Last night at a party, conversation chanced on parenting abroad.
First there was the conversation about Other Parents. The major international school in Nairobi had to send out a very fierce letter to all parents a few weeks ago. 'If you and your partner are both out of the country in termtime please inform the school, and give us the contact details of a responsible adult in your absence. There have been too many incidents where a child breaks an arm at school, and we then discover there is no one to take them to hospital or to take control.'
The issue here is about access to cash. Many parents seem to go abroad leaving the homehelp and the driver in charge. Which may work for a routine week or fortnight, but crashes on rocks if you need access to a hospital, and therefore access to large amounts of cash via an ATM or creditcard. One mum described how, when she needed to travel abroad, she always left her children's health books with the office manager in case of an urgent medivac. But you can't help thinking she is one in a hundred, and clearly many people don't think of this, or even more mundane emergencies, till far, far too late.
A grounded mum working in social development described her and her just teenage son's experiences in a country in SouthEast Asia. How the girls in his class liked him. Alot. Would regularly arrive at their house en masse. At the mum's bedtime. And be very difficult to deter, deflect or dislodge, never previously having had people saying no to them.
How most of these young teens would have a car, driver and armed guard at their disposal. Bedtime, and the arrival of a bevy of belles and their accompanying guards and guns. Not calculated to allow a restful slip into sleep. How the mum developed a new rule. No guns in the compound. Bodyguards and their guns wait outside. Please.
One of the tales of one of Nairobi's secondary schools is that 'the food is so bad there, students get their drivers to bring takeaway pizzas each day.' OK we did go and look at the school, did even like it. But that apocryphal tale buzzed round in my head. A good 40 minutes drive from our home I could imagine when it was FirstBorn's turn to pay back those sneaked slices of pizza. How her mulish driver (me) would be put under pressure. How my take-it-with-you in the morning homemade option would be assessed as Not Good Enough. How any option would need to come, warm, in a cardboard wrapper to make the grade. How simple issues, fuelled by teenage hormones and the unrealistic standards made by others, could blight a mother's life.
It's a Big Bewildering World out there, - and that's just for the parents.
First there was the conversation about Other Parents. The major international school in Nairobi had to send out a very fierce letter to all parents a few weeks ago. 'If you and your partner are both out of the country in termtime please inform the school, and give us the contact details of a responsible adult in your absence. There have been too many incidents where a child breaks an arm at school, and we then discover there is no one to take them to hospital or to take control.'
The issue here is about access to cash. Many parents seem to go abroad leaving the homehelp and the driver in charge. Which may work for a routine week or fortnight, but crashes on rocks if you need access to a hospital, and therefore access to large amounts of cash via an ATM or creditcard. One mum described how, when she needed to travel abroad, she always left her children's health books with the office manager in case of an urgent medivac. But you can't help thinking she is one in a hundred, and clearly many people don't think of this, or even more mundane emergencies, till far, far too late.
A grounded mum working in social development described her and her just teenage son's experiences in a country in SouthEast Asia. How the girls in his class liked him. Alot. Would regularly arrive at their house en masse. At the mum's bedtime. And be very difficult to deter, deflect or dislodge, never previously having had people saying no to them.
How most of these young teens would have a car, driver and armed guard at their disposal. Bedtime, and the arrival of a bevy of belles and their accompanying guards and guns. Not calculated to allow a restful slip into sleep. How the mum developed a new rule. No guns in the compound. Bodyguards and their guns wait outside. Please.
One of the tales of one of Nairobi's secondary schools is that 'the food is so bad there, students get their drivers to bring takeaway pizzas each day.' OK we did go and look at the school, did even like it. But that apocryphal tale buzzed round in my head. A good 40 minutes drive from our home I could imagine when it was FirstBorn's turn to pay back those sneaked slices of pizza. How her mulish driver (me) would be put under pressure. How my take-it-with-you in the morning homemade option would be assessed as Not Good Enough. How any option would need to come, warm, in a cardboard wrapper to make the grade. How simple issues, fuelled by teenage hormones and the unrealistic standards made by others, could blight a mother's life.
It's a Big Bewildering World out there, - and that's just for the parents.
This comment is not specifically on this post--though it was one that caught my attention, as a parent of a now (thankfully!) safely grown-up young woman.
ReplyDeleteInstead, I just wanted to let you know that, though I seldom comment, I often read and always appreciate your blog. I don't always have something to say about it, but I am grateful for the way you break down a large experience of a bigger world than I sometimes remember we live in, into slices of life real enough for me to grasp.
Thanks.