ProjectEd School Visit: Jobes' Story

This is a story, my story, about how lucky we are. How lucky we all are to live where we live, whichever corner of the earth we forumites hail from. How lucky we are to have been educated in the manner in which we have. How lucky we are to have found Bali to take from it such wonderful things and treasured memories. More importantly, how lucky we are we can all do something to give back tenfold any of the gifts we’ve been given by the island/s and its people.

On Friday the 28th January, 2005 I had the distinct privilege to accompany Melina and Joanne_Bali on a visit to SDN 2 Tista, Ngis-Abang, East Bali. Otherwise known as “the Project Education school”. Such a magical journey. Typical Bali post-card pleasures whichever window of the car we chose to look out of, the entire way up there. I had never travelled the east of Bali before and was completely entranced with the coastline. Had we not been running late due to one of those typical Balinese “time misunderstandings” I could have asked Melina to stop every half a kilometre to take pictures and it would have taken us five hours to get up there!

Having visited two of the schools which are being assisted by the Rotary sponsorship program (Yanne) in another area the week prior, I had been steeled with the forewarning that if they had moved me, I was about to be shaken. The Sembung schools, comparing them with everything we have, had upset me. The kids we sponsor play on a rusted out old slide and something which I’m sure about 20 years ago resembled a swing set. The “library” consisted of two wooden shelving cases and a handful of books. The kids sit at desks which I don’t recall ever having used in my school lifetime, perhaps my mother’s behind may have graced one of those old wooden things in her time, but definitely not mine! The grounds are neat and someone somewhere in the community obviously takes great pride in keeping them that way, however meagre the planting, but are mostly just dirt. The “canteen” was akin to something you might see farmers keep chickens in if you are from our parts. I was shocked, I was saddened, but most of all, I felt lucky. I knew this school was already in the hands of some genuinely selfless people who were doing all they could to ensure the kids at this school had the very basics to get an education. These kids have books. These kids, thanks to a lot of generous people, have (or are in the process of receiving) uniforms and other basics. In no way is this little tale meant to give the impression the kids in the Rotary projects are less needy or one project deserves more support than another. I’m lucky, as I suspect a lot of others in the BFN realm are too, that I can be involved in both. I’m also lucky that I’ve had the privilege of meeting the kids we sponsor and I now have little faces in my memory. I’ll know how I’ve helped these kids. I’ll watch these kids grow. The Rotary sponsorship program is a wonderful opportunity to be personally involved with individual kids in a needy rural setting and in a way nurture their futures. There is definitely not a shortage of kids left to sponsor and I’d implore anyone who has seen the topic come up over and over again and thought “maybe” to get involved. I got more joy out of meeting those kids than anything I’ve ever achieved academically or professionally and its only just begun. This story is, however, about my visit to the Project Education school.

Who knows how long it took to get up there? An hour, two, maybe even three. Melina and Jo would have to fight it out to represent Bali in the Olympics if talking was a sport and it was a fun trip!

When we pulled up at the school it was immediately apparent we were both expected and appreciated. As is usual in Bali, the ceremony is important so we were greeted by the who’s who of the school’s staff. Being in the middle of nowhere, there wasn’t a lot of English going around so I had to shake hands, smile and follow along in the hope that whatever I did manage to say in Indo wasn’t the wrong thing!

In the week prior to our visit, the toilets which were paid for with funds generated by the BFN functions etc. had gone ahead. The principal was most proud to take us straight to them and give us the grand tour. It wasn’t until I realised the kids from this school had been running down an embankment to the river below to go to the “bathroom” for about the last 15yrs that the excitement of a mere toilet block hit home and it was pretty confronting. Next we toured the classrooms. Into the first one, concrete floor, a roof caving in and in serious need of replacement and a broken up old cupboard storing god only knows how much nothing. Same again the with next one, and we were only up to grade 2. At that point I caught Jo’s teary eye and we both had to turn away and wander on to compose ourselves. I had never EVER seen anything like it called a school!

Thanks to ProjectEd, this school now has the basic school texts, of which they are immensely proud and the staff very happily showed us. To say these kids have precious little else though, is an absolute understatement. There are no fences and the neighbours happily trail through it like a thoroughfare paying little respect to it, as a result the school grounds are teeming with litter and various farm animals! It’s hot, it’s dusty and the whole place looks like a good old fashioned “Aussie working bee” waiting to happen. If only it were that easy.

This school & its community, like the others I visited, have a wealth of pride. Not having the slightest idea of what it’s like elsewhere in the world to compare themselves to, or much choice, these kids aren’t really aware of how dire their school actually is. The kids are happy kids and happy with what they’ve got. Every class we poked our heads into they were screaming out and waving and I don’t think once you’ve ever seen kids smile like that in a classroom so pathetic you’ll ever get a bigger wake-up call as to how spoilt and lucky the kids from our countries are. I tried to imagine the WORST school I’d ever seen in Australia or elsewhere in my travels and anything I came up with looks like Melbourne Grammar (one of our best private schools) in comparison. I sat there amongst those kids looking at the grounds remembering water fights in summer at the drink taps, kiss chasey up and over the A-frames in the playground, being confined to the portables which had air-conditioning on the really hot days and lining up for pies and chips at the canteen when mum had got us all out of bed late and didn’t make our lunches. I remember skinning my knee countless times on that damn asphalt during PhysEd. I remember holding my knees together and jumping up and down waiting because my school only had 20 girls toilets. I remember having show & tell in a big circle on the carpet every Monday morning after assembly and singing the National Anthem badly and as loud as I could to the big shiny flagpole. Our school was the COOLEST because we had the biggest flag of all the schools in the area. Amazing what you remember isn’t it? If my school had a roof caving in, concrete floors, chickens running through it and I’d been expected to run down to a river to pee, it would have been on the front page of the AGE newspaper under something like “Melbourne’s Shame”. This my friends, is quite simply SDN 2 Tista, Ngis-Abang, East Bali.

Being what we are with what we’ve got, your first instinct is to say “oh my god, we have to fix this, lets fix this! Now!”, but its just not that simple. This is a rural school in a very small, proud community and one can’t just send in the squads and build anything straight up and over that dignity. The school is beside themselves with genuine joy that BFN has offered assistance and the school have, with extremely gentle prodding, offered up a “wishlist” of sorts, prioritised in order of urgency. On touring this school it is blatantly apparent that it isn’t ready for the kind of donations of resources & supplies like the other schools; what this school needs at this point is $F-U-N-D-S$. It’s most basic infrastructure needs repairing, rebuilding in areas and building from scratch in others. The kids need toilets (in progress), running water, fences, roofs on their classrooms, desks to sit at, cupboards to put things in etc. etc! All this of course costs. Probably the harshest of realisations is that in our terms, and certainly comparing it to such an upgrade at one of our schools, it doesn’t even cost a LOT. In fact roughly $AU10,000 will see this school’s total “wishlist” taken care of and an ongoing maintenance program put in place. What a prime opportunity every one of us has to make such a difference in such an instantaneous and lasting way as a group who adore Bali and its people.

This hasn’t been solicited, in fact I hope in writing this Melina & Jo don’t mind me sharing my story and will forgive me for my Olympics barb! (but those girls REALLY can talk lol

). If you’ve got this far, I apologise for the length of this epic too! As one of the few people lucky enough to have had this opportunity, I can tell you that this school is not ready for a “sponsorship program” or regular visitors as is encouraged with the other schools and I felt I should share. At this point, it was my interpretation that the school is still pretty much reeling from someone coming out of nowhere like an angel to them and simply asking “can we help you?”. Slowly but surely, the funds the forum have raised thus far are starting to make a difference and every one of us who has purchased the BFN merchandise, attended the dinners or made a direct cash contribution to Project Education can be immensely proud of that.

I’ve come away from that day with an absolute sense of purpose as to how I can give back to the Bali I have fallen in love with and intend to spend a lot of time in. Between the three schools I went to, I saw some of the most amazing spirit and generosity I’ve ever seen in kids. I’ve seen the genuine desire for education in a way I have never seen before and I’ve come away with a renewed sense of understanding for the term “the lucky country”. If just one or two of you read this and feel the need to donate money to Project Education, buy some BFN goodies or even sponsor one of the school kids via Rotary, its been worth the finger tapping this has taken on a Sunday afternoon! The reality is that $10,000 bucks is all its going to take to change the lives of the kids at the Project Ed school now and for many years to come. What an absolute pleasure that would be.

Cheers,
Jobes

PS. Direct donation queries should be directed to Melina
PSS.Photo’s of my school visits will be on my Webshots page next week