The Silent S

After what could charitably be deemed a gap decade I became rather restless in my English seaside resort town. To say the time for action was ripe would be like claiming that Usain has a fair turn of speed. Nietzsche said that there comes a time in every man’s life when he must rise to the occasion and this moment had incontrovertibly arrived...

A friend set to undertake a highly ambitious two year globetrot said he was doing a weekend TEFL course in nearby Bournemouth and would Golf GTi me there if I could rustle up the funds. I (or my parents) did and, after so long since the salad days of university, I surprisingly enjoyed it. The instructor was engaging and imparted a glut of sound tips and advice. I passed “with flying colours”. Leaving I was convinced that, after so long out of the job market proper, this was something I could attack with an approximation of relish.

Parenthetically, I spent the third year of my modern languages course at Southampton teaching just eight hours weekly in a boisterous Parisian secondary school. Armed guards manned the gates due to a stabbing before my arrival, hardly a welcoming environment. I was lobbed in without preamble or textbook and cut loose. Being 1994, I had no access to the Web and no resources at the school of any nature. All lessons were by necessity conjured from my mind and the one inadequate primer I brought with me.

The absurdly light schedule over just three weekdays meant that the year’s raison d’etre was rinsing Paris dry with some close college buddies and three girls from Exeter also in the city that year. A close friend was ensconced a few hours away and routinely rocked up in his old-school Fiesta Ghia in which we sharked around making several road trips. The highlight was visiting another great mate in Belgium. His father, upon observing the state of the pair of us asked, not unreasonably, who actually managed to drive… A crate of beer and an ashtray of pre-rolled joints were our travelling companions, nothing but dead soldiers and roaches upon arrival. After visiting Maastricht and seeing nothing but the inside of coffee shops we were quizzed upon returning by his mother on a place we knew nothing about then troughed on Ben and Jerry’s before the standard twelve hour slumber.

I occupied a free and surprisingly spacious studio apartment above the school and gave private lessons to the son of my cleaner, Louis. With my input he climbed from rock bottom to the top three and this personalized tuition with tangible results installed my first love of teaching and the knowledge it was something I could do fairly well.

None of my (admittedly minimal) postgraduate work was in any sense related to French or Spanish and it was not until a frustrating period during the economic downturn after taking the course when I landed a job with the global outfit EF who peddle homestay summer schools at my local college. After 250 rejections applying for work worldwide – or, more accurately, a wall of silence and no replies whatsoever - I realized that current experience was holding me back and seized the opportunity with gusto. Bonding with a twelve-year-old Finnish giant named Jarkko who had severe learning difficulties and a batch of minuscule Orientals who spoke almost no English I again found the pastoral side of things extremely rewarding.

Jarkko’s entrance was one for the annals. Fully an hour into the debut class the door swung open without a knock and in bowled a broad bestubbled six-footer. Until then the Chinese had been subdued but his booming “Hello little Chinese people. I am Jarkko” was better than any formal ice-breaker. He avoided the other Europeans and plonked himself firmly between two bemused Easterners.

He'd been placed with a family eight miles away, failed roundly to make the bus connection so dialed 999 and had arrived in consummate style in a police riot van. His English was excellent and his presence enlivened the group substantially. Wrote a letter to his parents deliberately making no reference at all to his condition and said he was the most gratifying student I have ever worked with. I receive intermittent cards from him to this day.

Clumsy by nature, I spilled an entire steaming mug of cappuccino and severely burned my arm on day one which, in an anomalous hot English summer, tainted the experience to some extent. Disregarding this, it prompted me to decide that for want of further options I’d snag myself a gig abroad and flee the parlous state of affairs in England, a country awash in the lionization of “celebrity” culture. The thought of escaping the twin shit-eating grins of Robbie and Beckham splashed daily across every tabloid and magazine was in itself something I was eager to escape.

My original focus was upon Cambodia but when I received an email from the above friend with a capitalised DO NOT COME HERE appearing in triplicate I expediently scratched it from the list and concentrated instead on Laos, a country which I’ve always viewed with fascination. All fantasies were disabused upon arrival.

A torrent of emails during the month of November with the Head of English at "The School" led me to believe I was set for a good three years or so with a great job bagged. At $900 a month for 24 hours it seemed at least manageable and I even harboured the (instantly scotched) illusion of banking some dollars given the Third World location. The Web site showcased what appeared to be an unimprovable school of excellence. In addition to infesting my laptop with a series of viruses that swiftly destroyed it along with my 3000 song iTunes library and a host of precious documents, the content could only be described as a work of undiluted fiction.

The joker said he could accept me on the basis of my CV but was unable to commit until interviewing me. He pointedly refused to use Skype to this end which should have kick-started vibrant alarm bells. He also stridently urged me to arrive before Christmas as he would otherwise give the job to any candidate who arrived before me, again not a confidence-inspirer. Taking an enormous gamble on the back of hugely generous familial support I boarded a flight for Vientiane via Bangkok mid-December. Due to the peak season and the need for a open-jawed return plus all-encompassing annual medical insurance, the price was eye-watering.

The Japanese moron in front of me immediately fully reclined his seat. My SOP in this situation is to simply knee the transgressor in the back until he reverts to a position not encroaching upon my already tiny personal space. Sadly, this tactic cut no ice and even after employing fists and feet partnered with loud verbal abuse he remained resolutely lateral throughout. Manning the bum middle seat my fury was further stoked as the young lad across the aisle was smugly sprawled across a half-row sleeping like the proverbial baby. The South African adjacent, with incredible and unexpected kindness, offered me his window seat out of sympathy for the final five hours for which I was exceptionally grateful.

The mandatory brain-sodomising six hour stopover was spent with mixed emotions, boredom prevalent.

Nearing the Lao capital all I could make out was a patchwork of paddies, fields and murky water. I wondered if there were actually any houses at all. With a stunning suddenness and ferocity the pilot descended sharply and at such pace I thought a crash landing was in the post. Slamming onto the runway and somehow coming to a halt near the ass-end of the strip I was unceremoniously processed through immigration by sternly sinister guards sporting military-esque uniforms, relieved of $35 and issued a month’s visa.

Opting for the $7 MPV, I was whisked into the city centre. Minutes before reaching my hotel the car behind rear-ended our vehicle in the vortex of a busy thoroughfare before a crowd of intrigued onlookers. My chauffeur appeared to be struggling with the other driver who reeked of alcohol. Got out to assist and matters were settled of sorts.

Interviewed on a gloriously luminous Saturday, what I saw of the school was a tranquil setting, classrooms equipped with impressive Smart Boards and the opulent office that the Head of English (and Vice Manager, as he so proudly and relentlessly referred to himself) shared with the actual Manager. The role of the latter was seemingly to endlessly tour Southeast Asia making Nobby the de facto ruler. The expansive desk was worthy of a CEO, the plush black leather furniture a dream.

This was when the deal proper was tabled. Firstly, rather than the Lao I was expecting the man was Turkish and sported English as not a second but third language. He communicated relatively clearly but in nothing close to proper or grammatically correct sentences, more a series of barked phrases void of any definite articles. After telling me that I was also compelled to work Saturday mornings for the princely sum of $15 – literally not worth getting out of bed for - he added that required hours were 7.45am to 4.30pm.

Rising at six and walking for forty minutes to reach "The School" my travails began... I never started until 10am and finished three times at 2.30 but was forced to remain cooped up in an office with several other colleagues making productive use of time impossible. I was not asked to physically do anything and this attendance mentality jars with all that I hold true. The morning open-air assembly resembled a mini communist rally with a healthy dose of Islamism tossed into the mix.

Two young Polish women and two Filipino guys were great as well as one of the Turks, Mr U-Fuc (!) but his compatriot, a bland cipher of a man, was a despicable stool pigeon. For the first time in my life I added a password to my computer. He noticed I was writing copiously and on several occasions when returning from the bathroom I caught him unabashedly reading what was on screen. His function was slave-like and he never seemed to leave the grounds.

The ultimate ball-kicking was the announced start date of early January meaning I was absent from a family Christmas with a month to run amok in a tropical paradise void of any commitment or schedule and two wallets inadequate to house my bankroll, hardly ideal preparation for such a viperous schedule…

With a few notable exceptions, most of the students were at stark variance to the keen, respectful and eager pups I’d genned up on. Given arbitrary Anglicized names there were some true gems. The unimaginatively tagged Boy nestled beside B-Boy, a tiny girl was outrageously called Pakki, another Kung King and two lads a surly, rich lout Big First and his sidekick Big Boss. One of the female staff was the comically-handled Miss Bang-On. With infinite possibilities available each set contained pupils named, for example, Nana A and Nana B...

In lieu of the teenagers I was slated to tutor I had three classes of Primary 2, aged seven but more in line developmentally with English children of four to five. The books, not surprisingly, weren’t the promised Oxford University Press but superannuated Singaporean garbage called “My Friends Are Here”. Laos never made even a cameo appearance and I was obligated to instruct students, some with zero English, in detailed points of grammar via subject matter of no interest or relevance to them. Insanely, they waded in on book 2A meaning they lacked all the basics included in the opening couple. To ice the cake there were five weeks of term remaining and their previous teacher had already finished this piece of dross leaving me to entertain the unruly bunch with neither material nor assistance. As crowning insult, the Lao assistants slated to “team-teach” spoke no English rendering their presence totally pointless. As they were paid an utterly insulting $100 a month their motivation was quite understandably nil. I regularly told them to go home out of sorrow at their plight.

Cheating was endemic, encouraged even. Nobody was allowed to score below 40 even if they actually, as was often the case, managed an obese zero. Two invigilators were allocated to each exam; their role was a combination of swatting mosquitoes and relaying the answers. This was seldom necessary as notebooks were openly consulted. Results were then doctored and the sole concern of the rarely-spotted Director, also Turkish, was banking the not inconsiderable fees from 500 parents and publishing these massaged figures. Perversely, the school boasts an unparalleled reputation among the Lao community but I guess when you consult a set of jaw-dropping statistics and rock up at a palm-tree festooned set of buildings far nicer than that of most other competitors it’s not tough to be tricked.

Each year "The School" enters several prestigious international science Olympiads with up to 170 countries participating. The exclusive purpose of these ventures, to me, was that the odious Vice Manager got to hit the States gratis. Since his prose ability was commensurate with a fourteen-year-old I was commanded to write three detailed research papers of several thousand words on hypothetical experiments. In the skeletal guidelines I read online it mentioned repeatedly that the work must be that of the students alone. The project on the exploitation of volcanic energy gained them a bronze medal at one competition and I quit before finding out what honours the other brace reeled in. I wasn’t thanked or given anything in return.

Abutting the premises was a colossal glass banking tower where the school held its account. This was no bar to a three month delay in the issue of a child’s ATM card meaning that I was paid in a sheaf of over 150 notes, a security risk and nuisance of the highest order. After the initial euphoria of feeling like Vincent Vega paying his heroin dealer off a horse-choking wad subsided it become increasingly annoying. Also, payment was never on time with a gamut of excuses from the Manager’s wife needing a Caesarean to the parents not rustling up their fees. Watching the brisk construction of a vast covered basketball and tennis court from the office window suggested that cash-flow was certainly not a legitimate problem.

If we English instructors had the shitty end of the stick then I simply have no frame of reference for the IT teacher. He was palmed off with twelve separate classes, there were no computers in the house and he had no books to work from. There was no Internet access which he required to plan his lessons (except for the girls inhabiting the main office and living on Facebook) and, despite never starting until the afternoon, he was also made to pitch up at 7.45 in the morning. When it came to exams – you had to write your own – his already heinous job become untenable. He is not returning next semester.

Lao New Year consists of a puerile three day water fight during which I was attacked and had water thrown over my BlackBerry and iPhone. After four months of ill-health exacerbated by a fetid guest house for which I paid $300 a month and unhygienically-prepared canteen food, two cases of dengue fever as well as constant sickness, I ended up bed-ridden for a week. When I finally and belatedly received my salary I found I’d been docked the money, unheard of in a salaried gig. (The IT teacher spent two weeks with one of his children who’d been hospitalized in Thailand and he only got half his wages.) Since the school had not seen fit to issue me with a contract, pre-printed form documents that simply needed signing, I left without warning or notice. Had I not had the benefit of my parents and great friend visiting from Australia I would have redeemed my flight home within weeks.

All ended swimmingly and I’m now teaching at an outstanding small non-profit language academy which is another story and a far more positive one. If this piece contains a moral it’s quite simple: never ever work for "The School" if you find yourself in Laos. It will inarguably be the worst decision you make. They say that he who laughs loudest laughs last and I treated myself to a full roar when I discovered that the Vice Manager has been recalled to Turkey for National Service. Perhaps it will teach him some humility and manners although I somehow doubt it…

SOME NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED TO PROTECT THE GUILTY