‘A great way to grow up’

At school I spent most of my time at breaks in the sandpit, finding clay and making stuff and building water systems. The lessons were less interactive than in the UK and the materials there were not as good.

After school I’d walk home with friends. It was only a 10-minute walk and on our centre so it was safe. I’d get home, have a drink and snack and then I’d go outside and play with friends in the neighbourhood until it was time for dinner. We played in our garden, at the ‘park’ – a play area near our house that was like a meeting point for kids – or at people’s houses. There was a cool house/climbing frame thing to play in with a sandpit underneath.

I remember being outraged I had to wear shoes at school!

You could always knock on someone’s door and ask them to play

The kids in school in the UK are a lot worse behaved and rude to teachers compared to my school in PNG where everyone was a Christian, or from a Christian family.

Here we can see extended family lots, but in PNG we were 10 time zones away and Skype wasn’t very good so it was hard to talk with family. The internet wasn’t great where we were.

What my parents did in PNG

My mum was a mum – a very good mum. In PNG she had to cook everything from scratch, as food is less available there. In the UK we still do that because it’s what we’re used to, but there are lots of choices of things to make meals more interesting. In the UK we can just go to shops and buy things we need or want, whereas in PNG we had to order things online three months in advance, because that’s how long it takes for post to arrive, and there weren’t any shops near us. Mum also worked for EC [Executive Committee], which made important decisions.

We had to order things online three months in advance

What I have learnt

I know more than most people in the UK about geography, countries and different places – we learned about that in school in PNG. People in the UK seem insensitive about other cultures. We learned about different cultures in our PNG school because everyone came from different countries.

I know more about American culture, because a lot of people working for SIL* in PNG were American. Obviously I know more about Papua New Guinea than most people! In a quiz at school I knew the answer to the question ‘Which country owns West Papua?’ and no one else did.

It was a great way to grow up, a really nice childhood. I got to learn about other cultures and met lots of nice people. It has been hard moving back to a very different place, but worth it overall, I think.

*SIL is Wycliffe’s primary partner organisation. The title image shows an aerial view of the SIL Linguistic Center in Ukarumpa, PNG.