Governesses, tutoring, babysitting — not typical phenomena for Norway. But I had the chance to be a governess about 5 years ago. I was still studying on Norwegian courses then. I went to town by bus from my village.

Once a classmate told me that a Russian woman who works all day in a firm needed a Russian-speaking governess for her 6-year-old boy. He goes to the first class, was born in Norway, speaks Russian, but she worries that he may forget Russian, and in order that this should not happen he needs a Russian-speaking governess. I just happened to be the one who is “a tailor, and a reaper, and a player on the pipe.”

On a day off we met at their home over a cup of coffee. A wonderful family of three people. Papa a Norwegian, mama from Russia, the boy immediately announced to me that I may speak Russian with him! “How wonderful!” I thought. And I also tried to characterise myself from the good side: I know English, I have two higher humanitarian educations, I play the piano, and of course I have experience of working with children.

To which the Russian mama culturally replied that I need not already be proud of my two higher educations, in Norway our diplomas “don’t work,” but for her boy “you suit, so you can also do English with him,” and she named me a price…… “well, a very funny price!” (that is how I write now; at that time I very much liked kontant (cash), as they say in Norway, and now some unconscious Norwegians are also “fighting” against the complete withdrawal of cash notes, which may lead, as I understand, to complete, total control of money in the country).

I “in my joy” hurried to tell my Norwegian husband about my material significance. He, with Nordic imperturbability, asked: “That… per hour?” to which I answered: “No, per day, or rather for half a working day.”

And now it is time to “announce the whole list” of duties I was supposed to perform. The first thing I had to do was by one o’clock, and sometimes by 12.30 (this depended on the timetable in the first class) pick the child up from school. Here my first difficulty arose: by one o’clock I had nothing to travel to town in, and still less specifically to the school, and I started my working activity in January, after the Christmas holidays! I had to “connect” my husband with the car; luckily he was working at home then and could “interrupt himself” to drive me. As luck would have it, snow had also fallen “up to the knees”…

The boy’s mama put me in the picture about what the first class is in a Norwegian school. In first place in the first class is not study, but continuous positive emotions from the teacher. That is a smile, hugs, no marks, songs in a little circle, every day 45 minutes of PE in the fresh air, collective eating of fruit in class.

And just in that period the Norwegian government began insistently recommending leaving children at school in after-school groups (but not free of charge). And I think that the Russian mama, being an economist, calculated that it was not at all bad to hire a governess, so that her little son would not relax too much and would be “not like all Norwegian children,” but better. In short… Best of the best!

to be continued….