After nine months on home assignments Steve and Gerdine Stanley were amazed how familiar everything felt even after the first week back in Kovol. They feel like they are home. However, having had no internet for the last 30 days they have felt somewhat isolated at times.
For the most part Steve can communicate what he wants to say in the Kovol language, and he was glad to discover that his speaking ability had not degraded a lot while away. Small talk is not a problem at all, but he still finds himself out of his depth when explaining deeper ideas.
He had a discussion with a group of people from a village two hours away about the upcoming literacy class. They are very excited about it. He felt the need to communicate to them the idea that they themselves will need to wait for a bit. The first class will be 12 students from the local area. The course of daily lessons will last 5-6 months. It isn’t feasible for people living two hours away to make the commute each day.
They plan to train some of the graduates to become literacy teachers. The second course will hopefully see Kovol teachers in training and eventually the people will continue the teaching themselves. In a similar way they expect that eventually students from the far away villages will board in their village, become literate and go on to learn how to teach the course themselves. When villages have trained teachers they can build a classroom ready for literacy to be taught.
The villagers where the missionary team live have built the literacy classroom and made desks. It was a huge task framing the roof and walls with bamboo, and then gathering leaves and weaving them into a thatch.
Who to choose as the first students was an important decision. They wanted a mix of ages, previous reading experience, genders and dialects. The Kovol people would prefer an equal split for each village and clan. It seemed an impossible challenge to keep everyone happy with their choices. Twelve students is an intentionally small class to make sure each student has a lot of teacher time and thus a high chance of success, but it also means the vast majority of people have not been invited.
Steve’s co-worker, Philip, has been checking through the literacy programme that Steve created, catching the times where the tenses in the stories are incorrect, or stories make no sense to him or his helper. A fresh set of eyes is invaluable for improving how each story reads. When checked through and finalised the programme will be looked over by literacy consultants. Then it will need printing, and weather allowing, a helicopter can deliver the printed materials ready for the first students.
Steve says, “It does feel like starting with a whimper, rather than a bang. After all this time of language learning, excitement is high because the “school” is finally starting. Our focus is on long term outcome rather than hype and excitement… but I’m serving a God who can multiply it in a way that focusses attention on Him.”
They began pre-literacy classes with the first students this week.
Thank you for continuing to pray for the Kovol people of Papua New Guinea.