Field Trips (Joe’s School)

Preface

I live in a place where the culture views time fluidly, most people rely on walking to get anywhere, and the majority of the population handwash their clothing, bathe in a bucket, and use pit latrines because they don’t have indoor plumbing.

Field Trips
Field trips are a really big deal at my school. They are a big deal because they take a lot of coordination to make them happen and because they are expensive. Because of the time it takes to coordinate a field and its expense, they don’t happen often. (The last time my school had a field trip was in 2013.)

During the last two Saturday’s, my school participated in what they called “friendly competitions”. A friendly competition consists of a debate, soccer games, and netball* games. The first Saturday, my school travelled to another school, and the second Saturday my school was the host. As one of the English teachers, and moreso because English is my home language*, I was nominated to coach the debate team, which meant that I was also present at both friendly competitions.

The Debate Team and Joe

Weeks leading up to the first friendly competition, the teachers talked about it at just about every morning assembly*. As I listened to them, it kind of sounded like they were making a sales pitch. I could see why on the morning of the first friendly competition; the one where we travelled. Organizing a friendly competition took a lot of coordination. First, there was identifying a school and setting a date and the events; then there was booking the transportation, which in our case meant going down to the local taxi rank and hiring khumbis* to serve as drivers; and then there was getting all of the learners to the other school, fed, and back home. 

Khumbis!

The friendly competition took the entire day. At first, I was flabbergasted by how much time it took because Saturday’s are usually my day to go on a long run, wash clothes, and buy food in town. My initial feeling was that I lost that time. But then I took a moment to reflect on everything it took for the friendly competition to actually happen. There were so many moving parts: teachers, learners, khumbis, food, and more.

Reflecting back on my time as a teacher in Baltimore and, more recently, when I was a resident director at Pacific Lutheran University, I coordinated a few field trips. At both places, I don’t remember field trips requiring so much effort. Sure, there were a lot of similar logistics. However, the coordination seemed to happen more quickly in the US. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized the mechanisms to coordinate a field trip aren’t as readily available here.

Seeing how much coordination it took to make the friendly competition happen made me realize why it was scheduled for the whole day. The educators wanted to make the most of the day by having the learners participate in multiple events. Back in the US, schools will have a few field trips or multiple friendly competitions (i.e. games) per year; whereas, field trips here happen so infrequently that they are a very special occasion.

Learners Playing Netball

Afterword
My incredulity faded away when the friendly competition got underway because I could see the learners really enjoyed themselves. They had the opportunity to interact with learners from another school, show off their skills during the debate and soccer and netball matches, and dance to the house music booming from one of the tricked out khumbis. It was a day well spent.

The Soccer Team in a Huddle

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* netball - Netball is similar to basketball except there’s no backboard and only girls play.

* home language – Could also be called someone’s first language, mother tongue, or whatever language someone learned to speak first.

* morning assembly – My school meets every morning for about 15 minutes. The teachers use this time to more-or-less talk about a moral or value and how it manifests in everyday life. Examples include loving everyone like your brother or sister or respecting every elder like a parent.

* khumbi – A taxi van.