Madang, Papua New Guinea
Saturday, October 11, 2008
PNG 9........ So who is going to be there next term?Week 1 in October and we have just returned from Karkar. Lots of lesson observations, feedback time, talks on assessment with Heads of Department and trying to co-ordinate the development of a school plan which is realistic. We did the same thing but different at Bogia as well. We can also report that the boat ride out to Karkar was superb and coming back was side to side, up and down and wet...and thats in the 60ft boat not the little speed boat which we definitely would not have got across on at all. As you may see from photos if they end up in the right place Pam did have a lovely journey because she got the chance to cuddle a baby ! Some of the people on the boat know us now as we go back and forth, so there is conversation and baby hugging to share. There is a bit of a decadent admission however...while at Karkar this week we went out for dinner twice! Luxury as we got two invites, one with the Goodyears who run one plantation, and one with the Middletons who run another.....oh we are so spoiled at times I don't know how to describe it all AND we were so late stopping out at the Middletons that we had to stay in their guest room overnight and have tea and toast for breakfast before we went back to the school to pack and get on the boat
. What a life. It is a very odd time for the schools and the teachers at the moment. They are going hell for leather to do the Grade 10 and Grade 12 exams which are the 'selection ' times equivalent to our GCSE and A levels coupled with a sort of school certificate atmosphere as well. So a lot of the students know this is it and if they flunk they will be out of school.....so some of them don't even turn up at all. Then the time is now for Heads to look at their teachers and decide which ones they want to keep or not keep. So staff know there is a naming and listing going on, with Board meetings and pieces of paper going round, and they are in a mindset which says' I may not be here next term so why should I work at all this term' This insecurity of tenure affects the headteachers as well. They are on tenterhooks just like the others, and the whole business just redirects effort and energy away from the current term and the students. The atmosphere in the schools is strange, and it needs a lot of extra effort to get things working at all.Coupled with this is the VSO change as well. We seem to be losing lots of people who are going back home. In most cases these are expected ends of placement, but there have been several surprises including the Country Director who is to finish in December. We are also amalgamating with CUSO, which is the Canadian Volunteer Organisation, so there will be a gradual sharing of administrations, in country organisations, and international bits as well. The changeover of staff is actually quite unsettling, as you just about get to know who people are and what they do and what they're like, when they start to move on
. Of course it does mean the other change occurs, that of new people coming in. We have Donald the very tall and talkative Dubliner, MJ a Canadian lady who is full of life, Phil a science teacher from Cambridgeshire, Steven a VSO Office manager from Malawi, and Tobias from Uganda who is to work on the HIV AIDS programme. The office in
Madang is in an interesting state at present because the upstairs in being converted to make more meeting and office space so.......We have had a minor breakthrough with one school which has been holding out against the new curriculum. The school is run very autocratically (and managed very thoroughly) by a catholic sister called Sister Jane. She has always been opposed to changes as she is happy with the achievements of her school which has a reputation and takes the best students in the country. So although we visited to do our original survey we were not invited back, and all dates were turned down. Apparently there has been some movement from higher up to suggest that this needs to change, and there are also staff at the school who understand what has to be done. So after phone calls and letters and meetings we are due back for a business meeting on Oct 20th to see if we can get some training schedule mapped out which will suit the lady and suit the needs of the school/students/staff. This will mean that in the long term,2009, we will have 3 secondary schools on our patch with some re-thinking required about the best way to deal with travelling to the three rather than the two
. All good fun and there may be some delayed decision making dependant on who the headteachers are at each school come Jan.Away from work we are feeling full of our own brilliance because contrary to the stories we had been told we managed to get our driving licences all in the space of 2 hours with a walk between two offices and a wait in a queue in a very narrow space. While we were waiting entertainment was provided by one of the lady office staff who had to deliver applications to another office. This meant she had to go through the space occupied by the queue. And she was a very well endowed lady in the upper part of her torso. As, with the exception of Pam, all those in the queue were men, the imminent collision of bodies which this situation presented was just too much for the PNG males who attempted to turn themselves into wallpaper rather than achieve any contacts which may have been misinterpreted. I did get the impression that some did not try as hard as others to get out of the way, and it was notable that the same lady worker found that she had to make several journeys of the same kind during our hour wait. And she was smiling I thought.As a final indicator of the mad social whirl we are engaged in, we had to walk around the corner to a house we had not been to before, to attend a birthday party/goodbye party for two volunteers. When we got to the houses, there were two, a man came out and introduced himself as Sam, asked us what we were doing ,and when we mentioned party and barbecue he shepherded us into the house and round to the garden where there was a barbecue.......everything was very friendly and chatty but it transpired we were in the wrong party and we had to present our apologies and troupe next door . The strange thing was that the host seemed quite prepared to include us in his party and was quite sad that we had to go next door. You just got the impression that a party is a party and anyone is welcome. On a general note Pam thinks that she has cracked putting photos on our travelpod thing, in which case we hope that you can get a visual flavour of the people and the place. Our regards to all and we will keep in touch.
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