Remote school comes out to get Rotary’s gift of desks

THE 60 children of the Dantap Elementary School in Umi Atzera, Markham in Morobe, received 25 desks from the Huon Gulf Rotary Club of Lae last week.
The donation was arranged after a visit to the school last year by club representative Christina Bocksch. Teacher Bobbie Yawising said students had been using desks built by the villagers.
It is one of the four elementary schools in the remote part of Markham which feed the Nawantmaran Primary School, serving four villages near the Mami River. Yawising told The National that the river was the only means of transport available for school supplies and community services.
He said villagers who had completed their education and got jobs never returned to the village because of its remoteness.
“They never return because we walk long distances, cross many rivers and climb mountains to get to our villages,” he said.
“But this is how we have survived for many generations.”