Special guest at Kekesu school graduation

I had just sat down and was ready to watch the procession of students and special guests at the start of the Kekesu Primary School end-of-year celebrations (in December) when a Teop chief came over and asked me to be a special guest. I felt a bit uncomfortable with the idea, but I agreed, because I also felt uncomfortable with declining.

So I walked over to the other special guests and took all my cues from them. The students formed a guard of honour for the graduating Grade 8 students and special guests to walk through before going up on the stage.

Walking behind the Grade 8 students:

There were lots of speeches and also some songs that the students presented:

Academic awards were presented to students from each year level, with students receiving a gift presented by one of the special guests. I was surprised when with no prior warning, it was announced that I would be presenting the gifts to the E-Prep students! It was rather funny and a bit embarrassing, because I don’t see myself as being important enough to qualify for presenting awards!

I didn’t get any photos of myself handing out awards, but here’s a photo of one of the presentations. Just imagine me there instead!

After all the formal presentations were over, everyone had lunch, and again I had it up on the stage with the special guests and enjoyed nice food. After that I was able to return to my ‘comfort zone’ of my village aunties, sisters and nieces and watch some of the dances that various groups of people performed. It was a long day, and we got back to the village just before dark.

UC synod and food

The United Church in Bougainville held its Synod meeting at Kekesu which is in the Teop area. The UC congregations in the Teop Circuit had a big job of bringing the facilities at Kekesu up to a better standard. The church building got a new coat of paint, and the eating hall was transformed.

This is the inside of the church building, painted in light blue, which is the official colour of the Teop Circuit. It’s also beautifully decorated with brightly coloured cloths draped over the walls. There were flowers too, but you can’t see them in this photo.

This is the eating hall. It probably doesn’t look very impressive to you, but it is very different from what it used to look like. It was totally open at this front end, no wooden half-wall and no door. There are fly screens all around the walls now too.

The communities in the Teop Circuit were rostered to provide food for the people attending the Synod and they provided the best that they could. The day that we visited, there was pork and chicken at our table, among other things. The food was also very well presented with flowers and leaves decorating it. I haven’t been to any other even in the Teop area where the food was as fancy as this.

These two photos are of some of the food that our village prepared for the evening meal that they were scheduled to cook.

Big fish:

Big fish again and other decorated fish:

End of year school graduation ceremony

At the end of the 2010 school year, the local schools have a special graduation ceremony where students are awarded academic achievement certificates, and the year 8 students graduate from the school and if they got high enough marks, they will be able to go on to high school (in PNG, Grade 8 is the last year of primary school).

We went to the ceremony at the school at Kekesu mission station, which is about a 40 minute walk from our village as most of the kids in our village go to that school. We had a long wait for the rain to stop before any proceedings could get started.

There was a bit of a parade where the younger students made two lines and the graduating year 8 students walked between them and continued on to their seats. You can see the grade 8 students who are wearing blue in this picture.

The children had to sit under these shelters for a few hours while all the certificates were given out and several speeches were made.

These are the parents and relatives of the students, watching the proceedings.

After all the certificates were given out, it was time for people to eat lunch with their families. Rebekah and I hadn’t brought anything, but our village aunts and our village Mum looked after us and we ended up with two plates of food each! (We are not going to lose weight in the village!)

After lunch, there was time for people to perform items. There was one drama performance, and several dances to Western music. Here’s a group of children performing a dance.