Laos in the time of Coronavirus

 

Sunset on the Mekong River

I was in India when a message appeared in Facebook about teaching in Laos for a few months and I applied immediately. Fortunately, my cv was up-to-date and after a couple of Skype interviews I was accepted as an IELTS teacher.

The IELTS classroom

Teaching IELTS is not something I had ever wanted to do, as teaching to the test is generally frowned upon in my professional circles. However, the idea of Laos was attractive and at the beginning of January 2020, I flew to Vientiane ready to start.

Compared with India, everything seemed luxurious – the house, the kitchen, the air conditioning, the classrooms, the cafes and the range of food to cook. I even had a garden to play with, so during my time there I planted out a bed with Gardenias,

Creating the garden bed

Jasmine and other flowering plants. Everything grew fast in the tropical climate. Over the next few months, the heat gradually built up and the mosquitoes were almost impossible to control. Every night there was at least one driving me crazy.

Kitten with rabies

I became a regular visitor at one of the local temples and made friends with the monks, always trying to coax them to speak a little English. Mainly though, during my visits, I cared for sick kittens, supplied food and medicine for all the cats and traipsed back and forth in the heat to the vet with sick and dying animals.

Meanwhile, I worked six days a week at my teaching job – seven really due to the timetable which meant I prepared and marked even on my day off. Initially, I received three different versions of how I should structure the activities and became quite confused. This was very trying, particularly as I was used to designing my own courses in India. Eventually it became clear that I was required to stick to the text for each class and follow it page by page. They were Cambridge IELTS books and weren’t so bad, so I settled into a pattern.

The students were eager to learn and the classes were small. Mostly they were university students or professionals who were hoping to study overseas. Many were aiming to go to Hungary where there were scholarships and an IELTS score of only 5.5 is acceptable. Shock, horror! I knew well from my work in Australia that this was not enough to manage academic study and frequently warned them against aiming so low.

The other group of students I taught came from international schools. At first, there was only one seventeen year old, but then eight or nine more joined my classes. They were full of life and were used to being taught by foreign teachers at school.  I felt sorry for them though, because they were not in a position to make their own decisions about what to study next. Like many Chinese students in Australia, their families had mostly decided that humanities were out of the question and insisted that their children enter courses associated with making money. By the time I left, some classes were getting pretty wild as the students were all friends, but they were there to get a good IELTS score and motivated enough to be manageable. I loved their energy and humour.

There was one other group of students who were very different from the Laos students. These were staff from the Japanese Embassy, mostly economists and engineers. They liked my relatively strict approach and worked hard.

Test papers

So now, I have new skills as an ELTS teacher and I will use them again. However, I wish I was now also taking on the challenge of teaching online like many other teachers I know.

As time progressed, news about the Coronavirus started to appear in my internet feeds until it was the basis of nearly everything. I moved through the stages of thinking it was just another passing issue to understanding how serious it was becoming. Sometimes, I had to be dragged towards that understanding. The disappointment was palpable when my friend who had been coming to Laos to enjoy a holiday with me be after the classes finished cancelled her journey. However, it quickly became apparent that she was right. Eventually, one night in class while the students were reading, a message came in advising that the Australian Government was instructing citizens who wanted to travel back to do it quickly.  Airlines were failing and borders were closing fast. I took a break and had to quickly deal with this new blow in order to finish the class.

The next morning, I booked on one of the last remaining flights out and three days later I was taken to the departure terminal (in typical nerve wracking just-in-time Laos style). After an unbelievably slow check in, the plane was full and we left late. After transiting in Bangkok, I was on the next plane, with Australians only on board, heading for Melbourne.

Back at home now, like everyone else, all my plans have been shattered but I am letting all that go. At day seven of full isolation, I have reached a fairly peaceful state although the feeling of disbelief returns regularly. There is still music and friendly neighbours to talk to from a distance. While I am grateful for what I have, my heart aches, especially for India.

Now it all is about looking after each other and caring for ourselves in this new version of the world.