Before moving to Hat Yai we spent some time checking and watching the AQI in the area. Air quality was a serious issue in Yangon. My husband had a cough for months. He saw a doctor and was prescribed some meds. Apparently it's very common in Yangon, affectionately known as the Burma 100 day cough. I was suffering from debilitating migraines. Just for reference, I had never had a migraine before moving to Yangon. When going to the school to pick up my son, we had to sit in an outdoor pick-up area. The area was somewhat U shaped and the parents in cars would sit in their idling cars and wait to pick up their child. The exhaust was so thick.
During the rainy season, the water washes some of the particles from the air and Yangon enjoys quite decent air quality, but sometime before Christmas, the air starts getting very bad. It was regularly over 150 and sometimes over 200. Over 200 the air looked yellow. No one cared. The lower primary play area was next to the exhaust area. No one even noticed. Almost no one wore a face mask. In fact, the school didn't even know! My husband brought it up to the Head Teacher and he seemed quite surprised by it. Of course they were not willing to do anything about it. They also didn't care.
Hat Yai enjoys some of the best air most of the time. However, there are some severe fires in Indonesia right now and it's really messing with our air quality. Here's the difference.....
The school here cares. They care about their students!!!! OMG!!!!
When the air quality began to get bad, my son was met with a face mask, provided from the school. The school has air purifiers in most of the classrooms, they still have a few more to get. They monitor the air quality and make adjustments as necessary. If the air quality is too bad, they will play inside the auditorium, with an......wait for it...... AIR PURIFIER!
It's amazing how much better it feels to just know the school cares about the health and well being of its students.
This attitude of caring about their students, it's great. Not just the teachers but the administration seems to care about the welfare of the students. It's amazing! This was not the feeling I got from the previous school. This is my first child and first experience with primary school, since I was a primary student over 40 years ago. Last year I spent a lot of time thinking "this isn't right, is it?" Now it feels better. Of course it's not perfect, but I don't feel like the staff is rolling their eyes at me when I talk to them about a concern. Maybe in the future I will write about the bad things that happened at the previous school, but not today.
Link to WaPo article about the fires... https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/09/23/skies-turn-red-across-parts-indonesia-crisis-fire-induced-haze-escalates/
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