Islanders learn housekeeping

Weekender
Trainer Albert Pih teaching participants how to make the beds correctly during the ‘room servicing’ session of the training.
HOSPITALITY

By KINGSTON NAMUN
MANUS is around 2,100 square kilometers in land area and amongst its vast open 220,00 square kilometer seas, lie many islands, some inhabited and others not.
While some of these islands are large and can sustain multiple villagers like Lou, Rambutso, Pak and Baluan, others like Nyapio are so small no one would think people lived on them.
Nyapio island, more popularly known as Johnston Island, today, has 14 households and a population of just under 50 or so people who call this remote island their home. The island, on the south coast of Manus is part of Ward 6 of the Pobum local level government area.
Nyapio is around a kilometer long, around 300 meters wide and has sparse vegetation. These Titan language speaking people do not have a trade store, a school or an aid post on the island.
Their livelihood and major source of income is fishing. They fish from the sea and then sell their catch to villages along mainland Manus or to Lorengau for cash or exchange fish with the Lou islanders for fresh vegetables.
Not much grows on the island
On the island, they have coconuts, banana, taro and very few sago trees but nothing much grows here as the island is just three to four metes above sea level. Even water is scarce on this island and when the seasonal trade winds become harsh, food from the sea becomes even harder to find making hunger an issue at times.
The Nyapio sail on outrigger canoes to mainland Manus or the surrounding islands of M’buke, Lou or Baluan or sail to the nearest health service provider at Patu Health Centre on the mainland of Manus some two to four hours away.
One person I talked to explained that once, he had to take two children who were very sick most probably with malaria, with their mothers, and sail on his outrigger canoe all the way to Lorengau town. They began the journey in the middle of the night using the stars as their guide.
All along the journey, the mothers kept keeping a cold press on the children’s bodies just to keep their fever at bay for that three-hour journey on the high open seas. They arrived in Lorengau, just as daylight broke out.
While their story seems sad and difficult, it is what makes them resilient in the face of constant hardship and continued difficulties.
I usually write on my blog lopoki.com about community initiatives in Manus so I was pleasantly surprised when I was invited by the community in September to come see a small project they had started early this year.
You see, being resilient means that when everything seems to be going wrong or difficult, strong people emerge and stand up to provide solutions to the problems faced by their communities. The Nyapio people are resilient. They sat down and thought long and hard about how they could solve some of their community problems. They knew that the island would, in its simplest and mundane form, still provide the solution.
They decided to build a community-based resort of sorts that would provide a means of an income to support their livelihood on the island.
They had this understanding that through such an enterprise, much more would come and eventually a school or an aid post would become viable on their little island.
In that way, they wouldn’t have to send their kids away to the mainland of Manus for months on end to gain basic education or sail the high open seas just to have access to life saving medication.
The young elite of the village, who live in Port Moresby, supported this move and began by chipping in cash and kind.
Around 10 young men on the island eventually built two bungalows – one completed – using traditional materials like wood, sago leaves, bamboo thatched walls, etc., while the other, still to complete, has iron roofing. They are also building a septic toilet and shower room too. They sourced the raw materials from mainland Manus and shipped the rest of the materials from Lorengau.
A community resort
In November, through my small not-for-profit non-governmental organisation called Lopoki Inc, I organised a three-day basic housekeeping training for 10 of the locals. The community resort fully funded the three-day training on their island.

A child walking through the small ‘main street’ of the village which is only about 100 meters long.

Lopoki worked in partnership with the Manus Provincial Government’s Commerce Division and the Manus Training Centre to carry out the training. The Division of Commerce through their business development officer Pius Kuweh and Manus Training Centre’s Tourism and Hospitality instructor Albert Pih were both at the island to conduct the sessions.
Pih focused his training on three main areas of housekeeping (storeroom and stock control), accommodation and guest laundry, and room servicing.
The training provided basic housekeeping skills to the participants and increased their knowledge and capacity to manage guests.
I can already see that the community has taken the initiative to build two semi-permanent buildings housing four rooms for around eight guests when they visit the community based resort.
The Nyapio islanders have proven that they want to bring change to their community and so they worked with Lopoki Inc. to ensure this training occurred.
The very fact that they do not have an aid post or even an elementary school speaks volumes about the suffering that they have had to go through all these years. It is inspiring to see the islanders stand on their own two feet and build something that will sustain them as a community.
If you want to visit Nyapio Island Getaway Resort, please visit the website: https://nyapioislandgetawayresort.com for more information.
You won’t regret your decision to visit. If you do visit, please commit yourself to give something back to the island with a programme or session while you are there through your passion, education and work so that greater cultural learning is mutual.

  • Kingston Namun is founder of Lopoki Inc, a not-for-profit NGO based in Manus.