Reflections on New Guinea

This evening the group will make a presentation to the Argyle Rotary Club about the trip to Manus Island and Korojih for the water project. The distance between the two cultures makes a transportation of the mind back to the experiences of the place difficult. My part for tonight's formalities is in making a presentation about the school, the women's committee and basket weaving.

Visiting the school was one of the greatest experiences of my life. The rudmentry building with desks and chairs that were falling apart housed students in years 4 - 8 from 8am until 3pm daily. The methods for teaching were dated. There were few resources available to the teachers, leaving them with the old fashioned (in my view, better) rote learning techniques at their disposal. The students were well disciplined and courteous, responding with respect to their teachers and each other. They wore their school uniforms on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, a fabulous compromise to settle the argument as to whether there should be a school uniform or not. The children had the happiest faces I've ever seen. This doesn't mean that they were without their concerns, however, there was no denying the fact that, although the school was in need of repair, the view from the building was worth a fortune in Western, Capatalist terms.

A daunting moment came for me when one of the year 7 students asked me which way of life I thought was better, the back to basics island life of the majority of people in New Guinea (and I might add here that we ARE talking about paradise), or the fast-paced, progressive life of Western culture. On the surface this question appeared like an obvious one from a year 7 student, but this student had never experieinced Western culture - she'd never heard of McDonalds! In her village there is no electricity and none of the technologies that would bring the Western experience into her life.  I came to realise as I attempted to answer the question that the girl was not opertating from the same underlying influences that I was used to from a girl her age here in Australia, or for that matter the teenagers I know in Iceland. Her question was one of real innocence and genuine inquisitiveness and my reply could never be impartial because in the people of her village I saw real sustainability, the type that WOULD be compromised by excessive progress. Education is progress, electricity is progress, technology is progress - and each of these endevours require money. So we talked about the pros and cons of each culture and found that neither was perfect, each had their strong and weak points and striking a balance was optimal.

The women in the village work hard. They do most of the fetching and carrying, so one of the greatest joys of the water project was in bringing running water to their front doors so they no longer had to walk up to 5 kms to do the washing and collect drinking water. The sheer delight of the people in the village to have a basic water system was fantastic! This was real progress without any adverse effects. The time the women will save on domestic chores will be better spent making sago and weaving baskets, both of which are saleable products and fundamental in earning an income.