Journey to Malala School

It was a very quiet run in just under two hours from the Plantation Hotel. Very little traffic being a Sunday. Stopped a few times for photos but mainly by the time I'd said stop we were past what I thought of as interesting! I wanted to capture the different vegetation that you go through from what looks like an English road to the rain forest. The first time we did this trip a lot of the road was under loads of water.

We arrived before 4pm and Sister Jane walked me up to the guest house that she had organised for us. The school site is so large that it's a bit like a small housing estate. This is all the staff housing. Bit gloomy inside but clean. Handbasin not for the faint hearted though!! Flush toilet inside which is great!! The only trouble is that we have been given two plastic bowls, two plastic plates, two mugs and a spoon and fork each! Not a knife in sight nor a tin opener and who never thought to bring???

Anyway we [ I ,sorry Finlay it was me!] coped and we got some supperbefore the water and power were switched off. Then it is pitch black all night and I mean PITCH black!!

There is a fridge freezer and kettle so now we know for the future. As I now take our own white sheets and decent pillows we had a good nights sleep. Only one cockroach and very few insects about. We were woken up by water running so I had Ken outside with the torch but it was just the huge tank filling up!!

After breakfast we went down to the staff briefing at 7:45am. Oh dear that was the start of our interesting day. We were given the two day training that was expected from us at this meeting with a start time of 9am. Not a lot of time to plan two full days with teachers you don't know!!!!!!!!

But then the briefing changed somewhat. There had obviously been some sort of incident the week before and basically some staff feel threatened especially if they try and correct students behaviour. Things had blown up over the weekend, this is a large mixed boarding school, and some staff said they didn't feel safe teaching. So after an hour of us feeling a bit in the way, Ken spoke up and it was agreed that they would hold meetings with the students, then come back for another meeting etc. So it is now 5pm and the Governors have just come in from Madang. I have stayed in the house all day as it's a difficult situation. Ken has been asked to go to the meeting but declined. He's now sitting down new the staff room in case they want an evening session but I'm against that as some are very emotional and it's the last thing they want in an evening.

So my tin opener hasn't arrived so it's back to Ken's Swiss Army knife [thank you Simon] and everything in one saucepan!! We had a good lunch of chickenwith anything that I'd brought thrown in for a hearty casserolewith yam chips I'd made and tonight it might just be left over casserole with noodles thrown in and that's real PNG fare!!