Village School Diaries: Where Blackboards Have More Holes Than Chalk

The government says we have a school. What we really have is a concrete shell where chickens wander in during lessons, and the smartest kid doubles as the janitor because he's the only one who can fix the well pump.

Our Classroom Reality

Morning routine:

• 6AM: Fetch water for school toilet that hasn't worked in 3 years
• 7AM: Sweep rat droppings off broken desks
• 8AM: Teacher arrives (if the motorbike didn't break down again)

The "computer lab" is just a photo in last year's donor report. Real tech education? Figuring which neighbor's WiFi we can leech for homework.

Teachers Who Stay

Our hero isn't in those inspirational posters:

• Miss Devi who teaches 4 grades simultaneously while breastfeeding
• Old Pak Harun who retired 10 years ago but still comes to tutor slow readers
• The vegetable seller who lets kids practice math by calculating change

Their salaries? Mostly paid in eggs, firewood, and the occasional chicken. The ministry would call this "community participation." We call it survival.

Exams vs Real Life

National test questions:

1. Calculate the area of a swimming pool (we bathe in the river)
2. Diagram the water cycle (we watch our crops wilt in drought)
3. Write about train travel (the last train passed through in 1987)

What we actually need to know:

• Which mushrooms won't kill you
• How to fix a diesel pump with rubber bands
• When to plant before the rains fail again

The Escape Artists

The lucky few who "make it":

• Maria - scholarship to city college, now sends home money for siblings' school uniforms
• Ahmad - construction worker in Dubai, funds village kids' notebooks
• Lin - married the district officer's son, got electricity for the school

Their secret? Part brilliance, part luck, and entirely too much pressure to save the whole family.

Why We Still Come

Because:

• The school lunch might be the only protein kids get all day
• That one donated storybook lets us imagine beaches instead of rice fields
• Even if we drop out by 15, those 8 years of math mean we won't get cheated at the market

Tomorrow the kids will come again - some barefoot, some hungry, all hoping today's the day the "real teacher" shows up. And when he doesn't, they'll teach each other instead. Like they always do.