Our first tour completed
Trip Start
Feb 06, 2008
1
10
22
Trip End
Ongoing
Bogia,
Papua New Guinea
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Our home base at Holy Spirit School is next to the North Coast Road which is the transport link between the provincial capital Madang 220km away and our small place. The tarmac ends here and after that it's a dirt road to the Ramu river. The school has boarders, and is in a semicircular area of flat land between the sea and the first inland hills. The school land takes all the land to the sea, and includes the first hills and some of the road which goes along the road as well. There are two big buildings for the boy boarders, one for the girls, and a big steel barn which is used as a canteen space with lots of tables. Classroom blocks are in twos with store rooms and offices between
Driving on Manus
. This is standard for PNG. It all shows up well on geo earth and you can even see our house! The school people have been very friendly and helpful, and we are lucky to end up in such a supportive place. The facilities are not exactly perfect, but we are not camping and on hot days we have hot water as the sun heats the water pipes which are routed over the metal roof...luxury! The headteacher John Malengen, and his wife Mildred, live in the house next to us and have been very kind in many ways so when we come back after jaunting around there is that nice feeling of coming back to friends.We did our study of this school first, and Pam did a first inset as well which went very well indeed. We then went to the next school down the road which is about 90km away at a place called Malala. The school is a secondary with a good reputation. It is run by a pair of sisters who are quite amazing people. Sister Jane and Sister Edith. Sister Edith is Austrian and has been in the school 12 years. She looks after the girls boarding and is the school bursar. Very chatty and looking forward to retirement and 'knitting socks' she says. Sister Jane is American and she isn't retiring. She started the school when the area was deep bush in 1961 and she definitely has a strong sense of ownership and control. The school has huge lands, with 700 boarders and bakery, vehicle maintenance shed, trade store, bookbinding room, coffin making business, furniture making factory... The staff houses form a village on their own and the school owns three tractors, four lorries and two minibuses. It is an amazing place which is a town in its own right really. Sadly the standard of teaching which we saw was very low, and the staff development was also very low standard.
Our third school is on an island called Karkar, which is a 40 minute speedboat ride from the mainland. To get to the boat we had about 1 hour drive from Madang, having gone to Madang two days before in the school 4x4. Then we had to find the boatman (all pre-arranged this) and then pay him enough money to get petrol for the trip. The crossing was superb, a flat calm and beautiful views of the coastline and the island. Karkar is a volcanic island which lost part of its summit in a major eruption in the 1970s. It has a small conelet inside the crater now, but otherwise is peaceful. All the beaches are black sand, and there are still areas of rocky lava stream clearly tracking from the high ground to the sea. We were escorted from the boat to the guest house which is on a coconut plantation and was used as the plantation owners home until there was a family move along the coast. Now it provides eccentric casual visitors accommodation (there aren't many). There are 2 bedrooms a kitchen and an enormous living area which has a dance floor and disco lights. The previous owners were obviously very party. The house also comes with Samuel and Nicola who look after you and cook if you want (we didn't) and two security guards who light a fire on the edge of the lawn by the beach and watch over the place in the night.
The school was also boarding, and once again we were very well looked after by a very impressive head and deputy. We went to school each day in a lorry loaded with children who are day students, and the whole visit was fun. AND the school cook makes the biggest doughnuts I have ever seen! They are like cannonballs! People, when not full of doughnut, were keen to talk, and as we already knew that the school had not undertaken the reform curriculum most of the research was on quality of organisation and teaching, and the overall condition of the school and the site. It was a completely different scale to Malala school, which has received lots of help from American catholic Church donations. Karkar is a state school and is not as fortunate financially but it does get a lot of support from the local MP who is an Australian business man who has taken PNG citizenship. He seems determined to raise the standard of the school provision on 'his' island and has his own people at his school every day. The 'bigpela' principle is very important in all aspects of PNG life.
After all this excitement we returned to Madang to stay in the 'Country Women's Association ', hostel which is right in the middle of town. Very different from our green and peaceful up-country house. They do however have running hot water at the normal times of the day. We then sat down with the rest of the team to collate observations and write up a report which is to guide any work we do in the next months. The talking with the others was good, as was the eating, and dare I say it drinking, and our conclusions when sober matched those from a similar exercise in school research (not imbibing) undertaken by 3 other volunteers in Simbu, which is a highland province south of here.
Quite what happens next we do not know. We will spend time training here at Bogia and then possibly on Karkar for two weeks as both those schools were very responsive and keen. You get a prize for noticing the school which did not want to change its ways. Then we will be in Madang again to prepare the first workshop for the Heads and deputies. Sadly two of the team have returned hurriedly to UK as the lady, Sue, learned that her father was ill and she and her husband, Ian were booked onto the first flight out. They hope to be back in 2 weeks.
So we are having a breathing space and a relax. We hope that all is well and that messages are getting through. Many thanks for letters, emails and parcels which are lovely to receive and we really enjoy hearing all the news of family and friends.
