Teaching in the jungle

I have, officially, had two weeks of classes, although I have yet to have a full week of classes here in Ampangan Woh, a village on a hillside in the jungle near a small town called Tapah. Although I've written a couple of posts already about my new center, I thought that, with classes moving along and feeling at least somewhat settled in my new digs, an update was in order. I've also spent this weekend and last weekend helping out with a food donation project in a northern city called Ipoh, so I'll say some (mostly) nice things about that.

The People
A major difference between the center in Chaah and the one in Ampangan Woh is that the community in Chaah, like that of Malaysia in general, is composed of a mix of Indian, Chinese, and Malay Malaysians. The country's three primary races tend to separate themselves from one another, at least to some extent. This is, in part, due to the differences in religion, in language, and, in many cases, though certainly not in all, in wealth and social standing. In Chaah, although it was common for me to run into Chinese and Malay neighbors on my morning jogs through town or at shops or restaurants, my students were all Tamil-speaking Indian Malaysians, due to the center's connection with a political group whose goals served the educational and cultural needs of the Indian community. This led to my (slowly) picking up some words in Tamil and even learning to read the unnecessarily difficult alphabet. I also ate a lot of curry and rice, and got used to introducing myself: "hello, my name is Emily, I am a teacher from the US and I can eat spicy food."
Ampangan Woh is a village of the Orang Asli, literally people of the land. Orang Asli is the name given to Malaysia's indigenous people. I am just beginning to learn about them, and all that I hear is very interesting. They face many of the same problems as exist for indigenous populations in most countries, most specifically loss of land and culture. Lately, many religious groups in Malaysia's multi religious atmosphere have been sending representatives to the Asli villages to convert the people. In Ampangan Woh, a Christian group arrived and started to build a church in the middle of the village, without consulting anyone or legally purchasing the land (if I understood correctly, the land there does not  officially belong to one person, but to Malaysia, and, although it should be used for the Asli people, it is reasonably easy for shady business to go down). For this reason Orang Asli are suspicious of religion in general and, though they are very spiritual in terms of their tribal beliefs, will claim to have no formal religion.
Ampangan Woh is a village of the Semai, one of Malaysia's largest Asli tribes. They speak a language called Bahasa Semai, which, while it shares little linguistic geneaology with Malaysia's official language, Bahasa Melayu, has been influenced by it to a great extent. The kids in Ampangan Woh attend a school at the bottom of the mountain - a bus arrives to pick them up at 5 am, and it is not uncommon for them to oversleep and miss class more than once a week - with a mix of Asli and Malay students. The language of instruction is Bahasa Melayu, but Semai is taught as a second language that both groups must study. Having devoted a large part of my final semester of university to studying the issues of identity and political power for groups whose mother tongue is not the official language of their country, I find this very interesting. Forcing fluency in Bahasa Melayu encourages more equal educational and political opportunities, should speakers of the identity language choose to pursue them, and requiring even students whose first language places them in a position of power to learn the minority language, to any extent, legitimizes the minority language as a worthwhile means of communication.
The Asli people, in general, live very simply. I am learning a lot about what a person needs to get by. I had expected it to be really hard to get used to not having a real toilet, or sleeping on the floor, or sitting cross legged on the floor, or sharing a room with enormous bugs and rats. I thought it might be hard to adapt to the isolation that comes with living in Ampangan Woh, a place that requires me to hitch a motorbike ride down the mountain to find a shop to buy a notebook or coffee or a bag of rice or a bottle of water, or anything that doesn't grow in the jungle. I get very limited cell service if I sit in one corner of the house. I am finding, though, that I really don't need anything I don't have there. The hotel beds where I spent two food donation weekends hurt my back, and sitting on the floor at eye level with my students makes it easier to see how they're doing. I haven't even hung up the mosquito net I bought to come here, and the humming of any bugs around lulls me to sleep. Being cut off from virtually anyone who speaks English has been, so far, really good for my Bahasa. I buy serious groceries (rice, coffee, cooking oil) whenever I'm in town, and otherwise, food just happens. We get what we need. Which brings me to...

The Food
I love the food in Ampangan Woh, even more than the food elsewhere in Malaysia. I adopted the set up from the previous teacher in the village, which is that I buy groceries for the family every now and then, and the family prepares it, and throws in some things from the jungle. For breakfast, we sometimes have just coffee, or we have bread, or ramen, depending on supplies. I'm not bothered, as long as there's coffee (instant, and half sugar, as everywhere else in Malaysia, but it does smell like coffee). Lunch and dinner are the same. There is always rice, with whatever the jungle chooses to provide us with on a particular day. This is often cassava leaves (possibly, although I'm not totally sure of the translation) and fresh chilies (just because I am no longer living with an Indian family does not, by any means, suggest that my food is any less spicy) patai beans, and other leafy veggies, and occasionally, fish caught in the river by one of the boys. Very rarely, the boys will be successful with their slingshots and birds will wind up on our (metaphorical) table. When there's meat, I don't ask questions. I find it better not to know. But the vegetables are so good! Cooked in any sauce or with any spices available to us (I try to buy at least onions and garlic whenever I am able) they taste so fresh. Whether or not it's just in my head, it feels so good to be eating straight from the land outside the house, and there is something to be said for the fact that whatever we eat, I know took some effort on the part of my host family to actually go deeper into the jungle to gather it.

The Classes
Another big change from Chaah is in relation to the classes here. While my classes in Chaah were held in a classroom, with desks in 8 neat rows and a teacher's desk facing them with a whiteboard at the front, the Ampangan Woh classroom is just part of the family's main house. The floor, as in the rest of the house, is made of bamboo pipes laid one next to the other. If you stand up too fast, or place your weight in just the wrong place, they snap under you. They are numerous enough that it's not a problem, and happens all the time, but it is quite jarring and a little embarrassing to hear a loud crack and realize you've just broken this family's house. As there are no desks or chairs in the house, the students and I sit on the floor, which gives the lessons a much less formal feel, not necessarily a bad thing. Sitting on the same level as my students relaxes the student-teacher relationship, which is really important, as most of my students are adults, my age or older. That's another thing. In Chaah, my students were all school children. I had always said that I'd prefer to teach adults and,  though I loved all my students there, by the end of the night I was exhausted of disciplining. In Ampangan Woh, I have two classes of illiterate adults (one mixed with literate, older public school students), two classes of adults who are halfway through the program (one including a handful of the sons and daughters of the students), and only one of children (in addition to the computer classes, which has only six students, who all happen to be teenage boys). I am thrilled to be teaching adults - they are so much more invested in the class then their youthful counterparts, as they really understand the value of what they are learning. However, it hasn't been a completely easy transition, as I have no experience teaching adults, and am a bit pressed to come up with age appropriate but also engaging activities.
To keep my classes straight, I have assigned each a color. Want a quick run through of my week?
The first class of the week is orange. They are a small group of mostly younger adults (late twenties and early thirties)  who are already halfway through the program. These are some of my strongest students, and because they are such a small group we are able to work really one on one. Also, perhaps because of their age, they really want to learn. They see English as something they can really use to improve their lives. The orange class meets three times a week. Like the other classes, they cannot meet every day, because they need time to go into the jungle each week to gather things that they need. So they come in the afternoon on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
The second class is yellow, who come on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings. They just finished a basic literacy program, but they are still working on sounding out words. Our classes, therefore, focus on doing the English exercises orally, and then practicing reading in Bahasa Melayu. They struggle, but they are definitely progressing. This is the class that makes me the proudest, but also makes me work the hardest. They are all adults, but most of them never had the chance to attend school because they grew up too deep into the jungle. Many, like my host parents, moved to Ampangan Woh to be closer to the school in town, so their children could have the educational opportunities they were denied themselves. For them, my jungle is the big city. It actually brings tears to my eyes when they read a word that has been giving them trouble, or correctly form the English question "what are these?" correct plural construction and all.
Third is the green class, a big class of students who are halfway through the program. They have class on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights. Though they should be at the same level as the orange class, it takes them a little longer to get through the material, mostly just because there are more of them. They are mostly adults, some young, and some older, in their forties or fifties. A couple are in their sixties. This class, though, also has about 7-10 kids, who come to class with their parents because they must walk an hour from another part of the mountain, or simply because they behave better in class with their parents then with their friends.
The fourth class is blue, on Tuesday and Thursday nights. They are mostly adults, another group that just finished the literacy class, but they are a little quicker than the yellow class, except that it is a very big class, and many of them are very shy, so it's hard to get everyone participating. The class also includes a group of students from the town public school, but they are older kids, mostly around 15.
The kids' class is purple. They meet only twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and that is enough for me. It's a lot harder than in Chaah, where enough students knew enough English at the start to follow my directions or explain them to others. Here, I try my best in limited Bahasa and hand gestures, and coloring books when I can't do any more. While most of the exercises from our curriculum are too advanced for the kids, we are trying our best.
We also just started our computer class. It meets four afternoons a week and includes six of the young boys from the green class, who speak enough English at this point in the program to follow directions, or at least ask questions when they don't understand something I say. So far, we've had only one computer class, and we spent it playing with Microsoft paint, trying to get used to holding and moving the mouse, but next week we'll start a speed typing program, and then move on to basic skills in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.

TESCO Food Donation Project
This weekend and last weekend, I have spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at a massive supermarket (think Target only not as well organized) asking customers to donate food for a local charity - an orphanage. The supermarket is in a city called Ipoh, a few hours north of KL, and somewhat close to Ampangan Woh. By "somewhat" I mean that to get to Ipoh I must get a ride down the mountain on the back of a student's motorbike, then catch a bus from the bottom to the town nearby, then another bus to a midpoint town, and finally a third bus to Ipoh. From the Ipoh bus station, I can take a city bus to the supermarket, which is just around the corner from a cheap hotel that a coworker, who grew up here, was nice enough to find for me. All in all, it is quite a trek to Ipoh. The journey this past Thursday took six hours door to door. I did get to do a little sight seeing (a phrase which, in Bahasa Melayu, I was delighted to learn, translates literally to "eating the breeze") out the window of the bus as we drove through Old Town. Ipoh seems to be a pretty little city, with lots of evidence of British influence. Yeah colonialism! There is even a clock tower.
The project itself is hard work. Eleven hours a day, I hand people flyers and ask them, in Bahasa, if they can donate food. Most people don't understand me, but the ones who are really interested in donating sometimes come running back out to have me explain further, and once they get it, a lot of people are extremely charitable. I was a little disappointed to find that no one from the orphanage came to help out with the project, seeing as they're the beneficiaries and all, but people get a real kick out of a white girl speaking terrible Bahasa and handing out flyers. It's pretty tedious and lonely work, just standing by myself asking people to donate to an orphanage I know nothing about and have zero connection to, and I learned during my internship a couple summers ago that I am no great raiser of funds. Every rude response (and there are many that seem rude to me) puts me in a grumpier and grumpier mood, not much relieved whenever I consider that no one who is getting either benefit from or recognition for the project (specifically the orphanage and the grocery store) has been helpful at all. The manager of the supermarket even told me that the collection table had to face backwards and be out of the way of customers. This is supposed to be their big Ramadhan donation project and has literally nothing to do with me, so maybe they could take an interest in it. Still, all this is worth it every time someone makes a donation. There have been many happy moments. One man and his daughter donated an entire shopping cart of food. Another older man gave bags and bags of rice and noodles, and told me I was doing a really incredible thing. When I told him that he was the one doing an incredible thing, he refused to hear it, saying "what's a few extra bags of rice? Nothing." One woman misunderstood me (okay just about everybody misunderstood me) and thought she could give cash after she finished shopping. When I told her we could only take food, she selected a few items from her own shopping cart, things she had bought for herself, and placed them on the donation counter. A guy from Pittsburgh and his Malaysian wife donated a huge collection of food and told me that their neighbor is looking for some international social work. She is going to apply for my organization. A little girl tried to donate her half-eaten ice cream cone. These more than make up for the rude ones, even the ones focusing so hard on ignoring me that they run over my toes with their shopping carts. I will never love fundraising, but I have mostly enjoyed these weekends. I'm looking forward to getting back to Ampangan Woh, though, and pushing ahead with my classes! We've got an exciting week ahead of us, with (hopefully) some awesome projects for my first real weekend in the village!