My wonderful year in Madang

Weekender

By MEGAN FIU RA’VU
PEOPLE have said that Madang is possibly the most beautiful town in the nation but that was not the impression I had when I first arrived in Madang.
I was afraid and felt lost as a first timer there after arriving very late on a particular day early in the year – so late that you could not admire the beauty of the place and doing that with people you knew.
You have to understand that I was from the south, this was up in the north where things and people are generally not the same as where I come from – more than 700km away.

First day in Madang
I was a Papuan girl who spent all her life in the southern part of the country speaking English and bits of the local dialects of my parents and now entering a world up north where Tok Pisin was spoken everywhere.
I was excited about leaving home but I was also a bit nervous as to how I would settle in a town so far from my hometown of Alotau in Milne Bay – and study for nine months of the school year.
As a first-year Communication Arts student about to begin her year of studies at the Divine Word University, I arrived late at the airport on January 31. I had no idea what to do, the cell phone network was down and it was late.
I didn’t have any contacts of relatives living in Madang, but thank God I travelled with a former class boy who was to attend Madang Technical School.
We also met two other students who arrived on the same flight. Both were to study at the Madang Teachers College.
I stood there with the four boys, who were apparently calm. I was not – I was so worried because of the five of us I was the only one going to DWU and I was the only girl.
We did not know that to do because we were all first timers in Madang. The terminal was about to close soon and I had no idea how we were to get to our institutions.
I could not contact the school because the network was down and I was so scared. Then thankfully some staff at the terminal came to our rescue. They stopped a town bus and told us to hop on, the other two who were going to the teachers’ college had to wait for another bus. I got on the bus with my former class mate.
The bus we got on was so old and I was scared by the looks of the people because this was my first time in a place like this.
I sat very close to the former class boy and made sure he did all the talking. To make matters worse everyone was speaking Tok Pisin and to be honest I did not know how to speak it.
I could understand though but I could not speak it. I sat there looking out the window as we travelled to the campus but my mind was somewhere else.
The bus crew gave directions to us and I told my companion that if he was to get off first, he should not. He should remain with me and see that I alighted first and made sure I was safe before he went to his school.
He was a gentleman and he did as was requested.

DWU welcomes first students of 2018
The bus finally came to a halt at the Divine Word University gate.
The driver asked if I was okay to get off, but the look on my face made him feel sorry for me, so he mercifully drove into the campus, and they offloaded my things and left.
As I stood there looking around like a lost sheep, I could not help but admire the buildings in the campus – some were huge, bigger than any I have seen in Alotau. Others were unique in their design. The campus sparkled in a way in that late afternoon.
Then something caught my eye, something weird. When I looked up to the big rosewood tree near the chapel, I saw some black things hanging there.
It took me a few seconds to realise that they were flying foxes and there were about a thousand of them.
I soon came out of my wonder and pulled my heavy suitcase onto the walkway and trudged towards the girls’ dormitory. There was no-one around at first but a few minutes later someone saw me and approached me.
She gave me directions to the dean’s abode, so I left my suitcase and went to the dean’s residence.
The dean warmly welcomed me and told me I was the very first student to arrive on campus. I could not believe that.
I did not know whether to get mad at myself for coming early to Madang or to cry my eyes out.
But I knew that crying wasn’t right, so I just smiled and said it was okay.
One of the dorm mistresses took me on a tour around the campus and she was speaking Tok Pisin to me all that time. All I did was just smile or nod in response. I explained to her that I wasn’t a pidgin speaker but I could understand what she was saying.
After the tour she gave me a key to one of the rooms and I took my things inside. After I settled in I just had this strong urge to scream at myself for coming early to DWU. I also wanted to cry because I could not contact my family due to the network outage. I knew they were so worried about me.
However, it was not long before I fell asleep, possibly due to the long day of travelling – first from Alotau to Port Moresby and then to Madang – and the anxiety of entering a new environment to start a new part of my life as a university student.
Fortunately, at midnight the network finally came on. I rang my parents and started crying. I told them I was the only student on campus and I didn’t want to spend another night in the dorm.
My parents called some of their relatives who said they would come and pick me up in the morning.
I could not sleep that night. I wanted to talk to someone so I called a friend whom I travelled with from Milne Bay to Port Moresby. His flight was cancelled so he was in the capital.
I told him that I was the only student in school and I was angry at myself for travelling three days earlier. He did not talk properly to me because he was with a friend at a hotel which they were booked in.
I was mad. I had no-one to talk to and the only person I wanted to talk to didn’t seem like he wanted to talk. As I was crying myself to sleep, my phone rang.
It was him. We talked and I felt much better and soon fell asleep.

My stay in Madang
When I woke up in the morning, my stay in Madang finally began.
After a couple of days, my former schoolmates trickled in from Milne Bay and I finally had company. Naturally we stuck together because we did not know how to speak Tok Pisin. Everyone spoke the lingua franca except us.
After registration I got a room and settled in. Incidentally, I didn’t have a roommate for a week. On the next week she arrived, she was from Morobe, Milne Bay and New Ireland and she was a very good pidgin speaker. She always spoke Tok Pisin to me but I always responded in English.
In class I was the only student who was from Milne Bay. However, I soon got myself acquainted with others and after a month I knew all my course mates.
I started learning how to speak Tok Pisin and my friends helped me whenever I made a mistake. After two months of the effort I could not believe I was already speaking Tok Pisin – as if I was born speaking it.
I met a lot of nice people from all over the country at DWU. However, I have three best friends – Lisa-Faye Kenny, my roommate who is from Morobe, Gladys Kila from Rigo in Central and Augusta Ariku from Bougainville. I also met and befriended others from the Highlands, New Guinea Islands and the Southern Region.
Besides learning to speak Tok Pisin, I learnt a lot during my stay in Madang.
I go around town once in a while and whenever my friend Paul comes to Madang from Lae.
On weekends or semester breaks I go with my friends to town, often to the Kalibobo Lighthouse (formally known as the Coastwatchers Memorial Lighthouse), and to the Machine Gun Beach to swim.
During my stay in Madang, I experienced many new things and met many people from different provinces. I also learnt a lot from the different courses in my communication arts or journalism programme.
However, I think my greatest achievement for 2018 is learning to speak Tok Pisin and using it in a setting where everyone speaks it. It was an A1 language learning experience, learning the language and practise using it on a daily basis.
I guess language students, non-Tok Pisin speakers, would give an arm and a leg to enjoy the immersion experience and free tutorials I had in learning the language with the selfless help offered by my friends.

Final weeks in Madang
My stay in Madang has been good so far.
That life of having a lot of friends, hanging out together and having fun, apart from the drudgery of a student’s life of constantly studying, handing in assignments and sitting for tests and exams.
It is now seven months since I, a thin, fair-skinned, typical Papuan girl, stepped off a plane late in a dark afternoon and stepping into a silent university campus and crying myself to sleep in a ghostly dormitory in DWU as the first student to arrive on campus.
Looking back, I feel very privileged to have been to Madang, made many friends and enjoyed the whole year of schooling in DWU.
I love the place but I miss home and can’t wait to go there soon. I have a couple more weeks to go and I shall be heading home.
Being away for a whole year is a long time. I miss my family so much.
I will say goodbye to Madang soon to head home to Milne Bay.
I am sure next year is going to be a good year for me here in Madang, a wonderful place to be in.

  •  Megan Fiu Ra’vu is a journalism student at DWU.