Midnight kindies tough on families, teachers

Rest time: Children of a class at Le Ninh kindergarten take nap under a teacher's care. — Photo by Van Minh

It was one o'clock in the morning. The alarm went off in Quyet Tien unit in the Le Ninh rubber farm even as thick darkness was still covering the area.

As always, Tran Thi Ngoc Phuong woke up and hastily brought her two-year-old daughter My Le to kindergarten while the little girl was still sleeping. After leaving her with the teacher, Phuong and her husband rushed to the rubber forest nearby to start their work day.

They both make their living tapping rubber trees for MTV Le Ninh Company in Le Thuy District in the central province of Quang Binh.

"It is a very hard job which needs to be done at certain times," Phuong said in a hurry.

"Sometimes we start working at 9pm but in this season we start at 1am. We have no choice but to bring our child to school whenever we start work everyday."

For Phuong and other workers here, deep darkness has, for ages, become their morning. The same goes for the children and teachers at Le Ninh kindergarten.

Phuong has been sending her daughter to class since she was only five months old.

"At times I miss her like crazy when I am working but I have to wait until 7am to return to breast feed her," Phuong said.

Nguyen Thi Dung, headmaster of the special school, said the kindergarten was built ten years ago by the rubber company to meet the demands of workers with small children. The school currently has 25 teachers and 14 classrooms for children under five years old. Since the farm is very big, the classrooms are not all concentrated in one place but scattered over seven separate locations with the farthest one being 13km away from the headquarters.

"Class start times also vary based on different working hours from group to group," Dung said.

"At the headquarters and some classrooms near the town centre, classes open at 5am. But at the Quyet Tien and Number 2 units, classes often open at 9pm or 1am. School hours change often, depending on the season, weather and the working schedule," she said.

Putting a scarf around her two-year-old child, Ngo Thi Luong, also a worker at the Quyet Tien unit, said she had to send her only child to the farm's school because she and her husband couldn't afford to hire a baby-sitter with their very modest salary.

"At the beginning, my baby screamed herself hoarse every night when she was awakened at midnight to go to class. It was so heart-breaking for me to see but I had no other choice," Luong said.

While it is difficult for many parents to leave their children in such conditions, it is also not an easy job for the teachers.

Vo Thi Trang, a teacher at Quyet Tien unit, has been working here for two years but said she was still not used to hearing her alarm go off at one in the morning.

"Sometimes I have a hard time sleeping. It's like I just had a wink of sleep when the alarm rings," she said. "Even though I'm very tired, I still have to get up and go to class because I know the parents will be there and I can't keep them waiting for long.

"It is easier for older children but it's really hard work to deal with smaller ones because being awakened in the middle of the night makes them cry almost non-stop."

Trang said she recently got married and her husband was also a worker tapping rubber trees on the farm so she had a good understanding of the hardship the parents were going through which made her love the children more.

Tran Thi Hue, another Quyet Tien teacher, said she sometimes thought of quitting to find something more comfortable.

"But we really feel sorry for the children so we encourage each other to stay."

Her family lives 20km away from her classroom but the special requirements of her job keep her from visiting home often.

Despite the hard work, Trang and Hue only receive a fixed monthly salary of VND2.5 million each, paid by the rubber company.

Their wish now is simple: for the kindergarten to be turned into a public school so that they can be recognised as permanent staff in the public education system.

"It will help bring the teachers some benefits as regulated for public employees and their salary will, therefore, be increased periodically," headmaster Dung said.

"We have sent our request to higher authorities but have yet to receive a response." — VNS