Today saw the founding run of Toamasina Hash House Harriers. It was a run unlike any other in the world, through delightful local villages, past a mountaintop church in the foothills of Toamasina returning on the same trail we entered.
Buying bananas in a village
Starting at 2pm we carefully laid the trail, placing strips of paper on the grass verges along the route. Many locals were curious, what were we doing and why? Some begged to be given these slips of paper and were over the moon with their present.
On the way out we realised we had a problem. We caught some children collecting our strips of scrap paper and coming back along the ‘in’ trail could only a few papers remained.
Jackfruit
Luckily the turnout was poor so we had a guided walk in the bush rather than a proper ‘hash’. On the way a local pousse pousse (cycle rickshaw) driver joined us and talked incessantly about teaching in Malagasy. How did he know I was a teacher? Eventually I saw a strip of paper I’d laid earlier in his hands, he was reading part of my shredded teaching book!
Moral of the story: Use flour and hash where there aren’t villages…
Regarding the real reason I’m here…this week we began training about 50 teachers on the ‘Modern teaching methods 1’ course, 20 teachers on the ‘Modern teaching methods 2’ course and around about 10 trainers. I’m very excited about the trainers course.
While numbers are not huge I’m happy to have a very enthusiastic and motivated group of teachers, and smaller numbers mean we can invest more in individual teachers through observation and mentoring.
So I thought I’d try and write more, shorter posts when I have something interesting to share. Does that work for you or did you prefer the longer ones?
4 responses to “Mismanaged Hash”