Rats, rosaries and resolutions

The time has rolled around once more for another blog post and I have been pondering what to write about. I started to compose my thoughts in bed last night, which is always a bad idea. As the sentences took shape, so sleep escaped me and my brain kicked back into action. Not good with only seven hours to go until the alarm went off.

The journey back from Dubai was relatively uneventful, although my friend Fuad nearly gave himself a hernia carrying my two tonne suitcase up three flights of stairs in Male. Arriving back in Ihavandhoo at 1 am, I was just in time to bump into the Big Man and Beardy on the jetty and was roundly scolded by Beardy for not having phoned ahead to arrange a small army to cart my copious belongings back to the house.

For some time now I have suspected that the previous occupants of my bedroom were a family of rats. There have been small amounts of tell-tale evidence and a rather strong smell of rat wee. Two weeks without airing and the smell was overpowering, so upon my return I decided that the time had come to take action. I called for reinforcements and together Bella and I moved my extraordinarily heavy mattress. Suspicions were confirmed, for the floor underneath was littered with rat droppings – and a squashed cockroach to boot. Curiously, we also found a rosary down there – strange in an entirely Muslim country. Once we’d recovered our composure we cleaned up, replaced the mattress and Bella threw the rosary back for good measure. I’m pleased to report that the smell in my bedroom is now vastly improved.

Since then it has been all go getting ready for school and jumping back into a full timetable. A friend commented the other day that I never write about school. This certainly isn’t due to lack of interesting material or because I’m not enjoying it. So this half term I have resolved to tell you a little bit more about the madness that takes place in my classroom daily.

We’ve got off to a relatively good start this week. I decided to plan a mini topic on clothing and fashion but both fashion and western clothing are somewhat scarce here. Not to be defeated, I scoured our old magazines for Muslim-friendly pictures of models to use as props. Having run the pictures past the relevant authorities I took them into the classroom where they were greeted by a mixture of horror and delight; horror mainly from the girls and delight mainly from the boys. They have, however, served their purpose as today 10C, ordinarily a rather lively bunch, worked in absolute silence on their fashion articles for a grand total of 35 minutes, setting themselves a new hard-work record.

More tales anon but for now I must stop. The crows are making an almighty racket in the palm tree, so I’m off to find my air gun. Just kidding.

TTFN xx