School visit Iquitos, Peru

Today we visited the school that our hosts' kids go to. It's a junior and middle school.

The kids visited the English class ( see Flo's blog), whilst I chatted with the headmaster, who had previously taught chemistry and biology. His main message about the school bore quite a lot of similarity to what we saw in India, namely that faith is a driving force of the school. This is not necessarily my strongest subject, and I inherently recoil when religion is front and centre stage because it's often a scheme to impose beliefs or ideas on others. However, in developing countries, I need to park some of my own opinions because schools need a vision and values, and to be honest, where should they get them from if not from a religion. Certainly not the politics of right or left, and unfortunately, humanists have a really terrible marketing department and a non existant comms operation. So religion fills a gap for schools, even if that's not ideal, but then I am an original subscriber to Willy Brant's Realpolitik, so I see this as the least worst option.

The headmaster explained to me that here intact families are the exception and that kids are brought up by Grandma, a new mother/ father, etc. and in that context, the only way to keep the school and society together is belief. He certainly has a point.

After that deep conversation, he asked me if I had tried what a girl at the snack shop had in her hand. I thought it was some kind of chicken on a stick. He said I should try, so I said OK. When it arrived, it was chicken coloured, but it wasn't chicken, but rather an ice lolly. Could it be chicken ice cream???. No, it was a delicious local fruit that had a bit of a caramel flavour to it. The ideal snack at 35C and 100% humidity.

When the kids came back, the PE class showed us a typical lesson. First coordination and reaction skills, and then a game of basketball. To end our visit, we had a simple chat with the students, and the trainer and the kids said a prayer for our safe travels. Even I prayed and said a loud amen. 🙏Read more