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APSIG newsletter no. 55: July 2004Going back to the villageDeveni Temu, APSIG convenor, writes: Last Christmas, my family and I travelled to Kapari and Viriolo villages to visit our extended family members and to celebrate Christmas and New Year with the village people. These two adjacent coastal villages are situated approximately 220 km south-east of Port Moresby in the Central Province of Papua New Guinea. Christmas in a PNG village is a big occasion. All the villagers who have left to work in the big towns return with lots of food (alcohol is banned) and gifts - usually clothes or money. On Christmas Eve, we went to Kapari's central square to join in singing traditional Peroveta (Prophet) songs, many of them based on the Old or New Testament stories. This style of singing was introduced by the missionaries from the Cook Islands, who were brought to PNG by the London Missionary Society in the late 1880s. Some of the songs are very complex, with many parts, and they are always started by women. We sang for about four hours and at midnight, the young people of the village arrived with late supper which included kettles of hot, sweet black tea, damper and slices of pineapples. After the communal supper, prayers were said, Christmas greetings exchanged then everyone returned to their respective houses for a good night's sleep. On Christmas Day, all the village people dressed in their best clothes attended the church service. This particular service was both historical and unique in that it was the first ever to be led by an all women's group from Port Moresby. After the service, everyone returned home for the family Christmas meal. In the afternoon, we all gathered in the village square again to watch performances by the various clans of songs, sketches or traditional dances. New Year's Day was just as full of fun and games as ever. Once again, most people attended the New Year church service. There is a local tradition that at the end of the service, as the congregation emerges from the church building, young boys and girls prepared buckets of mud and water to throw over the people. Soon everyone in the village joined in and some young men and women went into each home and carried the elderly and anyone else they could find to the river or the sea for the communal wash, symbolising a new start. Strangely enough, it was a high tide; the sea came right up under the houses, which are built on stilts, so many chose to wash and swim under or near their houses. Of course, there is more food for all the extended family; relatives came from far and near to join in. Then there were the village games - who can husk and scrape a coconut the fastest, swimming and canoe races, who can stay underwater longest, shooting the ball into a netball hoop, joke-telling competitions and races in the sand. The villages take great care and pride in organising lots of competitions in the week between Christmas and New Year, to keep all the young people (including those visiting from Port Moresby) occupied. On our first free afternoon, my family and I took a walk along the beach to see the Konepoti Primary School which my brothers, sister and I attended in the sixties and seventies respectively. The school is located about 2 km from the two villages. The school currently has over 180 children in six classrooms, one for each grade (3-8), and fourteen teachers. It is a government-funded school but, with many years of inadequate funding levels, the up-keep and the general lack of regular maintenance of the teachers' houses, classrooms and the other school buildings was obvious. What was of interest to me, and also caught my wife's attention, was the little square building standing on stilts, right in the centre of the school; desperately in need of a fresh coat of paint but still faintly labelled LIBRARY. Unfortunately, we were not able to look inside but my brothers told me that there were hardly any books in the library. I was also told that this library was built in the nineties by the village community. The villagers could only afford to construct a library large enough to house the books only. There were no funds to add a reading room. Because of the school holidays, I was unable to see any teachers to find out more about the library, but from what I could gather, the little library building is now used as a general store room. The chairman of the School Board is keen to seek overseas funding to improve and extend the existing building.
Deveni Temu
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