Its Past Glory

If there was anything from the experience I remembered the fond memories I have of making the first plane ride from the school airstrip to Wewak over Muschu Island. It was the beginning of many flights I would make in later years as I grew up and flew across seas and continents to places I have never thought I would visit. The plane was a one engine propelled plane that was operated by the Catholic Church in Wewak.

Unexpected things do happen sometimes in my life. On 14^th January 2019 I got on a dinghy with Thorsten Trimmpop and Michael, my friends from the USA heading out of Wewak town. We were heading into the open sea with the wind and sea picking up the wind and waves that saw out ride to Kairiru Island a bit rough.

I was used to rough seas, but not my two friends. The trip to the Island was supposed to be about 30 minutes, but I swear it could have been more than that. Not until we came around the Muschu Island made headed into the canal separating Muschu and Kairiru did we get a much more comfortable ride.

I hesitated taking the trip because of what it meant for me to make that trip I had done many years ago between 1978 and 1981. Those were years I spent as a 13-16 years old boy attending the St Xaviers High School on Kairiru Island. Those were years I began to grow up without my family, living with other boys from the Sepik area, in a mission school away from family and comforts of home. I’d like to think of it as a prison of some sort, for young boys surrendered as it were to the church’s disciplinarian life.  We were young boys growing up as teens and learning all we need to make it into the world. Most of us felt we were prepared for a larger cause, because our school in those days was one of the top performing schools in the country.

At least for me I wanted to go to Island but not with empty hands. I owe the school a lot for bringing me up the way it did and preparing me to be the person I am today. My plan was give back something to the school, but I was not ready for that yet as we came ashore to a shocking experience.

I noticed the jetty was all rubble and nothing much remain of it. The airstrip where we worked very hard as school punishment to remove the reeds for the extension was now overgrown with the same plants we were forced to remove. It is now no longer and airstrip as a house was built right in the centre of the runway. I later found out it was the house belonging to the priest.

Confronting the negation in the first few steps of my return to the place I call home for four years of my teen life, I had a hard time focusing on retrieving from my memory pieces of my life. In front of my was the only dormitory that accommodated the Grade 10s, and toilet next to it was also shattered.

A few steps past the toilet I stood on concrete that marked the Grade 9 dormitory which is no longer there. Dormitories that were housed the Grade 7-9 students were all demolished, leaving only the shattered remnants of the once lively dormitories. The swimming pool is still there. The practical skills building and the expressive arts building are still where there were in the past, except that they has rusted aluminium roofs and evidence of abandonment, as evidenced with the presence of Tau K, the school barge that ferried us in our years.

I could hear voices and laughter all around me. I vividly recall memorable moments in the school during my years. It was kind of seeing a movie reeling on revealing the past against the backdrop of a broken and shattered school. It felt like I was in a scene with places destroyed by bombs during a way.

I had mixed feeling as I walked into the school ground. It felt unwelcoming and yet sadness hung in the air as if this place had surrendered to the negation of time tricked by people with nothing to be proud of. It was hardening to stand there taking in the emptiness and abandonment of the place. It was troubling to just imagine what could have gone wrong, let alone bring down a school of high reputation, measured by its excellent output.

Here was the school that I began my reading into the literatures of the world and of out time. Here is the school with the library that I have fond memories of it. I felt a great lost of my history in the building, which was the central attraction of the school in the days I was a student there.  The library was the most beautiful and central building for us as students there.

In the very moment I stood facing the library I looked down and saw the classroom I used as the Grade 7 classroom in 1978. Much of that period is now deeply buried in memory. I recalled the experience I had with the classroom next door. It was where I wanted to describe a ‘boil’ on the body as a “buk” instead of a boil. My first confusion with, language differences between English and Tokpisin, languages. Brother Albert acted as if he did not hear me. I learnt my lesson.

St Xaviers was left standing the way I found it 40 years later on my return. It was a haunting experience, one that shook me a little and left me more sad than I expected. It was not the best experience to the one I left 40 years ago. Nonetheless, returning to the grounds that help many memories encouraged me to get my memoir published without haste.

One the way back we took the side facing the Wom Beach. A short nap removed all the haunting experience I had on that return to St Xaviers.

I hope to return to the school in future in a better state of mind—this time more prepared and with some gifts to the school.