Literacy classroom

We’ve been without internet for 3 days now. I’m sitting to write a post anyway that I can put up when internet returns.

With our first week back in Kovol after 9 months away behind us it amazes me how familiar everything feels. We feel like we’re home.

For the most part I can communicate what I want to say in the Kovol language. It is nice to discover that my speaking ability hasn’t degraded a lot while away. Small talk is not a problem at all, but I do find myself out of my depth still when explaining deeper ideas.

I had a discussion with a group of people from a village 2 hours away about the upcoming literacy class. They are very excited about it. I felt the need to communicate to them the idea that they themselves will need to wait for a bit. Our first class will be 10-12 students from our local area. The course of daily lessons will last 5-6 months. It isn’t feasible for people living 2 hours away to make the commute each day.

We do have a plan for them though. We will work on training some of our graduates to become literacy teachers themselves. The 2^nd course will hopefully see Kovol teachers in training alongside us, and eventually the people of our village will continue the teaching themselves.

In a similar way we expect that eventually 3-4 students from the far away village will board in our village, become literate and go on to learn how to teach the course themselves. When there are teachers from their own village ready they can build a classroom in their village and have literacy spread to their village.

I likened it to a fishing method of theirs where they get a root from the jungle with poisonous sap. They beat the root with sticks and throw it in the river. At first the poison drifts around the root, but over time it spreads through the water and kills all the fish. In the same way, right now we are beating our root in this village and over time the poison of literacy will spread and kill them too… At which point I realise that while the illustration conveys a slow spread over time it’s a destructive process.

Oh well, it seemed to communicate. The key observation there is that it “seemed” to communicate. This is where I felt a bit out of my depth and I repeated my explanation in Tok Pisin just to make sure I communicated what I intended to.

Our village has been busy building the literacy classroom for the upcoming course. Several days this week have seen Philip and me supervising the construction. Supervising because my practical skills are lacking and my jungle knowledge is also lacking. I clearly saw for example that the current task was to use a machete to strip the bark off poles to make them ready to add to the frame of the building. It seems like a task I could pick up a machete and join in with, but I can guarantee that if I did so people would point out that the pole I was working on was the wrong kind of wood or something.

I’m still amazed by the Kovol people’s ability to disappear into the jungle and come back 5 minutes later with a 6m long pole on their shoulders. At one point they needed a scaffold so a guy disappeared into the bushes and came back with jungle vine a minute later. I’m amazed because the times I’ve gone looking for jungle vine I was searching for 15 minutes and came back empty-handed.

The classroom is now framed and poles are cut and ready to use as rafters. The next steps are to frame the roof, wall the sides with bamboo and then the huge task of gathering leaves and weaving them into a thatch.

Thatching such a building is a huge ask. It will take days of gathering leaves and sewing roofing panels together. The result will be mostly watertight, but will have about a 2 year lifespan. The sun will dry the leaves out and then the wind will rip them off one at at time. In a year there will be leaks, in two it’ll be in bad shape.

We could supply roofing iron, but we don’t want to be on the hook to use a helicopter to sling in 20 sheets of roofing iron every time a new classroom goes up.

I’m eyeing up some leftover plastic wrap from my house build and pondering if I have enough to add a layer of plastic under the leaves to provide waterproofing. The leaves would then not need to be woven as tightly (fewer leaves) and have the function of protecting the plastic from the sun rather than waterproofing. Supplying a roll of plastic is much easier than 20 sheets of roofing iron. I’m pondering.

Who to choose as the first students will be an important decision. We want a mix of ages, previous reading experience, genders and dialects. The Kovol people would prefer an equal split for each village and clan. It may be an impossible challenge to keep everyone happy with our choices. 10-12 students is also (intentionally) a small class to make sure each student has a lot of teacher time and thus a high chance of success. A small class does mean not inviting the vast majority of people though.

Philip has been busy checking through the literacy program I created. He’s catching the times where the tenses in the stories are incorrect, and finding stories that make no sense to him or his helper. They made sense to me and my helper when they were written, but a fresh set of eyes unaware of what the story is supposed to say is invaluable for improving how each story reads. When checked through and finalised the program is looked over by literacy consultants, who check things such as the syllable tables for each lesson containing the syllables the lesson is supposed to teach. Then it will be on to printing, and weather allowing, a helicopter can deliver the printed materials ready for the first students.

It does feel like starting with a whimper, rather than a bang. After all this time of language learning, excitement is high because the “school” is finally starting. Our focus is on long term outcome rather than hype and excitement and so at the moment I feel a little embarrassed. After all the work I’ve put in over years the first visible fruit of the Kovol work is soon to appear and it’ll be small. Lord willing it will grow and last. In the meantime I need to remember to be content with what the Lord has given me to do. I’m not the super hero here to change lives, revolutionize education and bring about a golden age. My pride can cause me to unconsciously think that I’m the saviour and hero here and that I should be appreciated. I think my embarrassment about how slowly the literacy program starts comes from there.

I need to remind myself that all I’m doing is bringing a few loaves and fishes, not enough for a large crowd, but I’m serving a God who can multiply it in a way that focusses attention on him and not on me.