| By Mark Wanner, Zoological Manager, Emerson Children's Zoo November 2003 was an exciting month for the Tree Kangaroo Conservation Program (TKCP) and me. A Saint Louis Zoo Field Conservation (FC) grant given to Providence, Rhode Island’s, Roger Williams Park Zoo (RWPZ) provided funds with which to add an additional educator to a team going to Papua New Guinea (PNG). The intent of the project was to teach in the classrooms of five remote villages and then to present each instructional unit at the first-ever TKCP Teacher Workshop in Isan, PNG. Happily we were able to do all this and even more. As for me, I had the good fortune to be selected to fill the final slot. This was my first major trip abroad, and one to a place I have studied and long dreamed of visiting. Carrying radically downsized and repacked gear and all my curriculum material, I arrived at Los Angeles International Airport and joined RWPZ educators Chris “Doyle” Doyle and Chris “Hitch” Hitchener. (They soon lost their familiar monikers to become “Chris-meri” and “Chris-man” to the natives.) We flew to Brisbane, Australia, and met Lou Perroti, the third RWPZ member of our team. He and Doyle regaled PNG first-timers Hitch and me with many stories on our flight to Port Moresby, PNG. The most important thing they said was that PNG is the “Land of the Unexpected.” They were right! At Port Moresby, PNG, we walked right through immigration and the metal detectors with no one there to greet us! We hurried through the two-room airport to catch our connecting flight to Lae, PNG. Three hours later the loudspeaker belched forth the message that our flight had been delayed another six hours. This is where I learned the PNG motto, “hurry up and wait!” Our seasoned travelers just happened to know of the only hotel/bar to which we could take a public motor vehicle, which, itself offers an experience that everyone must try at least once in a lifetime. (It helps prove beyond doubt that PNG is the “Land of the unexpected.”) While waiting for our ride, Brett Smith, an Australian tree kangaroo keeper and member of the TKCP team, joined us, and a bit later we reached our destination, the Lae International Hotel. Here, with the rest of the team, we spent the next three days prepping for a month of team teaching and buying school supplies that were boxed up and flown to the five villages we were scheduled to visit over the next 23 days. On November 1, the teams flew out of Lae, headed for the village of Yawan, the first of the villages. Nothing could have prepared me for the experience I was about to embark upon. While the cities of Port Moresby and Lae are bustling, crowded and somewhat dangerous, the extreme opposite was true of the beautiful village into which we flew. As we prepared to land our small Cessna on the mountain airstrip, I saw an enormous waterfall, beautiful flowering plants and the Yawan villagers running toward the strip from all directions. We deplaned to the stares of the villagers. Dono, the community leader, and his wife Eni, an elementary school teacher who is in charge of the village school, were the first to greet us. Once they welcomed us, the rest of the village approached, shook our hands, touched and laughed at us and smiled. We were accepted and welcomed. Overwhelmed by emotion, my tears flowed. Lisa Dabek, RWPZ conservation and research director, had to reassure the villagers that my tears were good ones and that I wasn’t having a nervous breakdown. Harmony Frazier, director of conservation at Woodland Park Zoo (WPZ), was experiencing the same happy tears. Shortly thereafter, our pre-trip efforts were put to the test. For this initial venture, three zoos, SLZ, RWPZ and WPZ participated in the creation of teaching units dealing with selected world cultures. The two from RWPZ were on Native American culture, specifically Rhode Island’s Narraganset people. SLZ educators developed units on three cultures: Inuit, Masaii and Aborigine. In addition, a Bug Club curriculum was produced by WPZ. It was a challenge, as more than 800 languages are spoken in New Guinea; each village has its own! Therefore, lessons were based on visual, tactile and interactive information, and were designed to be left at each village for teachers and students to learn. Local teachers and villagers were so impressed with our efforts, they wanted to show and teach us their own culture from which we could prepare units to teach during a trip in 2004. With video recorder, waterproof pen and pad and umbrellas in hand, we were treated to a series of spectacles that were firsts for TKCP. Each was like seeing pages from back issues of National Geographic come to life while standing beside Margaret Mead! The villagers, with the help of several elders, recreated time-honored ceremonies for us. In traditional dress, they staged a marriage (with an actual offering of a pig that was eaten by the village and us that evening) and a rite of passage. They demonstrated gardening and hunting and how to make fire, spears, bows, arrows, grass skirts and the bilum (a woven bag used for everything). It was absolutely overwhelming! Once back in St. Louis with time to reflect on my trip, I found it difficult to express to anyone the experience through which I had gone. I engaged, laughed, danced, sang, ate and cried with people from some of the most remote villages on the planet. I went to PNG to teach about world cultures, and in turn wastaught what life has been like for thousands of years. It was without a doubt a life-changing experience!
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