It’s a bird

By ELLEN TIAMU
BRAZILIAN Claudio da Silva is a social education Masters student at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. He has just finished working on a book project with school children at Madina on the east coast of New Ireland. He worked in collaboration with linguist Professor Craig Volker. The interdisciplinary project integrates traditional knowledge into the regular school curriculum.
Claudio spent almost three months, up until December last year, working with grade six and seven school children at Madina Primary School to find out how much they knew about their local culture, customs and traditions.
The good news is that the book, titled, A Maani Birds and Nalik Culture, is ready to be printed.
“Well, I am really happy. Having this book ready means that all the planning for this project ran well.
Not only the development of the book itself but also the interactions with the community, the workshops with the students and my personal learning and integration into Nalik culture,” Claudio said.
The only holdup now is sourcing funding for the printing of the book. Claudio and Craig spoke with Kavieng MP Ben Micah in Kavieng last November to try to get some help. Micah was very interested in helping publish the book.
Claudio said they had anticipated that the books be distributed by this time and distributed free to all schools in the Tikana area with the idea being that teachers in those schools could use some of the ideas to build other projects in their own schools.
“…printing would be expensive and impossible for us doing by ourselves. But Madina Primary School will receive some books printed with our own resources,” he said.
In fact, Professor Volker is currently at Madina with some samples of the book and showing it to the school
students and the community.
Working on the book was not easy, especially when working with children.
Claudio and Professor Volker had to spend a bit more time to edit the children’s texts because Claudio needed to validate the information with the community before he left New Ireland to return to Portugal.
“Because the topic of this book and of this project contained elements referring to the culture of an entire ethnic group, we thought it was also important to give the final text to several members of the community so that they could validate the vocabulary and content. Eight members of the Nalik community, including maimais (clan chiefs) and teachers were asked to read and correct the texts. Based on their recommendations, some Nalik words were changed and some additional explanations were included.”
Claudio, also a biologist, enjoyed working with the children at Madina.
That’s not surprising as he has worked as an educator, in schools, public and private spaces besides NGOs for a long time.
“Despite some language problems because I do not speak much Tok Pisin, I think that the communication among us was fine and I personally learned a lot from them.
And I can tell that they learned with me as well because we were building something together and this is, in my opinion the real education process.”
He was impressed at how there were differences between knowledge about local culture among students.
Some knew a lot about the Nalik traditions, about their clans, about traditional events, etc. Others knew almost nothing about their clans, or had information that was not correct.
Something interesting he found was with the animals that symbolize the clans – 7 birds and a snake. When I asked the students for the names of these animals in Nalik, many delivered to me in English and or Tok Pisin. Few knew the nomenclature in tokples.
“Some students were also unsure of the clan that they were part of, and knowing some aspects about the local culture I perceive this as something very serious, since the rules of marriage depend on the clans.
Claudio found the people friendly and outgoing.
“Collecting the stories or making this project real was only possible because Nalik people are really amazing people. I don’t know much about Papua New Guinea but the people I found in New Ireland are among the nicest and friendly I ever met. I spend wonderful 3 months talking with people and being taught about their culture and also teaching something about my culture.”