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.

Women’s Christmas fellowship lunch

Before Christmas, we joined the local women’s fellowship for a lunch time gathering. In the picture below, you can see everyone sitting at the beach, and the table with

The ladies had organised a ‘Secret Santa’ or ‘Kris Kringle’ type thing a few weeks earlier, and today was the day that they gave their gift to the person whose name they had drawn previously. We hadn’t been involved in this (next time maybe!), but it was fun seeing the ladies’ joy as they gave and received gifts. The smiles in these pictures say it all:

No metho in town! What will we do?

When you’re living in a village that doesn’t have electricity, you need some alternative lighting for the evenings, so Rebekah and I bought a Coleman lantern. The conventional way of lighting these lanterns is to fill the dish with methylated spirits and light it to heat up the metal rod before the whole lantern lights up.

When we were first going out to the village, we searched all over town for methylated spirits, going from one place to another following people’s suggestions, but to no avail – we couldn’t find any anywhere. So we went off to the village with our Coleman lantern and no way of lighting it – or so we thought. Local people also own Coleman lanterns and they have a way of lighting them, so they taught it to us (Rebekah really, it’s her job to look after the lantern).

What we have to do is: first remove the lid and glass part, then soak some cotton wool in kerosene (which is the fuel in the bottom of the lantern) and put it in the dish, light the cotton wool, replace the glass part and the lid and proceed as you usually would to light it.

Here are some pictures of the process…

Cotton wool burning and heating the rod:

Still heating the rod, with the glass part and lid replaced:

Finally, here is our evening hang-out spot all light up:

Woven baskets

Woven baskets are useful for a lot of things in the village. They can be used as a rubbish bin for food scraps, or they can be used for transporting food from one place to another. They are inexpensive and don’t damage the environment when they are thrown away.

One day Rebekah and I learnt how to weave a basket. It was pretty easy to do, although I would still need a bit of supervision and guidance if I were to make one again.

This is Rebekah and Joyce working on a basket:

This is the basket that I made:

Some baskets drying in the sun. The one I made is at the far right.

Gas stove = easy cooking

When we returned to the village on 29 October, we had our gas stove with us because it was in the crate that we shipped to Buka and unpacked during our three night visit to Buka. We have cooked using it every night since we returned to the village and I am really enjoying it.

Here’s a photo of me on the first night we used it:

What do we cook? Well we bought a lot of tinned products in Buka and took them to the village and we use them mostly as well as whatever fresh vegies we can buy at the market or have been given to us. Some of the meals we have been cooking are: vegetarian korma curry, tuna spaghetti bolognaise and vegetarian creamy pesto pasta. The remaining meals don’t have very interesting names.

Our friendly village dogs

We have two dogs that live in our village and both are very friendly and come running up to us for pats. I’m pleased that they are not afraid of people like many other village dogs are.

Meet Sasaki. He is my favourite of the two. He is really cute and makes some interesting noises sometimes when you pat him. Sometimes he’s a bit naughty and jumps up on us for pats.

This is Bill. He is the older dog and is the dominant one. If he sees me patting Sasaki, he gets jealous and runs up to me to get patted too. Sometimes there is a bit of growling and the occasional fight between Bill and Sasaki.

Language learning - showing photos

The following are some photos of me showing my photos to the local people. I practice speaking in Teop by showing my photos to people and talking about them in Teop. People also ask us questions about our photos which gives us good exposure to the language and also the opportunity to talk some more.

This is me showing my photos at the beach in our village. We’re all laughing about something.

A close-up of me having a good laugh at something when showing my photos.