My Two Years at Manggai High School 1982-83.. A SSCEP School.
By Barbara Short
Looking back to those two years, 1982-83, that I spent as headmistress of Manggai United Church High School in New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea, I am flooded with many wonderful memories and I thank God for giving me that opportunity to experience life in a truly unique Christian community. That is not to say Manggai was without problems. Quite the reverse! There was always a problem or two, but at Manggai God was in charge and He was prayerfully consulted on every issue that arose.
David Odd had been the Headmaster for the previous eleven years and during that time, in 1978, Manggai had taken on the role of trialling a new curriculum approach, known as the Secondary Schools Community Extension Project (SSCEP). It was designed to help students set up projects in their own village if, for one reason or another, they were forced to return to their villages after their schooling. Much time was spent in planning the course and it began in 1980. Manggai was an ideal school in which to trial this new approach as, due to a shortage of funds over its developmental years, it had set up many self-reliance projects in such things as carpentry, mechanics, plantation crops, tropical fruits, vegetables, pigs, poultry and cattle. Some of these were used as the basis for the SSCEP projects.
The Education Department had a policy of streaming out less-academic Year 8 students at the end of Year 8, who were expected to return to the village. At Manggai, these students were allowed to stay on to complete years 9 and 10, hoping that the SSCEP course would equip them with more skills for village life. In actual fact, many of these students became more motivated and ended up winning places for further training. Those who were the “nominated stayers” at the end of Year 8 also showed a greater motivation and, after the School Certificate, in Year 10, most were offered further training in National High Schools (Years 11 and 12), and Agricultural, Technical, Teachers’, Secretarial and Nursing Colleges. Manggai was seen as one of the top schools in the country but on first sight it looked rather “poor and struggling”.
There were many factors at work in Manggai’s success. These included the long period of careful nurturing, especially of national staff, under David Odd, and a history of many dedicated, talented Christian teachers and support staff from overseas, all able to work well as a team and all united in their support for the SSCEP approach.
Manggai’s weekly routine included plenty of time for worship and fellowship. Regular devotions were held in the mess every morning before lessons. On Sunday there were services, morning and evening, a student run Scripture Union in the afternoons, and, once a month the staff all met for the evening meal and fellowship at a staff house. On Friday evenings students divided into small groups based on their village and took bowls of food from the mess to eat in their Papa/Mama lukaut’s house. Brothers, sisters and wantoks came together in a homely atmosphere. The teacher, the lukaut, had the responsibility of keeping an eye on these children and came to know them well enough to counsel them in times of trouble. There was also a prayer meeting later on Friday nights and the Monday night staff meeting was also a time of prayer. All of these activities created a special atmosphere at Manggai.
Producing good food was an important aspect of Manggai life. During my first six months at Manggai the school produced and ate five cows, six pigs, hundreds of eggs, as well as plenty of green vegetables, corn and pumpkins, pineapples, bananas and pawpaws and other exotic tropical fruits. Students did at least ten hours of manual labour per week, maintaining the buildings, grounds and farm. They also did all their own cooking and cleaning.
Because Manggai was a SSCEP school, trialling this new curriculum approach, as well as running ordinary academic lessons, we were also training the students in many skills that could be applied in the village situation. In order for students to try themselves out in the village situation we arranged periods known as Community Extension {CE}, where students lived in the villages.
The Year 10’s did two weeks of CE in the first part of Year 10 and three weeks in the latter part of the year. While being “students in the village” they also worked on projects in cocoa, coconuts, vegetables and pigs. Some of the projects were set up by village youth groups, others, by older relatives. We hoped that if students went back to the village after leaving school they would be able to set up similar projects themselves and so have a cash income and an improved standard of living.
CE was also a lesson in leadership for the leaders of each project and, in group co-operation and team work. As well as the main project they were involved in many other mini-projects such as, improving the village water supply and sanitation system, teaching the mothers about health and hygiene and better nutrition, and carrying out various interviews. I remember taking part in cooking demonstrations held after village church services. The village women enjoyed learning new and better ways of preparing food.
Students also took part in other forms of Christian outreach. They took part in church services, Sunday schools, Religious Instruction in schools and village fellowships and gave service to the village in a variety of ways. The students enjoyed the freedom and responsibility of working on their own and the teachers visited them about twice a week to observe their progress.
Because of all these activities, the Year 10 students were an amazing group, who, on their return to school, after CE, would study flat out at their various courses for the School Certificate. They really enjoyed CE and it matured and motivated them and their fine School Certificate results are evidence of this. It amazed me that students who had missed five weeks of normal classroom teaching were able to gain higher marks than students from other high schools in New Ireland Province who had an extra five weeks of face to face classroom teaching.
By 1984, of the 75 1982 leavers, six were known to have started projects which included- a tradestore, piggery, chickens, cocoa, copra and vegetables.
Another aspect of Manggai’s self-reliance was to be seen in its building program. During work parades students made large corronous bricks out of crushed local corronous (ancient coral) and cement, which were later used in the building of classrooms and dormitories. The woodwork department made most of the desks, stools and other furniture used throughout the classrooms and staff houses. These included beds of every kind, including double bunks, chairs and tables, food safes, cupboards and benches.
During 1982 carpenters came from a neighbouring village and finished the Home Science block, the walls of which were made from the corronous blocks. It had a rough hand –made look to it but was weather proof and very comfortable to use.
When I arrived, Trevor Marshall (from Tasmania), the handyman at the school, pointed out to me that many of the staff houses, which had been built out of bush materials by various village work parties over the past ten years, were in various states of disrepair. He suggested that we try to replace them with ones built of permanent materials- sawn timber, fibro and iron. During 1982-83 six new houses were slowly built. I applied to the New Ireland Provincial Government and was given a Kina for Kina subsidy for these new houses. We were fortunate that there were many United Church members connected to the Provincial Government.
The year 1982 was also the year of the bad drought. Our bore ran out of water and the tanks ran dry so the students went to the beach and river to bathe. We had a strong steel tank made to carry on our truck and bought a small water pump. Every afternoon the students loaded the tank onto the truck with pulleys then drove to the nearby river and pumped up fresh water, which was then delivered to all parts of Manggai. Our cattle were let out to graze in the nearby, unfenced plantations with cowboys and cowgirls to keep an eye on them. The kaukau and vegetable gardens were spoilt and we ate a lot of Australian rice.
Manggai had a long-standing policy of giving away one tenth of everything it produced. That included one tenth of every animal killed and one tenth of all the fruit- soursops, pineapples, guavas, mandarins, pomelos and so on. Much went to the main hospital at Kavieng and the nearby Catholic Health Centre at Lemakot, who reciprocated by giving the staff huge slabs of “Lemakot Special” – a Swiss bun with a delicious custard filling. Needless to say, we were well looked after when we became sick and needed to attend Lemakot or Kavieng hospital.
One of the work parades, which I felt capable of leading, was weeding the cow pastures. During 1982 I remember helping to clear great hillsides of bracken – standing behind the students calling out “ don’t just cut it off, pull it out by the roots!” Long lines, of about one hundred of us, would work our way slowly across a paddock, carefully removing all the prickly “sensitive” grass by the roots and laying it across logs to be killed in the hot sun. Our agriculture teachers, led by Andrew Magarey (Adelaide), were Greenies and there were no weedicides or pesticides. Naughty students could be seen, during afternoon punishment parades, filling up glass jars with insects off our vegetables.
We were good at “planting” our own fences for the cow pastures. The branches used for the posts were of a variety that soon started growing, so we ended up with a “living” fence. The seeds of tall tropical grasses were imported from Australia and provided lush pastures for the cattle. Part of the pigs’ food supply was the centre of the mature coconut (kruz).
There were many old run-down copra plantations along the Buluminsky Highway, on which we were situated, and every week the old school truck went to one of these to collect a huge truckload of mature coconuts which, during the following week, would then be cut open and the centre taken out and fed to the pigs- fat healthy pigs! Problems arose when the copra prices rose and plantation owners decided to make copra again.
During 1982-1983 the school had 340 students, 14 teachers and 8 ancillary staff. All students were boarders and the farm covered about 80 hectares and included about 50 head of cattle, 50 pigs and hundreds of chickens as well as a few ducks. Besides the food crops, there were coconut palms and cocoa trees and we were involved with planting out new hybrid cocoa seedlings under the coconut palms. We ran our own electric generator and had about four hours of power each evening.
Manggai village was nearby and many of its members were great supporters of Manggai High School. One was Israel Matasem who had donated land for the school and from time to time would help out in the Aid Post. Others served on our Board of Governors and one became our tractor driver and farm hand.
Manggai had good relationships with the United churches throughout the whole of New Ireland and, during the annual Service Week, students carried out many forms of community service in the villages. Ben Lenturut was a regular visitor and, although we didn’t have our own chaplain during those two years, many ministers and pastors visited and led the Sunday services.
Manggai students were noted for their fine singing. If no teacher turned up to take the class the students quietly started singing hymns in four-part harmony, using the traditional New Ireland harmonies. I remember, during one week, teaching them to sing a hymn, which was new to them. At first they seemed to be rather quiet and kept looking at each other. I later realized that they were just trying to work out the harmonies. By the end of the week they gave a marvellous rendition of the hymn with the traditional harmony. They took part in the annual United Church Hymn singing day and the Malagan Show in Kavieng and won many of the choir items, singing hymns and traditional songs and playing bamboo bands.
They were also keen at sport and over a year many types of sport were available. In 1983 the soccer team, known as the “Frogs”, was declared the Premiers at a carnival at Namatanai, during which we experienced a strong earthquake, and I watched the Namatanai High School water tanks crumple up and burst open. In 1982 a student from Lihir won the Kavieng 10,000m Marathon, at a time when his best friend, a fellow pupil of Manggai, was dying of leukaemia in Kavieng Hospital – “I did it for him”, he said. After strenuous work parades there was still enough energy to take part in sport and football, basketball and volleyball were the most popular and sometimes the girls could be seen playing hockey.
I have many memories of my own endeavours at Manggai. As headmistress, I took the Saturday punishment parade for hardened offenders. We spent many hours filling in a septic-type swamp in a limestone sink-hole behind the boys’ toilets, using all kinds of waste, including the coconut husks after the kruz had been removed, as well as freshly mined corronous. We studied the huge variety of incredible micro-organisms
We had some memorable visitors. In 1982, Sister Dorothy Beale (Misbil) stayed with me on her way to open the extensions to Kimadan Hospital. I was able to interview her, in front of the whole school, and she told us of Mission days in the 1930’s near Rabaul, the eruption of Vulcan volcano and the invasion of the Japanese. Also, her subsequent capture, and the time she spent as a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II. Then, she described how, after the war, she returned to P.N.G. and worked at Kimadan Hospital. Another visitor was Dan Armstrong, who came with an evangelical crusade group from Canberra. He was most amazed when the school students became very stirred up and “raised the roof” as they spoke in tongues after his address. Dorothy Billings, a noted anthropologist from the US, an expert on the Johnson Cargo Cult on New Hanover, also spent time with us and interviewed many students.
The United Church had banned dancing so, when Helen Magarey produced a ballet version of “Peter and the Wolf” in the mess, some of the boys equated this with dancing and stones were thrown on the roof. I watched in amazement from my position at the sound system as most of the audience arose in the middle of the performance and ran around like mad men, looking for the stone throwers. I stopped the music for a few minutes, then, suddenly they resumed their seats, as though nothing had happened, and it was “on with the show!” During 1983 Helen had fun training the girls to prepare a PNG version of Act II of Coppelia. By then, students has come to accept ballet but the leading dancer disappeared on opening night suffering from stage fright and had to be carefully coaxed back from her village.
The school was isolated in many ways. It was a long way in to Kavieng on a bumpy road. We had no phone until 1983, and even then it was a radiophone with set hours and not always reliable. My kerosene refrigerator was one of my pet hates as it had violent smoking attacks, usually around midnight, so there was this lengthy cleaning process one had to go through while half asleep. In 1983 the main electric generator broke down so we had to practice daylight saving for some weeks, rising and going to bed with the sun. We had numerous robberies and I bought a heavy safe, which Trevor attached to the wall. Some nasty types came and tore the wings off our young chickens. The police were too far away, so we set up our own vigilantes and I took over as chief detective and we finally found out who was doing it and told them off
Despite all our problems, during 1982-83, whilst I was at Manggai, it was a fine school, with hard working staff and students. The influence of the Pentecostal movement, sweeping New Ireland at the time, was very great at Manggai High School. Many students came to know and accept Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour. My own experiences at Manggai strengthened my faith and gave me a better understanding of the impact of Christianity on the people of Papua New Guinea.
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