student's dinner

For yesterday we had offered our students to make their final farewell dinner at our place, as the students hardly have any other possibility to gather casually within their tight financial restrictions. So at 1 PM the first group of girls came to our place, packed with fresh veggies and other products from the market to start cooking with us together some traditional PNG dishes. As the class has 30 people, there was a lot of stuff to be cooked. In parallel, the guys arrived with firewood and politely asked the neighbor, a lecturer from the communication arts department, if we could use their fireplace. The boys prepared the “pseudo national” food – the famous lamb flabs. These are lamb belly pieces, part of meet that is not used for consumption in other parts of the world. They are produced in Australia and New Zealand and shipped in frozen big cubes to PNG. It is the cheapest meat available and a major source for animal fat and protein. Not sure if I would eat this in Europe, but here they were delicious, grilled with Ginger and lemongrass.

So it was a very nice scenery for the afternoon, everybody busy preparing things and we had the chance to chat with the girls about their life growing up in PNG.

Around 5PM everybody returned to the dorms to freshen up for dinner. When all people were there, Gaius, the key organizer of the party, made a speech, reminding of the special occasion and that soon will be graduation and the students will not see each other again so often. Of course he also thanked Fabienne and myself for hosting us. Then another guy of the class was giving a prayer in which everybody was expected to join in. We are clearly at a Catholic University.
The table and kitchen area was bending under the piles of dishes that had been prepared: creamed banana, chicken and veggie hot pot, sweet potatoes, banana saksak, potato salad, veggies in coconut sauce, lamb flabs, Aibigar veggie salad, lemon cake etc… Fabi and myself were asked to start serving ourselves first, which is a great honor, as normally men eat first in PNG. A rule, which is still highly respected. So under great laughters, we started filling our plates and sat down, enjoying the delicious meal. Although serving happened in mixed gender, eating was then again fairly separated.

I was amazed how quickly the pots and bowls emptied, no wonder, the big highlands guys are eating a lot and most students skipped lunch that day. It was a nice, casual gathering with good conversations and real PNG music. Some of the girls started dancing and we taught a smaller group how to play “Kings” (Arne, thanks for introducing that game to me ;-)) and had soooo much fun!
At around 9PM the traditional Melanesian way of dealing with farewells started. So we turned off the music and everybody who wanted was giving a little speech about the past four years of studying together and special occasions during that time. Some got really emotional and some had great motivational speeches. At the end everybody was looking at me, and Peter, the toastmaster was announcing that I would now also be talking as the last person of the night. So I also did my speech, that I will miss the students and thanking them to welcome me so heartily in their group. Another prayer concluded the evening and for goodbye each one got a hug instead of the normal handshake. At 21:50h our house was empty, so that the girls would be back at the dorm on time. So when everybody was gone we looked around in the kitchen and the living room and could not believe what we saw: The entire house was more tidy and clean than it has probably ever been before. Not a single spoon was unwashed, all pots and bowls in place, the floor broomed and wiped, even the tablecloth was neatly folded. Not only had they brought every single item they needed for the dinner, they also left the venue in a perfect condition. Impressive!!! We should invite them weekly.

The next day at morning tea people were giving us a strange smile, asking us about how yesterday’s party went, although we did not tell them anything beforehand and some said something like “don’t get angry – just overhear that comment”. We had no clue what people where talking about until we were told that one of the lecturers had posted a highly disapproving comment into the staff intranet bulleting board about our gathering from last night. I was so puzzled by this; I decided to put it into the Blog. It is amazing how one could talk about students as if they were uneducated kids. Around a quarter of the students are married with kids and around 30 years old, the rest between 23-25…