The literacy classroom nears completion

Written April 15^th. A 30 day internet outage meant this blog could not be published when written 2 weeks ago.

This last month has seen the literacy classroom getting further and further along. After an initial few days of being on hand to answer questions and provide “encouragement” the community have settled into their own rhythm. They have never built a classroom before and were uncertain about how to do it “right”. As time as gone on it has been great to see them taking initiative as they have grown in confidence.

The community has been organising for resources to be collected, delivered and then added to the building. Our role has been much more back- seat for a few weeks. I have been able to help with some of the steps and get a bit of work done, but their skill as builders exceeds mine.

One concern the community had was the wind blowing away the sago leaves that are used for thatching. My observation is that a sago leaf thatched roof needs substantial repairs after about 2 years. Winds rip individual leaves off and eventually holes start appearing. After 4 years or so the roof is too leaky to be any good. The water starts to damage the inside of the house and usually the entire house is rebuilt from scratch. It was an understandable concern that this large classroom building would quickly deteriorate and maintaining it would become a chore.

After some thought we decided to provide a large grey plastic tarpaulin. Years ago when we were building our houses we lived in a tarpaulin tent. We bought two 30 foot x 40 foot tarpaulins and used one to make a living area for us as we built and one to cover our work area.

When our houses were finished we folded them up and made them available for the Kovol community. People would come and borrow them to cover their work area when they processed sago, or to make a tent when the went to a football tournament. Over the years how prompt people were in returning the tarps after use decreased and in the end we didn’t know where either of them were.

We put out word though that we wanted them again and shortly afterwards they were returned. The plan was to put the tarp underneath the sago leaf thatching. That  way any leaks due to the thatching would not come inside, and the thatching would keep the sun off of the tarp and stop it deteriorating as quickly. That’s the idea, we will see if it works. The tarp has many holes itself so it may not work out as we expect, but it’s worth a try.

This blend of jungle materials with a large plastic tarp is a brand new construction method and the Kovol guys needed to figure out how to attach the sago leaf thatching on top of the tarp. The solution was a double roof of sorts. We’ll see how it goes!

In the last weeks the bamboo has arrived and been woven into walls. The process involves lots of splitting, cutting, hammering and weaving. I helped out with the weaving a little bit, but they are the experts, so I’m not sure how helpful I was. It amazes me that the Kovol guys weave these strips of bamboo with bare hands. I had to put a pair of work gloves on because I’m able to cut my hands even holding bamboo, let alone weaving it into a tight weave.

Following the bamboo walls was a few days of many people coming to sit and make roofing panels. They take a strip of bamboo a few metres long and sit breaking leaves in half over it. The leaves are then sown on with a vine until the bamboo strip is covered by a line of leaves broken in half and sown on.

The guys picked Friday as the day they will all get together to tie these panels onto the roof. Then it’ll just be making some benches and tables out of bush poles and mounting the blackboard and the classroom will be ready.

With the classroom almost ready we’ve been working on getting the literacy books for the class ready for printing. The problem is that without internet we have not been able to email them to the print shop for printing! Just before the internet cut off we sent the books over to our consultant team for a check. They fixed up a few little details and then wanted to send it back to us so that we could fix a few things. They had to put the files on a USB stick and put it in the mailbag. Our supply flight came in this week and we were able to get the updated files. Now it’s time for printing, but we won’t have opportunity to get the USB stick back out before class starts so we’ll need to print using our home printers here.

We don’t want to delay the start of the class when excitement is so high. Our current plan is to print the first books and send the USB stick out for the following books to be printed at the print shop. 🙂 We’ll make it work somehow!

With that in mind we revealed our list of students to the community. The class is intentionally small in size so that each student gets a lot of teacher time and attention. That does mean not picking a lot of people. We were concerned what the reaction might be to the names we picked, but on a nice sunny morning we revealed the names to community leaders and they responded saying, “We are one stomach, we will do it just like you say. No one will be bad stomach about this.” That was yesterday. In a few days time we’ll need to put our ears out to see if any “bad stomach” thinking came after all.

The date is set. The literacy class starts on April 27^th Our families moved into Kovol in January 2020. It’s taken 6 years and 4 months to get to this stage. We’ll be planting our first seeds and we’re looking forward to seeing what grows. How will literacy go? How will our students do after the initial excitement has worn off? What will effect will being literate have on them if they make it all the way through and graduate? We’re excited to see.