

4. I realise that Lula, our baby, is no longer a baby and will be starting school in 15 months’ time (Sep 2010). A quick scan of the local Ofsted reports puts me into a panic. We have ‘that’ private vs state debate and I realise that neither really works for me. I am just not sure that our education system is providing what children need for the 21st century in either sector. Add to this my horror of facing the prospect of being tied into working in London in stressful jobs for the rest of our lives (at this stage I had parked Tim Ferris and was getting realistic).

5. I manage to convince John on steak night Wednesday that this is what we need to do. Absolutely and completely. And totally.

5. I read Fuck it: The ultimate spiritual way and decide to say Fuck It to everything. Job? Fuck it. Scared of not having an income? Fuck it. Possibility of getting amoebic dysentary in India with a child in tow? Fuck it.

6. One of my best project managers at work tells me she is leaving. I say Fuck it. I am too.

7. I resign and they make plans for my succession. It is like a bridge is burning behind me and I can’t turn back.

8. Ex-housemate comes around to discuss renting house off of us. She looks out window, sees a robin and says, ‘but won’t you miss things like English birds?’ I look at John then back to Lizzie and say, ‘Er, no. When I’m lying on my sunbed by the pool in Bali, I don’t think I’m going to be thinking about how much I miss English birds.’

9. Every single person I tell our plan to turns around and says ‘That’s so inspiring’ except for my father in law who thinks we are mad. I feel like Gandhi. No one has ever told me I’m inspiring before and now I feel like I’ve been told it 384 times in the last week alone. I could get used to this. I might not be a Head of Projects anymore but I am inspiring.

by Sarah

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