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| Muschu and Kairiru Island from Boutique Hotel, Wewak Hill |
We
were excited, sad, and also afraid of the journey. There were a lot of people
on Wom Beach that day. The crowd was there to see the journey we were to
take across the sea to the island known as Kairiru. Most of the year seven boys
on the school barge had never been on a boat, let alone have any experience of
the sea. The atmosphere was one of anxiety, despair, and trepidation. We just
imagined where we were going to on this first boat trip. Our parents probably
held their own fears at bay about releasing us off to a strange place. We held
on to anything on the boat that can keep us steady and safe.
The moment I stepped onto the school barge I
knew the journey to the world beyond familiar shores had begun. I was excited
more than worried, as might have been the case with many of the new faces I was
on the boat with. I was fortunate that I had three other cousins travelling
with me on this trip. We were starting year seven together so we could look out
for each other.
The boat left Wom Beach on reverse outward to
the open sea. From the barge we waved to our families and relatives on the
beach, who became smaller and smaller until they disappeared in the mass of land
we had just left. The boat we were later to become accustomed to as our link
with the mainland was named Tau K. The boat was an old Australian navy barge
donated to the school. As Tau K positioned itself between the Wewak mainland
and the Muschu Island the sea began its initiation of the boys who would accept
the sea as an important element in their lives.
I tried to ignore the sea spray on us. Some of
the boys suffered seasick along the way. The journey from Wom Beach was almost
an hour and a half before we saw the Shokailal Point and the St. Johns
Seminary. St Xavier’s High School was hidden from us for most of the journey
until we navigated around the western point of the island.
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| Teaser cover of forthcoming personal memoir |
St Xavier’s High School started in 1932, when
it started as a small catechetical school in Marange, near Boiken mission
station. Lawrence
McCane FMS wrote about the Marist Brothers and their part in setting up the St
Xavier’s High School. In Melanesia
Stories: Marist Brothers in Solomon Islands and Papua New Guiea 1845-2003,
published by the Marist Brothers at the Divine Word University, Madang, McCane writes that the language of instruction
at that time was Tokpisin language for the students. According
to McCane (2003) Father Andreas Mueller, S.V.D. was in charge of the school for
the first few years until he decided to move the school to Kairiru Island, a
move he deliberately masterminded to stop students from drifting back to their
villages. Bishop Loerks, the first Bishop of Central New Guinea (Wewak area,
west of the Sepik River) had set up his mission headquarters at St Johns Seminary
in 1928. St Xavier’s High School was set up on sixty acres (twenty-four
hectares) of land, with gentle slopes running from the mountain into the ocean.
Brother Patroclus Appeldorn, a German SVD Brother and two Holy Spirit Sisters
assisted Father Mueller from 1936 onward until the invasion of Kairiru Island
by the Japanese during the Second World War in 1942. The tragedy that unfolded
in 1943 was that the Japanese executed all of them including Bishop Loerks and
Father Mueller on board the Japanese destroyer Akikaze Maru. St Xaviers and St
Johns Seminary were obliterated during the war as the war progressed. Brother
Patroclus was spared from the execution as he was away in Marienberg was the
Japanese invaded Kairiru Island. He returned later after the Second World War
to rebuild St Xavier’s High School. Soon after the war Fr. Leo Arkfeld, the
American missionary from Nebraska was appointed as the replacement for Bishop
Loerks. Fr. Arkfeld began his work in the middle of the Second World War in
1943, starting in Lae, and gaining his flying license as a pilot in 1948,
earning his reputation in later years as ‘the flying Bishop’ of Central New
Guinea. Bishop Arkfeld appointed Brother Patroclus to return to Kairiru to
rebuilt St Xaviers. Father Frank Mihalic SVD was later appointed by Bishop
Arkfeld to join Brother Patroclus. By late 1948 St Xaviers was re-opened for
students to return to the school. The Marist Brothers arrived in 1959 almost 11
years under the SVD missionaries in the likes of Brother Patroclus and Fr.
Frank, who had done more in rebuilding the school to a level accepted by the
Bishop.
Brother
Baptist Faulkner and Brother Canute Sheehan were the first Marist Brothers from
Brothers of Melbourne Province, Assumption College, Kilmore, set up the Marist
presence in mainland New Guinea, starting their teaching at St Xavier’s High
School. They started teaching Standard One to Standard Nine. From this humble
beginning the School went from the Australian curriculum on English,
Mathematics, History, Geography, Science and Religious Studies to the PNG
curriculum in later years.
It is this first journey that remained vivid in
my mind after so many years. I can never forget that trip that changed me,
shaped me, prepared me to face the bigger challenges, and let me to become
someone I never thought I would become. It is this first sea journey that linked me to the world beyond the
doors of my ancestors. It was this first sea journey to Kairiru Island that
served as the link I made between my parents’ world and the world beyond our
immediate environment.
The world that I was born into was the deep
forest in the Prince Alexandra Mountain Ranges. It was a world of the mountain
people. It was a different world to the world of the ocean going people. I had
made the bridge between the mountain life and the sea world.
I chose to attend the St. Xavier’s High School
instead of Brandi High School in Wewak. I chose to attend the Catholic Marist
High School because it would help me to stay focused on my studies. The decision
to attend St. Xaviers was done without the consent of my parents. Many of the
classmates I had in Mongniol had applied to Brandi and Mercy College Yarapos to
begin their year seven.
My parents had nothing to do with the choice I
made on which high school to attend. I was a decision maker at the age of 13, without
knowing where the road led would end. I was confident of myself. I became
literate, conscious of the world around me, and knew that I will become someone
important someday.
All I thought about at that time was to become
a lawyer. In those days a lawyer was the same as a magistrate in court. It was
the power that they wielded in their robes, courtrooms, court rituals, and the
decisions that they made regarding a man’s life that rubbed off on me in a
permanent way. I made up my mind to become a lawyer then. How and what I must
do to become one I had no idea. I held on to the idea as the inspiration to
succeed in school at least for the four years I was on Kairiru Island.
Such an idea was packed into an old suitcase
marked with red and black strips around it. The suitcase belonged to my mother.
It was my mother’s idea. I did not have much to pack. All I had was a new
bed-sheet, a new towel, two khaki pants, two shorts, two shirts, and a pillow.
As a carry-on I had one of those small green rucksack, a favorite of mine in
the late 1970s. I had only what I can take with me to last for the whole year
in school away from home. In later years I swapped the green rucksack for a
side-hung bag made from a used 10 kg Trukai rice bag. We also carried with us a
bag of taro or yams to supplement the school diet of rice, sago, and sweet
potato (kaukau) with canned mackerals.
After two hours on the rough sea we arrived at
the jetty. It was a relief to get off the boat, to stand on hard soil, to feel
the roughness of the earth again. The feeling was one of purpose now that I was
back on land. The jetty was connected to a gravel track linking the St.
Martin’s Primary School and the St. Xavier’s High School. An airstrip for
planes to land separates the primary school from the high school. A tractor made its way to the jetty. It was a beautiful place with clean lawns,
coconuts, scattered iron roof buildings, slopping green hillsides, and a
towering mountain reaching the clouds. It was perfect as a getaway from the
mainland.
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| Out Into the Deep from Wom Beach |
Across the narrow passage is the Muschu Island,
more flat than the Kairiru Island. The two islands a closer to each other that
I would one day swim with my cousin across the narrow passage. Kairuri is
mountainous that it rains often, filling the Lake on the summit with water that
flows down both sides of the island. It is believed that the water from the
lake, known as Malanges, also flows through an underground tunnel across the passage
and comes out on Big Muschu station. That is possible given the proximity of
the two islands.
At least the first experience of living away
from my father’s house prepared me to stand up on my own two feet and to fend
for myself. I accepted the experience as the foundation of my later life. In
many ways the moment I stepped on Kairiru Island I knew I was going somewhere.
The first years on the island had done more to shape me in mental strength as
well as in physical strength. The third element that was instilled into my life
was spiritual strength that would define the kind of person I became in my
life. Religion, mental preparation and strength, and hard work were solid
foundations for my cohort. Discipline, humility, poverty, and perseverance are
keys to high achievers.
The school motto is Duc in Altum means “Put
out into the Deep” (Luke 5:4). My
generation thought it meant “Reach for
the Stars”; even to this day many former students tend to think of the
motto as “Reach for the Stars” though it means “Put Out Into the Deep” as it
comes from the Gospel of Luke Chapter 5 verse 4.
There was no lowest for us. No one was lowest
to another. Always aim for the highest results. Highest points are the measure
of the ideal student in St. Xavier’s High School in those years. We scored our
own individual highest points in different fronts of our lives.
I scored my own highest points in literature
without realizing it. By the time I started grade seven in 1978 I read stories
and books Papua New Guineans wrote and published in the early 1970s. I took
great delight in learning about the world outside of my own through these
writings. I read Paulias Matane’s Aimbe,
the Challenger, Vincent Eri’s The
Crocodile, and Sir Albert Maori Kiki’s Ten
Thousand Years in a Lifetime, books that became important to me later in
life. In The Night Warrior and Other
Stories from Papua New Guinea edited by Ullie Beier, I read stories such as
“ “The Night Warrior” by Wauru Degoba, “A Bride for Hwekao” by Lazarus
Hwekmarin, “The Bird Calls” and “Matuda’s Departure” by Arthur Jawodimbari,
“Tax” by John Kadiba, “Our Mouth” by Kumalau Tawali, “Man on the Moon” by
Lazarus Hwekmarin, “Riotous Soccer” by John Saunana, “Seduction” by Maurice
Thompson, “The Portrait of the Odd Man Out” and “Glimpse of the Abbys” by
Russell Soaba, “He Took the Broom from Me” by Meakoro Opa, and “Betel Nut is
Bad Magic for Airplanes” by John Kasaipwalova. All these were part of the
pioneering Pacific Writers Series published by The Jacaranda Press, in Brisbane,
Australia. I read those stories and others published in New PNG Writing and Kovave.
I also read Albert Wendt’s Flying Fox in
a Freedom Tree and Sons for the
Return Home. I began reading stories and books written by Asian and African
writers.
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| Grade 7 Leo Class outside School Library. Teacher: Bill Braba. |
The St Xaviers library was one of the best
school libraries around the country at that time. The school library was the
best in the province. The architecture was unique reflecting a traditional
‘meeting house’ from the Maprik area. The library building occupied the best spot
in the school, built on the slope overlooking the school, and out into the sea
and Muschu Island. It had the total command of the view. It looked like a
church on the hill, but this was the school library. The pyramid-structured
library occupied the top hilly side of the school. The school library was a hub
of activities every day except the weekends. The popular books among the
students were Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure
Island, Allan Paton’s Cry the Beloved
Country, Daniel Defoe’s Robson Crusoe,
and Vincent Eri’s The Crocodile. There
were others that we read at this time. Our seniors were responsible for
introducing us to these novels. In a way my introduction to literary works were
limited to what we were introduced to in high school.
I delved into the literary world of books
without realizing I was preparing myself to be a writer some day. The world of
literature opened itself to me but the word “Literature” and what it means now,
was never part of the vocabulary in those days. If I knew what I know and live
now it would have been a different story altogether. All I knew at that time
was that the world literature belonged outside of my reality, perhaps in the
world of Europe as it would be later introduced to me as closely aligned with
the British literature of the 16th century to those of 18th century. Little did
I know that literature itself was transformed from a high culture to one that
would become an instrument of political agitation for Independence in PNG.
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