Always Remember a Day in a Ditch like this by Sheila Laing
Always remember a day in a ditch like this...
‘Scotland Headteacher coming. Get ready. Quick! Scotland Headteacher coming,’ shouted the awed Burmese father of Aung Aung, a pupil of Hle Bee School on the Thai-Burma border.
I was indeed coming. As Headteacher of Forthview Primary School, Edinburgh, I was making my first visit to the home of one of the pupils of Hle Bee School, Mae Sot, Thailand. Hle Bee is a school for 300 children of families who have fled Burma through fear or hunger with a determination to find a better life with food, work and education for their children in Thailand.
I had never been in a paddy field before and here I was walking the path between the wet field and the paddy field drainage ditch that separates 2 paddy fields. This was the first of 6 homes that Headteacher Tha Zin had arranged for me to visit that day, Saturday 12 July 2008. I felt apprehensive to be arriving announced as SCOTLAND HEADTEACHER, knowing how nervous and excited this impoverished Burmese family were at having such an important person as me (!) arrive. I didn’t want to let them down. I also had some conservatively Scottish worries. ‘What would there home be like? What if I needed the toilet? What if they offered me scary food? How could I communicate my appreciation for their hospitality when we didn’t share a language?’
None of those worries prepared me for what happened next!
We did, of course, have to cross the paddy field drainage ditch. Across a narrow plank with 3 vertical sticks driven into the ditch, I felt quite confident until the Burmese teacher in front decided I looked a bit wobbly and grabbed my hand from the lovely stable stick that was supporting me.
SPLASH! I fell backwards…right into the paddy field drainage ditch! As I went down, I remember thinking, ‘What is this muddy water? Slurry? Keep your mouth shut, Sheila. It may not be safe to drink!’
I tried to stand, chest deep in mud. The kind Burmese teacher came to my rescue again. She held her hand out to pull me up but the mud clung tight to my leg and I pulled her in too.
A few minutes later, the rest of our party of Burmese children pupils, teachers and friends, had dragged us both out and we dripped our muddy way through the paddy field to Aung Aung’s home amidst great shrieks of laughter. As ‘SCOTLAND HEADTEACHER’ entered the home, looking more like the Loch Ness Monster than some foreign dignitary, the women of the house rushed me over to their water butt (no tapped water supply in the middle of a paddy field). They then proceeded to wash my clothes thoroughly - with me still in them. I had water poured on me, was pummelled and scrubbed. I felt like a washboard. My shoes were taken off and plunged into water by Aung Aung and I was invited to sit on the edge of their little shed house.
‘Minglaba. Hello,’ I said, ‘My name is Sheila. I am SCOTLAND HEADTEACHER. I am pleased to meet you. Here are some biscuits for you.’
And we all dissolved into helpless peals of laughter that transcended the barriers of language and culture, as the Burmese teachers shrieked, ‘Always remember today. A day to remember!’
