Presentation of the bilum.

Day 7. Friday, May 30th, 2008. I returned to Talidig today with Lynn. The views along the North Coast Road are spectacular. We passed the Asian Tuna Factory and wharf, the school I visited with Peter on Tuesday, Jais Aben dive resort, and the Coconut Institute. Today, the rains came and we picked up some teachers from Rempi village along the way. Very similar to education meetings in Zambia, all the formalities of introductions, greetings, and thank yous were made during the opening remarks. The Provincial Officers said their bit and left-at least they made their appearance. The training initially had little interaction as the teachers sat and listened. Lynn encouraged participation during her presentation on outcome based education, but it was notably a task with which they had little experience. During the in-service, I interviewed teachers on their perceptions of children with disabilities and the education of students with additional learning needs. I learned that children with disabilities are not sent to school mainly because they will not ever be able to repay their school fees to their wontoks. In other words, they will not be able to get a job and pay back the money that their family spent on their schools fees. Although they are kept in the house and taken care of physically, they are not stimulated in any other way. They are not spoken to, they are not played with, and they are not taken out of the house. They are simply fed and cleaned. In regards to students who have difficulty learning, one teacher perceived the students as problem children who lack the obedience to learn. Sounded too familiar to the Ritalin craze in the States to me! The most prevalent difficulty noted by the teachers was hearing impairments related to ear infections. Many children come to school with serious ear infections as a result of either swimming in dirty water or not being taught how to clear their sinus pathways. This was consistent to the information provided by the staff of the Hearing Impairment Unit at the Creative Help Centre.

After the training, the teachers from Rempi presented me with a bilum. This is a traditional honor and I was very humbled by this generous gift. It takes about a month to make a bilum like the one I was given and they sell in the market for about 50 kina, a lot of money for a PNG woman. The pattern is of KarKar Island and it was woven by Gom, a sister of a teacher from Rempi. It was woven from vines found in the rainforest and dyed bright pink, blue and purple. As they placed the bilum around my neck I felt like a true PNG meri!