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Jillian actually wrote what you'll read in response to a PCV questionnaire.
I am a mathematics teacher in the east coast village Kemaman – in the state of Trengganu. I've just come home from school and I'm relaxing in my living room – sweating. Today was not quite the typical day at school – I think it was probably better than usual (for me, not the students). On Tuesdays I have only 4 classes – but today I had 1½. The morning class was its usual smooth 40 minutes, following which I sit for 2 free periods. Just before my 2nd class, all students and teachers were asked to report to the school field where 5/6 of the student body was to be punished for not taking part in yesterday afternoon's cross-country practice run. So for the entire 4th period in the hot hot sun, the school ran round and round the track – in full dress, which includes, for the girls, maxi skirts and head scarves – and luckily also, sneakers. That took care of 4th period, and 5th period had to be canceled so that the school could rest. Well I rested as well during 5th period and then sat for 2 more free periods and got ready for my last class. 10 minutes into my last class the head master began an announcement of the past year's test results and, in the manner of Malay speeches, it stretched on and on endlessly. When he finally signed off there were 10 minutes left so I spent the time simplifying enormous square roots. I think he likes to use the intercom system because it's brand new – and I hope that he'll soon grow bored of it.
It's around 3 o'clock now – I've been home since 1:30. Had my usual lunch – Quaker oats with honey and powdered milk followed by an apple, sometimes red, sometimes green – today red. I also eat oats for breakfast – except on Thursdays, when I eat peanut butter and jelly to get me through the day (7 period stretch). Sometimes I also eat peanut butter and jelly for lunch. Sometimes for dinner. You ask where the food I eat comes from. Well, at the moment I have four jars of peanut butter in the cupboard. Skippy brand from New Jersey, Fairco from Maryland, Planters from New York, Lady's Choice from Malaysia – and all are Super Chunk varieties and have been bought in various parts of Malaysia. My jelly is Krakus brand from Poland (jam actually) stocked by the shop down the street – I alternate between the Gooseberry, the Black Currant, and the Strawberry. I'm considering trying the Raspberry. I have to admit that my diet sounds rather strange – I did not realize until called upon to write it down that this is what I actually eat. The bread is delivered daily by a Chinaman on a bicycle – or if I miss him I can catch the Indian on a bicycle. My housemate and I share a loaf because in this climate it molds very quickly. Don't think that I never stray from my bread and oats routine – I do diverge into tomato and cheese, sardines, chicken fondue, stuffed crabs, wild boar, water buffalo, pigs brains, coagulated blood, green peppers, carrots, cucumber salads, curds, cuttle fish, soya bean patties, and rice porridge. I even had a stretch of two weeks when I took catering from an Indian lady. But I didn't like always going to collect my food so I quit it.
I mentioned my housemate before. Her name is Parameswari, a beautiful Ceylonese lady and the hospital's only radiographer. I think that her X-ray department, the bank, the Kemaman Coffee House, and one back room in a certain Chinese restaurant on Jakar Street are the only air-conditioned places in Kemaman. And of the entire hospital, her toilet is the cleanest (and the only European-style toilet I've ever seen in town). People from other departments will visit her just so they can use it. The hospital is not very clean – the goats have the run of the place and you can find their droppings even in the sick wards.
In fact this whole area is overrun by goats. They don't milk them and they don't eat them so why do they raise them? Actually no one really bothers to claim them unless you run one over on the road – then they make you pay for it. I think that's it – they train them to run in the road. Goats aren't so bad really – they eat all sorts of ugly trash that's all around and transform it into uniform brown pellets – which are also unfortunately all around, but so much more compact. The cows are also all around but they move in groups and are more often chaperoned. Their bad habit is sleeping in the road at night. It's probably a nice warm place, having been heated by the sun all day long, but you can really get hurt if you run into a cow. For dead cows you pay a lot more than for dead goats. Cows aren't milked here – there is no fresh milk in Kemaman and hardly any in Malaysia.
In the past two years I've had milk 3 times – once on Christmas 1978. But you can make yogurt from powdered milk as well – and it tastes quite good. Every Wednesday night I make yogurt. By Thursday afternoon it's ready and I take it across the road to my friend Krishnan. We hop on my motorcycle and drive to the Taj Mahal restaurant where we get chicken-livers to go. Then we set off 20 miles south to one remote place along the beach called Twin Islands Motel where we sit down and order fried rice, extra hot, which we will eat mixed with the yogurt and chicken livers. As we wait we have a bottle of liquor that Krishan's bought – usually Block and White, our drink. Then after dinner we play Scrabble – and I beat him – every Thursday night. Well, after all, his native language is not English, it is an Indian tongue.
I spend a lot of my free time playing Scrabble. Sometimes with Parames and the Malay dentist down the street, Yaldis. Sometimes with the Indian and Chinese workers contracted to finish off the new Club Mediterranee on Cherating Beach, sometimes with Dr. Sodi and his house guest, a London cabby, sometimes with Mura Raju, a skinny lawyer, and his girlfriend Helen, my newest friend.
I could really just go on and on because I've hardly told you anything. What about the rats who dance on the roof at night, what about the monsoon rains, the open monsoon drains, the rubber estates, the elephant in the sugar cane.
I hope to accomplish exactly what I've been assigned to do – teach Form IV and Form V mathematics to 175 specific students, to get them over their fear and apprehension of the subject, and to get them through their SPM exam with a higher percentage pass-rate than last year's Form V class. This might seem like a very tiny goal to come half-way around the word to accomplish. It is not so tiny once you consider that they haven't yet mastered or even ever understood Form III mathematics. As to why such goals are important to the community, the country, throw in the world – I don't care about these mass bodies – ask me why mathematics is important to each one of these 175 students and I will answer: mathematics gives one an orderly and exercised mind and with this the results can be as far-reaching as you choose.
I had some problems adjusting to a new culture. (Are rats part of the culture?) But I think they're the ones having trouble adjusting. They had to learn that Farrah Faucet, Jamie Summers, Olivia Newton John and I are not one and the same. They had to get used to me whistling in the teachers' room, wearing red shoes, running the track, eating salt on my eggs, cycling to school. One poor chap saw me cycling behind him one day and turned head-on into a car – and when I got my motorcycle they had to adjust some of their notions about girls. I made my share of sacrifices – I quit hanging my underwear outside, quit wearing bikinis and shorts, quit using my right hand to wipe, quit wearing shoes in the house, and learned simply to nod when they call me “sir.” Have I won the confidence of local residents? I don't even understand this question. Their confidence in what? In the fact that I will not run them over with my motorbike? If they have confidence in that then they're fools.
You know, I cycle quite fast. In fact I do everything very quickly compared to the pace of things here. And every time I pass people cycling or walking I hear them comment on my speed. “Speed, speed, speed” they say as I pass: “Laju, laju, laju.” Now yesterday I passed a group of my students and I heard one of them comment on my “halaju paduan,” my “actual velocity.” And this has been my most satisfying experience – they related, without prompting, something that I taught them in class to a real-life situation. Yes, one can learn to be satisfied with very little. If you ask me they're dismaying – if you ask them they're amusing – we'll all agree that they're not unusual, as these experiences happen all the time.
Well one Sunday the unexpected occurred when the school was called to attention for morning assembly. Mr Yip, who starts the assembly by conducting the students in the school and state songs, was missing. We all looked from one to another and on to someone else and the students all looked at us and we just looked back at them... so I hopped on to the podium and asked them to begin the school speed – “lagu” being quite close to my favorite word “laju.” But I do say they'd never sung quite so well before and never since.
I was teaching something about triangles, drawing on on the board, labeling the vertices and suddenly the class roared. I knew it was something I'd said – so I repeated it: “The vertices X, Y, Z,” and they roared again. And this is when I discovered that Z is pronounced “Zed,” not “Zee.” Once while discussing impressions of Malaysia with a taxi cab driver I realized that I'd been comparing noses (“hidung”) instead of lifestyles (“hidup”). Most frustrating was during training, riding in a car one evening with a family who'd volunteered to keep me for a week. I was trying to find out the word for “lightning,” which was constantly dashing across the sky. Every time I pointed to it and asked what it was, it was gone. I could sense them growing uneasy. How should I tie these incidents nicely together for you? How about with a sigh: Yes, I had to learn Malay for this assignment – the schools used to be in English medium but now everything has been switched to Malay. In the west-coast city, Muar, where we trained, we were instructed six hours a day in the language. But in daily living I speak English. I learned it in Iran.
Inspired by Yaldis, the little Malay lady dentist whom I found in my bed upon returning home from vacation:
Charms of the Trengganu Girls
What kind of girls are these
who eat but half a tangerine?
Are they really as dainty as this
or does it only seem?
My wrists are as big as their ankles small
My legs are stronger than their men
My feet in their soldierly wooden shoes
could never be part of them.
Whereas I used to stand so small
I tower as a queen
Walking through the streets as if
in a Lilliputan dream.
Dark eyes and chocolate looks appraise
my crown of golden hair
My hazel eyes and freckled nose
encompassed by their stare.
I fear that once while bound in sleep
I'll grow as small and dark as they
And instead of the dream, when I awake
my past will slowly fade away.Jillian Beuschel
6 Jan 1980
