Gatherings of the Clans

We have now reached the second stage of our placement,. After completing  the review of schools and writing the report which was sent to all and sundry we went back to our schools. The second part is the presentation of workshops and the revisiting of schools. The preparation of the workshop sessions was a really enjoyable time, because given the range of personalities in the team of five we got on very well, sharing ideas and learning a lot from what each person had seen in the schools so far. The workshop itself went very well, with good participation levels, coverage of subjects, and whole hearted involvement of all the heads and deputies who came from our 8 secondary schools. Lots more for us to learn and improve on of course but there is no complacency. We are able to be critical and see what needs to change.

The Robinson Crusoe Look

The workshop was held in a hostel called the Country Women Association. It was chosen because it has a nice large room with table and chairs, two power points, and a kitchen hatch for sandwiches at lunchtime. Three of the walls are glass louvres which give plenty of draughts to ease the heat, there is a ceiling fan, and the area outside is green, overlooking the water of the inlet near the Madang Resort Hotel at Kalibobo. The heads and deputies stayed at a hotel called the Madang Lodge which meant they had to be bussed down to the hall in the morning, but they didn't mind this and they were all ready to go 30 minutes before the transport arrived. Sessions started at 9.30 and finished at 4.00, with a snack for lunch of double decker sandwiches, which were huge! Our accommodation was in the same hotel, in the budget rooms which are about 3m square, two beds and a fan(very important, and two walls are glass louvered. The showers etc are down the path in a shared block.

It all worked out well, and we will be staying there for a few days extra because the flight we had booked to take us out to the islands was cancelled at short notice and we have to wait two days for another flight down to Port Moresby which will then connect to our island flight. We will spend those days stretching out and resting after the hard work  of the workshop, with some swimming because the hotel has a small but nice pool right next to the sea so the view is wonderful.. .. all mountains and palm trees and sea with some amazing storm clouds which build up far out in the east and roll across the horizon. We are currently in the beginning of the dry season, which means it rains a little bit less than at other times of the year and gets a bit hotter! Sue  and Ian, who are also on our team, are off to Cairns in Oz for a week bholiday for their rest and recuperation, and Nigel,the final team member, is off to Karkar Island for a volcano climb and island circumnavigation walk. As Karkar School is one of our schools this is something we hope to do at a later date as well. Our week off (a bit shorter than we hoped because of the cancelled plane, will be on an island called Manus, where another volunteer called Rachel is working as a Physio in the hospital. We are basically going to stop work and be lazy for a short time.

After we get back on 6th July we are all on a Monitoring and Evaluation Conference, which is a way of gluing all the education programme bits together and ensuring that everyone knows what everyone else is doing, and that we are all still on track(a bit) Ian Draper, the consultant who set up our programme is due out then so there will be a talk time with him as well, and ther is also a gathering of PNG education big wigs to see if there are any other lines of development which can be taken on board. The exciting bit for us(the MandE sounds really, really, really I n t e r e s t I n g .......) is that the conference is being held inland up a mountain in the next province called Simbu (the Highlands) and as we have been locked to the coastal strip for all our comings and goings this is a real adventure which will involve a 7-8 hour trip in a PMV (public motor vehicle) to get to the venueat a place called Goroka. The idea is that the last conference all the Simbu lot had to come down and travel, so it is our turn! Great! After that we have a tight schedule of return visits to our schools for INSET and subject planning and development , then end of July and August we put on two more workshops which will compliment the work done in schools and fit in with the requests of the school staff.

Other than work...dolphins sighted again off the coast, flying fish and jumping fish...seriously high jumping. Kingfishers and kites aplenty, mad early morning cockerel is now a happy daddy with mummy and two chicks so he has calmed down and looks very sedate and domesticated(modern fatherhood)...noise level replaced by absolutely manic dog behavior as two of the bitches cam on heat and the squabbles went on day and night with all the school dogs joining in, loosing weight for love, limping for love, howling into the night for love, while the two bitches wagged and smiled and wandered around pretending to be innocent with smug grins on their faces. Perhaps the most disturbing part of all this was when the fights broke out in the middle of the night on our verandah or under the house. In fact underneath the bedroom. This can be very traumatic for the dogs and the humans, and it is very difficult for the humans to be sympathetic. Anyway satisfaction and fatigue eventually took their toll and we now wait for the results of all this labour!.

Journeys up and down the north road have become more difficult with the effects of the rains breaking up the surface..there are now some mega potholes although to be fair they do not match the total road breakdown of Zambia so we are very blasé about it all..... School has had some problems which have made the life of staff and students a bit difficult and more than interesting. The generator started to collapse some time ago so we had restricted power and then no power. This meant finally no  water, aided by the Murphys law syndrome of no rain in Bogia for 3 weeks while they had torrential rain and floods down the road 150km. This all put pressure on boarders behaviour and running the school. The Grade 9 were all sent home because of the water shortage and the rest of us were on buckets from the rain water tanks with no pumped water. Grade 10 stayed because they had exams but they were washing in the sea(oh so hard isn't it) Lots of discipline problems for the Discipline committee and the Board to deal with, some of which is still not resolved BUT we now have a new generator now so the lights are back on for 3 hours in the evening, and there is power for 4 hours each morning so we have pumped water as well.

Sadly for the head he now has the major headache of the increases in price of diesel which have begun to really stretch the very weak school budget....it even started to rain as well! Term 3 starts on 7th July with INSET, and the kids arrive 9th July so they all hope for a new start and resolution of all these problems in behaviour...there will be suspensions and exclusions, but this is as complicated process as the UK with major cultural demands on educators to produce the successful student at times when a few of the students don't want to accept responsibility for their behaviours and the standard of their work.(somethings never change in the human condition)...