Running head: THE FORGOTTEN MISSION AND ...

Running head: THE FORGOTTEN MISSION AND THE LASTING

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Running head: THE FORGOTTEN MISSION AND THE LASTING

The Forgotten Mission and the Lasting Transformation of My Teaching Identity: An Autoethnographic Account

Sotero O. Malayao Jr. Mindanao State University- Iligan Institute of Technology

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THE FORGOTTEN MISSION AND THE LASTING

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Abstract This academic paper is an autoetnographic investigation of my 16 months assignment as volunteer teacher in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. What made me decide to volunteer? What changes did it made to me? Did I count how much I have given or did I count how much the experience changed? Overall, how did it shaped my being as a teacher and how my journey brought me intimate to my fear and its transformative manifestations to me now? My experience brought me to the area of gaining more self-reflective opportunity. I become conscious of me as a teacher walking on the realm of people I know little about but my contribution is something they will never forget. I realized in my journey that people on its earlier stage of learning must be approached in transmission type of epistemology that will eventually transition to another approach.

Keywords: volunteer, culture, mission, education, journey, transformation

THE FORGOTTEN MISSION AND THE LASTING A Forgotten Mission and the Lasting Transformation of My Teaching Identity

“Now your preparation is complete and the long wait is over. You will represent the quality of Filipino teachers that we are known for and is the specific request of the Bishop. You will make us proud” Those were the words of the Provincial Superior of the congregation sending me and my fellow volunteer to the highlands of Papua New Guinea. The date was August 23, 2003, our departure day but our preparation had been commenced as early as April of that year. And we marched off to the car that will bring us to the airport, wearing our windbreaker, with 200 US dollars in our pocket. We are filled with trust everything is gonna be alright but with lingering, nagging misgivings as well with the erratic telephone connection we experienced and a lot more I cannot grapple until I was faced with it. My honest intention of this narrative interspersed with review of literatures is to convey the unique journey of me being a teacher, of me tasked to teach but I was the one who learned a lot, the difficult task of entering a culture, and being vigilant that I will not violate in simple cues, words, and gestures the learners I am supposed to educate. Some of the names I am mentioning are real because I have asked their permission, but the others whom I have not asked permission I will have to use pseudonyms instead. I will surely regret if my experience will be lost with time, hence I will recollect them in series of different themes since the simplicity of the setting but with very complex human interaction as expression of their culture would mean several ways of telling their stories through my story.

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A Forgotten Mission and the Lasting Transformation of My Teaching Identity

The scarcity of De La Salle Brothers in the country of Papua New Guinea was the very start of volunteer programs in one school in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. The dwindling of local De La Salle Brothers is a unique reality in itself, and the coming of Filipino volunteer teachers made some unique tapestry in a domain that is religious in nature but with subtlety of political maneuverings which I hope to discuss in lightly along this this paper. Suffice it to say for now that the De La Salle Brothers have at least 6 houses throughout the country and eventually reduced to two houses and two schools as of 2003. The role of Filipino teachers was akin to an experiment of accessing teacher support and it was of the decision later whether the continued presence of imported volunteer teachers was cost worthy of they just have to make use of their local manpower.

High Expectations on the Preparation Stage

The selection of volunteers of the De La Salle Philippines, used to be known La Sallian Volunteer Program- Philippines, for Papua New Guinea was sort of hastily done since volunteer teachers from existing district schools in the Philippines will only be available on April, and the subsequent paper trails of necessary documents is uncertain as to its completion. Add the fact that the communication between PNG consulate and the Philippine government is too slow, and that the processing of the documents between the De La Salle Philippines and PNG government was facilitated by the SVD congregation because the invitation for volunteering came from an SVD Bishop, Henk te Maarsen, the former bishop of Kundiawa (Clark, 1989).

The preparation ranged from community life of two volunteers, how to navigate the life of volunteers as patterned after the Catholic religious missionaries, and many others that sounds so new to me. All I know was that I was to teach, I was not aware I was to be formed in the life of religious in the conduct of my volunteer journey. The exposure that we were subjected was such as a halfway house with rescued drug dependent teens, the LSVP community in Canumay, Rizal, and the 15 days send out program


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with religious groups in Tagaytay under the Holy Spirit Sisters. The range of our exposures were sort of eclipsed with the reality we faced upon reaching Papua New Guinea.

In terms of drug problems, there is a marked difference on the dynamics of drug problems here and in Papua New Guinea (Farrell, Marsden, Ali, & Ling, 2002). Suffice it to say that the exposure we went to in the halfway is far removed from the kind of problem in our assigned area (Macintyre, 2008). In terms of the volunteer community we were exposed to, there was a big difference in the kind of life demanded from us when we reached Papua New Guinea. The dynamics of the people, the issue on personal safety, the issue on traversing the cultural boundary lest one can be accused of transgressing a social construct, all these are never elucidated in our immersion in the local volunteer program (Clark, 1989). Probably the most perplexing part of the preparation was the send out together with the religious groups. Men and women from different religious congregations gathered for a 15-day training prior to their assignment to the different parts of the globe. Accordingly, it was a needed training and it only raised so much questions as to our preparedness to our volunteerism cum mission assignment. The talks on paradigm shifts in mission, the browning of the mission being past becoming actively dominated by “colored missionaries,” in a sense that the “white man’s” version of mission work has paved to another direction (Bosch, 1991). And are we part of these? We are supposed to be teaching only! It eventually dawned to us that our task is to be a teacher to fill the gap of man power shortage but we are to join the school in the cloak of religious context of missionary aid worker as stated in our visa, and we are to live like one. More questions than clarity, but the adventurous nature in us prevailed. Probably, there was something in our experience that made us brave to face uncertainties, including this potentially hazardous one. The hazard becomes clear when we got to our work station. A country of unparalleled diversity, a country of fragmented sense of nationalism or absence thereof, a country vacillating between remaining in its old rustic ways of village or to ride the waves of globalization (Connell, 2005).

The very big uncertainty in my mind was that these religious men and women have decided to spend their life as missionary and probably they were 5 to 10 years in their local


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assignment before they were made to decide to go overseas. They were already conditioned on the nature of their mission, I and my companion were prepared and briefed in rush.

Riding the Small Balus

Balus is the Melanesian pidgin term for airplane. A country so diverse that pidgin becomes the medium of common understanding for the people. Not yet an official language were linguistic development is concerned but it is so helpful for locals and missionaries to communicate. Its mixtures of different languages like German, Portuguese as brought about by early missionaries posed some barrier of pidgin to completely evolve into a formal language (Sankoff, 1979; Verhaar, 1995). What was so striking was that it was my first time to ride a plane and it is an international flight. I usually take boat ride from Mindanao to Manila. The flight was non- stop 5 hours and we are supposed to reach Jackson International Airport, Port Moresby by 4 a.m. the following day. A Filipino Lasalle brother will meet us in the airport to hand us our ticket for the connecting flight to the highlands in a smaller balus. Scarier for me because I am seeing propeller rotating compared to the bigger balus. One geographical fact for Papua New Guinea is that its soil is still in a constant geologic movement resulting to damaged bridges within two or more years of construction. That is the very reason there is no road dedicated to travel from lowlands to highlands. And at a time of bleak financial atmosphere, my volunteer assignment was guaranteed to have unique turns (Windybank & Manning, 2003).

A Unique Warm Welcome and Crash Course on PNG Culture Waiting for us at the Kagamuga Airport, Mt. Hagen, Western Highlands is another Filipino brother we saw for the first time. He used to be stationed at the Rosary Secondary School-Kondiu, in the town of Kundiawa, province of Simbu/Chimbu but now stationed at the Holy Trinity College in Mt. Hagen. In the early years at the boom of missionary assignments of different religious congregations before the world war, Catholic Missions was centered in Vunapope, Rabaul in Eastern Rabaul (Volker, 1991: Bevans, 2015). However on September 19, 1994, the two volcanic cones Tavurvur and Vulcan started erupting. The damage was so extensive that the


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thriving city of Rabaul was eventually abandoned and the Catholic Mission was relocated in the highlands which is pivotal for the intensification of education in Papua New Guinea highlands (Grossman, 2014). Due to shortage of brothers, the De La Salle brothers have to make a choice which community to continue, will it be the Rosary Secondary School or the Holy Trinity College. They decided in favor of Holy Trinity College because it responds quite easily to their teaching ministry. They will be producing teachers and thus more aligned to their mission. Hence the Rosary Secondary School was turned over to the ministration of another religious congregation but they withdraw their presence very gradually and still extends their assistance. In the heart of the people of Kondiu, the school is still very much Lasallian despite the absence of the brothers and with the actual presence of the Sacred Heart Sisters. We were fetched with the school vehicle and some teaching staff. We traversed the Western Highland to Simbu road in an easy pace and I was chattering all along, I failed to consider if I am comprehensible to the welcoming party. I appreciate the scenery along the way since it looks just like the provincial road with very familiar flora. The only thing foremost in my mind is how intensive is their betel nut chewing habit. The big difference isntat betel nut chewing in the Philippines result to dark spit due to the inclusion of tobacco leaf in the mixture of lime and betel nut. In their case, they combine betel nut, lime, and a certain fruit that result to a blood looking spit but a remarkable volatile smell can be detected. That was the time it completely dawned to me that there is no turning back. This is the point of no return.


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A Principal, a Father, and Someone who Thinks Beyond His Time

The Headmaster of the school, Mr. Francis Kaglwaim is a stocky man with an aura of authority. In PNG culture, a “big man” should exude an aura of authority, much more when they speak. The idea that the school needs input from Filipino teacher was initially suggested by the bishop which he also agreed on. It is also probably of two things. First, the school used to be a pilot area of the US-based volunteer organization that decided to stop their engagement for the whole country when their volunteers become subject of attacks from rascals. Those days when the currency exchange was 1 Kina is to 1 US dollar. The teaching force before was provided by the US volunteer group. Second, the exchange rate changed into 1 US dollar is to 1 Kina, hence, it becomes difficult to attract foreign teachers, and they see that there might be Filipino educators from De La Salle district schools in the Philippines who might be interested to be on secondment. That was where we fit in.

The headmaster’s trust on the idea of Filipino educators was a costly exercise for the school who shouldered our stay and SVD congregation who shouldered our plane ticket and the legwork of our pertinent documents. Our stay with the school would mean initially providing us our living expenses while our papers are processed to be included in the release of our fortnightly salary of 300 Kina. And the principal is well aware how slow the government bureaucracy works.

There were snide remarks of the local teacher why the need for foreigners when there are local teachers available. Thus, our presence is not at all met with enthusiasm from among the teachers. And much of it we have to learn very cautiously.


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From Mt. Hagen, we reached Kondiu at around 5 pm. Perfect time to see all the students who are already in the mess hall taking their dinner. As we were showed the house, we were met by an Australian brother, Br. Rick Gaffney FSC who was doing a selection process among the students who will be joining the first Lasallian Youth Camp in Bomana, Port Moresby. Br. Rick accompanied us to the mess hall and met the students on their way out back to their dormitory. Nothing prepared me of the kaleidoscope of nuances I am going to encounter. I learned thereon that the PNG are eloquent speakers, embellishing our presence with details I believe unnecessary. And that was the first of the many lessons I was destined to learn,

Education in Papua New Guinea is basically free. Private schools run by religious group exist because of their mission of educating but not as a source of profit. Only the international schools exist for profit. All schools private and public have something in common, the salary of the teacher is provided by the government. The private schools collect money from the students to shoulder their meal and maintenance of their dormitory and other services. Each private schools may source out funding for their physical development but it will not come from student contribution.

The presence of a secondary level, grades 11 and 12, is very scarce like only one or two per town, and there are few concrete roads and very few public transports. Students would come as far as the last mountain you can see in the horizon and they have to walk on foot say half day or more. Hence, the students have to be provided with dormitory. Only those residing in the nearby village have the luxury of going home, but it is more of a luxury staying in school than going home.

Suffice it to say that the school faces financial constraints from two sources, (1) the government is delayed in providing their support for the operation of the school, and (2) many of the students cannot pay on time on their dues to the school. Add the presence of the volunteer teachers that needs to be provided by the school for the monthly salary while the government has not yet processed our papers for inclusion of our name in the payroll.


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Anybody at Mr. Kaglwaim’s position would rather refuse the presence of foreign teachers but he is looking beyond what is comprehensible among his teaching force. He believed on what we can give and so supportive of what we can contribute to the school. He served not just a headmaster for me and my companion but a father as well.

The Classroom

Rosary Secondary School- Kondiu and is fondly called by students as RSSK has a reputation known throughout the country. It is one of the pioneer schools operated by Catholic Church and it has established itself as producer of top students in science and mathematics in the nationwide yearend assessment. It must be understood that it is the privately-run schools that are better equipped compared to government run schools. Private schools or schools managed by religious groups have ways of asking donations, thus having better facilities and support materials for the students.

The students begin their day by walking towards the mess hall 5:45 in the morning. Students will walk in single file one from the girl’s dormitory and another from boy’s dormitory. The mess hall opens at 6 a.m.and have one piece of scone for breakfast. By 7:00 a.m their classes commence and ends a quarter to twelve noon. The students will once again queue to the mess hall to get their second scone. Afternoon classes start at 1:00 pm and ends 3:00 pm. Students will have 15 minutes to rush to their dormitory and get their community service according to their assigned tasks. Certain students were identified to be specialist on certain areas like lawn mowing, comfort room cleaner, clinic, and many other areas. Students with no identified specialization will proceed to the garden area. The garden predominantly grows kaukau or sweet potato and some greens. Students stayed one hour and then go back to their dormitory to prepare for dinner. Dinner is the time the students will have rice and vegetables mixed with sardines. For some affluent students, the school food is not delicious, but for many village students, the food is already a big treat. There is so much to delineate between the binary economic background of the students and how they approach the life offered by the school. This I will try to discuss in the later part of the paper.


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The Classroom, the Bilum, and Everything of the Learner’s Being

At first glance, it is like me, as a teacher, is transported back in time but there is a caveat, somewhere in the past but there are things so much belonging to the present.

One has to remember that one particular item that describes a Papua New Guinean is the ubiquitous bilum. It is a bag handcrafted from twisted yarn wherein each province is identified by a certain pattern and people stick so much to this identity. The bilum is basically a work of the girls but some boys are learning it but not culturally acceptable. Students carry the bilum as side bag or the boys will hang it on their neck. The bilum will contain their pencils, erasers, biro or ballpen, liquid eraser, notebooks, and papers. It summarizes the general content of the bilum. Most of the students resides in the dormitory, thus they eat the same food. With the exception of some who has extra kina and toiea with them, these kids can buy soda and biscuits from the school canteen. The bilum can signify everything that a student holds valuable in the school (Pamphilon, 2015). Probably, most students keep only a certain amount they can use on their way home during end of the quarter.

What amazes me was that the stationery used by the students were somehow advanced than what I used to. From where I came from, correction fluid is in the form of water-based paint type, but in their case, they are using a pinch-point type and quick drying. Only few uses pencil and they have the three colors of biro, red, black, and blue.

The bilum can sometimes be used just an adornment of the body or a cover to shield the face from the heat of the sun. The bilum, when sold, derives its market value from the effort of crafting it and not much on the cost of the materials. The bilum is considered a knotless knitting and is considered primitive art in its basic structure, however, modernization eventually integrates into the process that intricate design can be attempted with techniques borrowed from mainstream knitting. One thing is sure, bilum making can never be mechanized since its pattern is a series of interlinking S-shape. The shape results to increased load capacity despite the low tensile strength of each yarn strand (Andersen,2015; Cochrane, 2005).


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The Book, the Assessment, and the National Exam

Each student is provided with a textbook. In no way that a book is shared by two students. This one best feature of Papua New Guinean education. I immediately remember the scores of schools in the Philippines with insufficient book for every student (Reyes, 2010). But beyond having one book per student ratio, this goes more on the yearend target of each school and students- to pass the national assessment given to all students. In my observation, the books were considered the focal source of learning material. At that time, the schools have to rely mostly from donated materials and the internet was still too limited in reach. Students have no other alternative source of information except the textbooks. In certain instances I attempted injecting something beyond the textbooks, and I was faced with outright rejection.

How was that rejection all about? When I arrived which was August of 2003, my assignment were all grades 9 and 10 mathematics which were all algebra. On the following year 2004, I still got the same assignment with grade 11 physics for Science & Engineering strand. In their textbook was the series and parallel circuit and I attempted to make them think of how to reduce a cubical arrangement of resistors by using delta-to-wye and wye-to-delta transformation. To my surprise, it turn out like a mutiny and they raised the following arguments: (1) I am teaching them something to difficult, and (2) it will not come out in the national exam because it is not found in the book. The students were talking about how to boycott my class, and to beat


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them in their plan, I told the subject head to remove that load from me and I will concentrate with the grade 10 mathematics who were my students the previous year. The scenario seemed simple but it was actually a complex matter. First, I made my intention to them that if any of them desired to be electrical or electronics engineer, this is a needed topic not covered by their textbook. The important issue was that the topic is nowhere in the textbook. Such concern is valid because the school already have the reputation of topping science and mathematics in the national exams. There were students in the past who topped physics and topped mathematics. The dux the previous year was in top 3 in science and was also top 3 during his grade 10 exam. For what reason school placed consistently is also something interesting. And as an aside, the top in grade 10 economics the previous year was also from the highlands but from Banz in the neighbor Western Highlands but now a separate province of Jiwaka. This is the interesting fact in the PNG national assessment, the highland schools had good chance of topping their exams. At the time that the only source of information is the textbook, it is highly probable. But, it is worth noting how the school made a good reputation, thereby drawing good students to enroll in Rosary Secondary School-Kondiu despite its remote location. I surmise the following were contributory: (1) the school used to be recipient of US Peace Corp volunteer service who were present in PNG since 1981. Many of the laboratory facilities were provided by the group; (2) the school was managed for a long by the De La Salle Brothers of Australian Province and that strongly complemented the presence of US Peace Corp; (3) the diocese of Kundiawa was under the care of the SVD congregation and there were donated facilities coming from Europe either from Germany or Netherlands. At the time of my volunteer assignment, the US volunteers have already left PNG due to their experience security problems when volunteers or service vehicles were attacked by


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rascals. Also during my assignment, the De La Salle Brothers also gave up their management of the school in favor to a teacher college in the neighboring Western Highland province. What I reflected in terms of lesson preparation was that it must be clear for the students that you are teaching them the textbook and anything not covered or beyond the textbook will be met with resistance. This seemingly passionate adherence to the textbook content is an implicit implication of lack of creativity in the flow of thought I suspect. Why the lack of creativity? Because there is absolutely no need to be creative in the lesson proper. The learners demand that they were taught the textbook and they will listen attentively. It is on this scenario that I suspect why in my country and even in any advanced country teachers must be creative. I suspect the reason is that the learners will have excuse to be bored and it might start any classroom problematic behavior. The PNG classroom is one classroom where teachers will have no behavior problems inside the class. All students will listen to the teacher, absorb everything consistent with the transmission type of epistemology, and do good in the classroom exam, and perform well in the nationwide Written Expression (Walton, Davda, & Kanaparo, 2017). Students of PNG and the people in general highly valued official written documents, a testament of their cultural heritage of honoring words as covenant (Robbins, 2001). At least, I was more fortunate than Don Kulick (1997) who tried to study the language of a coastal village.

What was so unique also was that the time for Written Expression mean so much that they will never cheat and in the same way, they are vigilant for those who cheat during class quizzes. Needless to say if the sanction for cheaters is severe that I never read the discipline guidelines of the school. What riveted me was that the students will never attempt cheating more from avoiding to be confronted by the classmates. This made the exam time or any assessment episode a truly breeze unblemished by cheating issues. In fact, I wish such attitude exist in Philippine classroom. Students may study alone or in a group but during exams, leakage, asking


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from classmates, or any form of cheating is simply a no. and one thing more, they do not like being looked at straight into their eyes. They will avert their eyes sideways.

The classroom was not just a venue for learning experience. The classroom was a venue of intertribal interaction and that the consequence poses more weight on what will be the reputation of the tribe and not on the specific student per se. As students come to class, their personal identity is not what they carry, they brought with them the name of their tribe. It will be perplexing for a foreigner to ask one student about another student because the first thing they will tell is the tribe of that student and the name follows. Hence, teaching a class is already a diverse presence of different tribes. A teacher must not in any form make a gesture or a comment that will make student lost face in class otherwise it will be considered an affront to their tribe.

With this scenario, it will be easier to understand why the students behave at their best inside the class. They were not doing it at the personal level. They were doing in the name of their tribe. The last thing they will need is to be humiliated in front of other tribes. This tribe thing can be expanded to selection of class officers. In this case, students may want to vote classmates belonging to other tribe and they do not want to be thought as “traitor” they will demand the idea of secret ballot by covering their eyes with their right hand and they face down the desk while their left hand is raised as indication of their vote. I thought that was queer but that was an important process that bears so much cultural significance.

Another interesting classroom experience is that students will never speak up unless they are very sure of the answer. The usual practice of calling a student to recite or discuss an answer and the teacher scaffolds the process, this might be misconstrued as humiliating experience, thus


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it will never be a productive strategy. That the teacher will dominate the whole classroom episode is very common and is welcomed by the students. The drawback about student participation is that there is no concrete measure on the language facility of the learner and whether I am comprehensible to them.

It is indeed very unique that behavioral problem is seldom observed inside the classroom. But this belies the fact that behavior problems occurs outside the classroom. My first night in the school was a testament of how I started to doubt my decision of volunteering. We arrived in time for their evening meal around 5 p.m. and they will proceed from the mess hall to their classrooms to do evening study from 6 pm to 8 pm. After their study, they will proceed to their dormitory and before 9 pm, lights will be put off. I was curious how they conduct their study, I was so eager to see. I have to walk around 4 to 5 minutes from my staff house to the classrooms. I stayed inside the faculty office. Around 7:15 pm, we heard a sound from a grade 10 classroom and two boys were moving towards the center clearing while their fists were exchanging blows and suddenly all boys went out of their classrooms and surrounded the fighting pair. One teacher with a loud voice boomed and started to sort them out. The faculty were laughing telling me , “Mr. Jojo, that is a nomal thing here, boys will fight over anything, exchange punches, then reconcile.” That did not pacify me. I took it to myself to learn the dynamics of this violent behavior and I have to proceed cautiously. I eventually learned that violence can erupt like volatile liquids and boys do slug it out even in their dormitory. After fists were exchange, they will sort it out themselves. So far, students are cautious no blood is spilled otherwise it will be a cause of tribal war. It appears that fist fight is something ordinary and that things will be settled out eventually. This explains why I see students having black eyes come to class. There seemed an unwritten rule among students that I have no time to unravel. Even teachers are aware of the packet of violence but it seemed that students knew of their limits, otherwise they risk of evoking tribal conflict that can be costly and probably more violent. But given that all things are normal, PNG students were very nice kids to teach. I would describe them as hungry for knowledge but must be contained within their textbooks. They want to be taught but never make remarks that will make them feel bad.


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Conclusion

My journey in Rosary Secondary School-Kondiu was probably a best episode of my life as a teacher. It gave me a chance to slow down and take stock of my teaching skills, adjust, strategize, and device ways that will somehow bring them out of their box.

Papua New Guinea students were in a situation that they have to strive so they can have a well-paying job so they can help their tribe. But there are two types of students, one are those whose parents have employment, thus they have their own house and were supported solely by their parents. Second are those that were supported by the whole tribe, meaning students who live in the village. For them, there will only be improvement in the quality of their life if they have education. However, they were also fortunate that they still have wide land and that they may be poor but they will always have something to eat.

The student come to class bringing the identity of their tribe. Their success and failure are always attributed to their tribe and that explains why graduation is always a family affair bedecked with the best finery their tribe possess.

It is this experience that made me realize that creativity is very difficult to teach. Papua New Guinea students lacks creativity because they do not need to be taught creatively. I would like to ascribe the creativity is acquired due to exposure to creative scenario.

I also realized from my Papua New Guinea experience that spiraling is not the best approach as opposed to the reform of Philippine education.


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I always asked if my contribution was helpful to students who were under me in their grade 9 and 10 mathematics. After a decade I finally got an answer due to the help of social media, the facebook. I tracked one student becoming an environmental scientist, one accountant, one physiotheraphist, two working in telecoms, one in a tobacco company, and one who entered priesthood. That I taught them mathematics in a unique manner made them hurdle college mathematics easily. That was all I need to hear.

In closing, there were so many realizations in my journey. I learn to take stock about my students and learn never to say caustic remarks. I become more patient and attentive. The drawback, though, was that my panic threshold in the face of violence seemed too long than before.

My journey was titled The Forgotten Journey based on the book written by Christian J. Moe about the first De La Salle Brothers in Papua New Guinea who were Germans. I believe my experience is bound to be forgotten unless I start writing it. In the course of my journey, I realized that although I was changed and shaped, my presence becomes less of importance but the people I served should be highlighted and be understood. I believe there were so many things we do not know about the PNG people, much more the learners. There is a need for us to understand them so that our effort of helping them becomes even more meaningful. I left Papua New Guinea June 20, 2004 and faced another challe nge of reentering the orbit of my old self. Just when entering a new culture was challenging, coming home was even more challenging.


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