Part 2: Journey through the islands The day after

Weekender

By THOMAS HUKAHU
My first trip to New Ireland was to New Hanover, or Lavongai as the locals know it. The largest island in the province is situated west of Kavieng. The destination was Konomatalik High School as I accompanied heads of schools, or those representing the heads, on a two-hour journey. This is Part 2.

IN the morning, after another wash at the waterhole, we dressed and headed to the classrooms and office where the programme for the day included the head teachers presenting their term reports to the provincial director and other officials. Their sports and in-service coordinators – who were also on this trip – had their own meetings where they organised events and a programme for the secondary and high schools in New Ireland.
I was informed that the island’s high school took in students mainly from the Lavongai area and a few from the mainland, for grades 9 and 10 only. There were four classes of grade 9s and the same number also for grade 10s.
After completing grade 10, the students who passed the standard would proceed to secondary schools on the mainland – like Utu, Mangai or Namatanai – to do grades 11 and 12. Most students at the Konomatalik were boarders.
At 8am, we were led down to the school mess where we were treated to buttered scones, scrambled eggs and tea or coffee.
The meetings then started and it was interesting to sit in and listen to the reports of the head teachers from the different schools, which highlighted the challenges they were facing as well as the innovative ways in which they were dealing with the issues – including the fact that the state funding was usually late to arrive.
Conversations, including the ones we had after the meetings all came to an end, reminded me once again of the teacher’s life in rural schools like Konomatalik. The teachers were committed to their work, regardless of the issues and challenges of managing the schools with very limited resources.
Lunch was served at 1.30pm
The time in the island school also brought back memories of my time as a high schooler in Port Moresby and visiting OLSH (Girls’) High School on Yule Island in Central in the 1980s. I was among a group of schoolboys from De La Salle High, in Bomana, who were selected for a weekend outing.
The trip took us out of the city and up the Hiritano Highway in the school truck before getting off the highway and following a smaller road up the coast, through miles of tall coconut trees, to Delena village.
There we got into a dinghy and travelled to Yule Island and were accommodated at the boys’ vocational school, which was situated a little to the north and beside the sea.
It was on the Sunday morning of the weekend that we visited the girls’ school on the hill to the south and I can still remember the breathtaking view from the high point to the sea below and towards the mainland to the east.
In the following year, my guardians had to move up north and I found myself enrolled in another island school – St Xavier’s High School, on Kairiru Island, in East Sepik – back in the late 1980s. That happened to be my father’s former school and some of the Marist brothers who taught us then had also taught the fathers of many of us back in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Lavongai trip reminded me of the days, when we as students, were cut off from our parents for at least 10 weeks and being hungry in the night because our regular daily diet of rice and tinned fish – and biscuits for breakfast – was not enough.
The time in Lavongai reminded me of the struggles of the boarding life, which many students these days do not experience because there are now secondary schools nearby.
The trip reminded me too of something I observed while I was teaching in East Sepik years ago. The students who struggle the most are those in island and river schools.
The life of formal learning on an island is tough, particularly if it is far from the mainland.
The cost of travelling by boat is too expensive for locals and most stuff, including resources that people can access in towns, are not readily available to students on the islands. The same can be said of students living in our river systems. And for many parents, keeping their children in school is a constant struggle because money is often hard to come by.
Sure, food is aplenty – sago, taro, yams and fish – but one needs K40 or so to catch a boat ride down to the district centre of Angoram and possibly another K40 to return to the village, something that they do not have, unless relatives working in towns or cities can chip in. Many make rafts and float down the Biwat and then along the mighty Sepik River to get to Angoram. It can be a dangerous journey and one not to be encouraged.

  • The writer is a regular contributor to The Weekender.