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Heather in Neverland

By Heather in Neverland,
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Heather in Neverland

Heather in Neverland

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Sorry! I am totally exhausted. I got home very late at night and started back to work the next morning. I haven't stopped moving since.

 

There is so much to tell I don't know where to begin. I wrote about it for a grad school class I am taking so I will copy that here. It will give you a good idea of what I was doing there:

 

In 1969, with the blessing of the United States and the United Nations, the Indonesian government held a vote to decide if the areas known as Papua and West Papua should be integrated into the country of Indonesia. The result was a landslide in favor of it. Unfortunately, those voting were hand-picked by the Indonesian military and many were forced at gunpoint to vote in favor of this. The political situation in Papua has spiraled downward ever since.

 

I am writing this post from inside a home in a tiny village in the highlands of Papua. It took 19 hours to get here from Malaysia and included 5 different planes, two of which were crop-dusters. This village is unreachable except by plane. One of my layovers was in an even smaller village, whose name I do not know, where I sat on a rock under a tree next to a dirt runway for two hours while a group of villagers gathered around me and just smiled at me. I had to get special permission from the government to go “interior†because there is so much fighting between the military and the rebels of the Free Papua Movement and so many human rights violations here that they keep out anyone suspected of being a journalist.

 

It was a harrowing journey but it was worth it because I am here to do teacher training for a small school with big hopes. My school has partnered with this village school in an effort to provide them with professional development and curriculum assistance they otherwise would never have. The struggles this school faces in terms of diversity, equality and social justice are of the level most of us cannot fathom.

 

It begins with the politics. As Chauvel’s 2005 study on the roots of Papuan nationalism showed, Papuans share a historical grievance about the manner in which their homeland was integrated into Indonesia and, due to all the Indonesian settlers, are of the belief that Papuans have been dispossessed, marginalized and are becoming extinct in their own land (Chauvel, p. 9).

 

My friends here are Americans and they moved to this small village in Papua 15 years ago to do community development. The situation here was dire and they realized that there is one good possibility for bringing the community together… education. I spent the last four days meeting with my friends, interviewing them regarding the issues they face here in terms of equity and social justice. To call these issues “ detractors†is a serious understatement. I asked Scotty what his vision was for this learning community. His words were powerful:

 

“For the 30 minutes before this interview, the leader of the freedom movement and his entourage have been talking to me about enrolling his child in our kindergarten. He has to come to my house at night because he will be arrested and killed if he is seen during the day. His child will now be classmates with several kids of Indonesian military here in Bokondini. My vision is that slowly these kids, this little Papuan son of the Papuan freedom fighter and the little Indonesian son of the military man, will see each other as human, as brothers, as friends. When the parents see how their kids act towards each other they will be far more likely to lay down their 40 year grudge and desire for revenge and come together in unity. When the two little boys are playing together on the soccer team and both fathers are cheering for the same side it will have a profound affect. The atrocities committed by both the freedom fighters and the Indo military are horrible. Rape, torture, murder... I don't believe these little classmates will support that kind of behavior.

 

Indonesia is built on a status system that was left by the caste system when Hindu princes ruled this nation for 400 years. In Papua girls are essentially owned and are treated in many ways like slaves. We write contextual stories that deal with the deep cultural beliefs that support these aspects of the culture and in a forum discussion between the child and parents they have to talk through this. The little 7 year old girl after reading the story to her father asks the question, "Why are boys more important than girls?" Because of the story, he finds it hard to answer because for the first time in his life he has to question a cultural norm that he has always assumed was the right thing. Our education promotes equal opportunity for girls and boys and we have a roughly equal number of male and female students. In the highlands only about 10% of girls graduate from high school. We are different and proving that girls are just as capable and smart as boys in school.

 

Each generation the system becomes more oppressive and abusive than before. Teachers here regularly beat students down physically and emotionally telling them how stupid they are. Those who can tolerate the system for 12 years "succeed" and then become the teachers for the next generation. This system has been perpetuated from the original Dutch colonists to the Indonesians to the Papuans. The greatest abusers of the Papuans right now are other Papuans.

 

Sixty years ago there was constant tribal war among these Papuan clans and ritual cannibalism, the ultimate form disrespect for the enemy. So the fact that nobody killed or ate each other today in class is wonderful progress. In our operational board meeting we talked about how the men from the four clans here have to get along for our school to be able to prosper. Each clan tries to block the other clan from every opportunity, such as coming to our school, and open the opportunity for their own clan. This is tribalism at work.â€

 

Scott and Heidi brought me in to train Papuan teachers, locals. However, I am not here to tell them how everything they are doing is wrong and they should all do it the white man’s way. And I am also not here to tell them that they are doing everything correctly because they aren’t. One area I am working with them on is classroom management. When I asked the teachers how their teachers handled classroom management when they were children I got these answers:

- I was whipped with electric cords.

- I was hit in the head.

- I was forced to crawl across the schoolyard in the mud.

- I had to salute the Indonesian flag all day.

- I was called stupid, idiot, brainless.

- My teacher rubbed eraser dust on my face and in my hair.

- My teacher wrote “idiot†on my face.

- I was forced to eat raw taro.

 

Fear, abuse and intimidation are a way of life here. But these teachers want to do better. We spent a lot of time talking about methods of POSITIVE classroom discipline and how these methods could be adapted to fit their classrooms and culture. Then I modeled it for them and we role-played situations where they could use them. Their assignment was to pick one method and incorporate it into their class the next day. I observed the classes and gave feedback at the end of that day and we talked about how to sustain these methods. I am here to help them integrate what they know to be true and right in their culture with best practices from educators in other countries and give these best practices their own Papuan flair.

 

Another strategy we are employing here is teaching reading and writing of English to their students along with the official Indonesian language. I met today with teachers and top community leaders and they were very enthused about this possibility. I convinced them that it is possible to learn English without sacrificing their mother tongue. To a people afraid of cultural genocide, this is very important.

 

I feel incredibly blessed to be a part of what is happening in this community and I hope to come here every 6 months for the foreseeable future to continue professional development with this team. In the end, I learn more about leadership in a learning community focused on social justice by coming here than I could ever learn from a book.

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