Feature Photo: Students making their way to class.
AMS’s Projects and partnerships coordinator Ashley Bulgarelli updates us after his time in St Joseph’s College, Mabiri.
I eventually arrived at St Joseph’s College Mabiri, Central Bougainville, two days behind schedule. Between plane problems and car accidents, I was glad to be here. En-route I spent one night with the Marist Fathers in Buka and toured their Parish and the Diocese office. The Diocese of Bougainville covers the entire islands of Bougainville and I met with local Raymond, and discussed their plans to set up a radio station and print media. There are currently only two stations broadcasting throughout Bougainville. One of them is a PNG government station which means that should Bougainville attain independence in 2019, they would lose this station and have just one station nationwide and zero newspapers. The transmitting tower has been built and they are awaiting the construction of a few more buildings before broadcasting is planned to begin next year.
The Marist Brothers have been in Bougainville since before World War II and as a result the island has a very Marist feel. We met a middle-aged guy at the car Kokopoa station, on the southern bank of the channel across from Buka, who was a former Marist student. He was asking Br Mark about the latest happenings at the school and how the principal and his family were after being involved in an accident. He said to me, “we are old students but we are still Marist and like to know about the school”.
Six of us were crammed in the back of an old landcruiser for the three hour journey. The roads are almost entirely unsealed once you leave Buka and we were soon in the heart of the jungle, traversing no fewer than twenty river crossings – some with bridges, some with a concrete path, some with nothing. On the journey down to Mabiri you start to understand the challenges rural Bougainvilleans face due to the lack of infrastructure.
The school itself is a sprawling area hemmed in by thick swathes of bush and, like the rest of the island, emits a stifling equatorial heat. There is no electricity, only intermittent generator power, and rain is collected in water tanks to provide the entire school community with water for drinking, washing and cooking.
Over 600 students attend St Joseph’s with over half that number boarding on-site. To really understand the importance of St Joseph’s as an educational hub, one must remember that there are only two primary schools in the surrounding 40 kilometers, and it is one of only ten lower secondary schools in all of Bougainville. The education that is provided, ranging from Kindergarten, through elementary and primary, and into lower secondary and a vocational stream, is really the only chance that these children and young people will get at obtaining an education.
Originally built to educate ex-combatants from the ten year Bougainville crisis, the school continues to play a pivotal role in educating the future generations of this fledgling island, and maybe one day very soon, independent island nation.