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Peer pressures can lead to Pepa Nating

Popular Madang singer Gedix Atege sings a catchy sing-along, Pepa Nating, the title track to one of his recent albums.
Pepa Nating is a story of the difficulties many young people face in finding a job despite their various educational qualifications these days.
Translated, Pepa Nating, speaks of the worthlessness of the certificates – just a paper with no real value.
Pepa Nating is about a wayward student who traded the advice of parents for peer pressure and other influences to dictate his or her student life, eventually ending up with a final certificate that had poor grades.
Thus the certificate becomes a Pepa Nating.
Pepa Nating was a theme and background music to a drama staged by performers from Madang’s Tourism and Cultural Bureau, Haus Tumbuna at a ceremony in Madang town last Friday.
Atege’s wantoks, the Junior Wali Hits, played Pepa Nating, and set the scene for the drama staged at the close of the inaugural Madang Provincial Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Trade Fair.
The drama relived a typical setting of an educational institution where amidst the majority of the studious and well-meaning students, there are some who are wayward and allow peer pressure and other influences dictate their education and end up with poor grades or discontinue studies.
In the story of the drama, a fictional school girl “Betty” succumbs to the sweet talk of a vagrant boyfriend at the expense of her education.
Betty skips classes or goes late for class regularly and does other silly things because of the sweet-heart of her unemployed boyfriend who lies to her that he is an engineer at the rich Porgera gold mine in Enga province.
The play depicts the parents of Betty as committed to her well-being and education and have always been among the first to pay her school fees in full each registration day.
But Betty lets all that parental love and commitment go to waste for
a street roamer who
had conned her and eventually ends up getting pregnant with graduation around the corner.
On graduation day, Betty’s peers and their parents and guardians are proudly assembled for the special occasion, while she looks dejected under the weight of her pregnancy and anger from her upset parents.
As her class lines up to receive their certificates from the guest of honour at the graduation podium, many eyes are on Betty because she walks up pregnant since word had been circulating in the community about her extra-curricular life.
After Betty steps out of the podium with her certificate, she is greeted by a verbal barrage from her parents, who know from monitoring her school work that the yellow envelope in her hand contains a Pepa Nating – a certificate with poor academic grades not likely to get her anywhere.
Betty has nothing to make up for the situation she has created but stare at the ground with her hands over her head and tears roll at will as the verbal barrage continues.
The story of the fictional Betty dramatised by Haus Tumbuna is repeated every graduation year around the country.
With the graduation season beckoning, no doubt, there will be many students passing out of the various levels of our educational system with Pepa Nating.
Some youngsters, like those depicted by the fictional Betty, will be victims of their own poor decisions.
Others may be victims of circumstances beyond their making. They may be those who fall prey to political gimmicks like “free education” as in certain parts of the country.
They may also be those who come from broken homes and poor backgrounds and end up performing poorly in their education despite the best efforts.
And then there are those graduating students who simply cannot get a chance for further education or a job because spaces are limited and only the best graduates tend to get in.
The lack of space for further education and jobs though is the concern of government and TVET is being promoted by the Department of Education to ensure students pass out of various stages of the education process starting from Grade 8 with certain skills that they can use to be productive citizens.
But the scene depicted by the drama as recounted above is one that every well-meaning parent dreads in these days of all sorts of influences confronting their children.