Korowai teacher training workshop

Yayasan Suluh had asked me to come to Papua again in August to help give a teacher training workshop for the Korowai teachers, together with Lukas Hawiih, the teacher/evangelist of Sinimburu.

I agreed to do that, saying that I could not be involved in any of the preparations, due to my other tasks. This turned out to not be feasible. Alice and Telma from Suluh had to prepare the workshop and they really needed my help with a lot of things. They themselves do not speak Korowai and the reading and writing method we developed in the past is quite different from the methods they worked with before.

So I cancelled my trip to Papua in order to also have time to work on my other tasks. I proposed Alice and Telma to prepare the workshop together with Lukas Hawiih, but that did not work out. Lukas was hard to reach and Suluh did not have money to fly him out to town.

So, in August, Telma and Alice flew to the village of Danowage and gave this first workshop. The Korowai teachers from Yaniruma, Sinimburu and Afiuumabul all came to Danowage using their own tranportation. Lukas Hawiih was one of the teachers from Yaniruma and Telma and Alice prepared the training sessions together with him.

Lukas taught literacy for several years in Sinimburu using this method, so it was not difficult for him to teach this to the other teachers.

With a bag full of Literacy materials and a solid preparation, the teachers returned to their respective villages. Last month, several of them sent us pictures of how they were now teaching the children in their villages using this method. That was very encouraging to see. In November I hope to meet some of these teachers myself when I go to Papua again to join Suluh for a follow-up workshop.