Many young Canadians upon graduating from university have taken jobs overseas teaching English. What’s unusual is for acouple of 50-year-olds to seek these same jobs overseas and to come back to Canada and write about it. That’s the casewith Castlegarian Judy Smith’s new book, Out of Poverty, which gives a detailed rendering of what it’s like to teach in a landfar from home.
Told in straight narrative, bits of poetry, parts of letters, photos, rants, and reflections, this book is as close as you can getto what happens to some people who work overseas. Smith’s book is as much about the various cultures and specificpeople she and her partner experience as it is about the teaching itself.
You can meet Judy Smith at the Castlegar Public Library on Wednesday, May 25 at 7 p.m. when she will be reading excerptsfrom her fascinating book.
Smith begins at the beginning. She and her partner, though well-educated, couldn’t find decent jobs in Canada. So runningout of money and giving up their house, they answered an ad and then headed overseas to teach in South Korea.
Fortunately, their first teaching experience was a good one. As in most overseas work, much depends on who is directing orbossing or owning. Their first employers, Mr. Kim Im Hwan and his wife, turned out to be benevolent folk. Though they hada number of LIKE schools under their control and were keeping an eye on profit, they also had time to make life tolerablefor their foreign teachers.
Smith’s book indicates that when the accommodation was acceptable and the teaching situations were manageable, she andher husband (also on a teaching contract) enjoyed their work. Where the opposite was true, they couldn’t wait to move on orreturn to Canada. They had difficulty during their teaching sojourn in Incheon, Korea, and again at a private school inThailand.
In addition to the problems with administrators and unruly students, they had a problem with the food — meat in particular.Most of the meat products came from unsanitary places, were butchered unsanitarily, and were sold in unsanitarysituations. Masses of flies bombarded the food in most local venues.
Smith was far more fastidious and careful about local foods than many foreigners teaching overseas. She was evensuspicious of vegetables, sticking to vegetables that didn’t require layers to be peeled off.
In several locations where they taught, much of their free time was spent searching for appropriate food — particularlystores where western foods were available. When they found a good supply of western foods, life overseas suddenly becamemore tolerable.
Smith’s narrative illustrates several situations where they were treated horribly by students and administrators. In aThailand private school, the students refused to accept them and to be disciplined at all. In some locations, teachers wereharassed on the streets and called nasty names.
Fortunately, during their 10 years teaching overseas, they had a number of good teaching positions — for example, Oman.There they had a magnificent apartment and taught students at a higher level. Smith, however, as a western woman used tovarious freedoms for women, could not believe how the culture there treated its women. Smith herself was often treated likea second-class citizen because of her gender.
Their final teaching assignment overseas was in China. The teaching situation was fairly good, but the living conditionswere horrendous. This was especially true during the Chinese winters when no building they lived in or worked in had anyheating. As I was reading, I wondered how they managed to survive.
Smith and her husband were the proverbial strangers in a strange land. In some cases, they adapted well, but in others, lifewas an ongoing struggle.
