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.

Back to school!

One day we visited the elementary school at Kekesu to see what happens there, as elementary school, which is the first three years of school, is taught in the local language. We spent some time at each of the three classes watching. These are some photos from that visit.

Elementary prep (E-Prep) students writing in their books:

E-Prep classroom wall:

E-1 students doing an exercise in their books:

E-2 students doing some work:

Food chain poster in the E-2 classroom. It shows that crocodiles eat people, people eat cats, cats eat rats, and rats eat sweet potato (kaukau).

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.