Mark's Say, June 2015
For those of you who’ve read Drusilla Modjeska’s most recent novel, The Mountain, you’ll be aware of her affection for the people of Papua New Guinea. The Mountain is set primarily in the lower reaches of Mt Lamington, an active volcano in Oro Province. Modjeska first went to PNG as the wife of a young academic, in the late 1960s, at a time full of optimism as the nation was preparing for independence. She began returning to PNG many years later researching The Mountain, often travelling with the late Sydney art dealer David Baker.
Baker had been going to PNG for many years collecting works for his gallery and during that time had provided assistance to many people in the remote communities, but his assistance was given in a rather ad hoc manner. When Baker died, Modjeska was inspired to provide lasting assistance to the people she’d grown so fond of. The communities were rich in cultural traditions but struggling to find a place and identity in a modern world; for many in the community literacy and education were the most important tools they needed to survive. So Drusilla founded SEAM – Sustain Education Art Melanesia – to help the communities.
She teamed up with supporters and advisors who included writer and publisher Hilary McPhee and architect Stephen Collier. The problem they wanted to solve was how to get effective educational resources into communities that can only be accessed by water or narrow tracks, and where the humid tropical conditions destroy resources exposed to the elements. Collier and Modjeska grappled with the problem, first thinking of a floating facility that could travel between communities. That idea was abandoned and Collier came up with the idea of a weatherproof box that could contain a couple of resource centres that would fold out with work spaces, blackboards, computers, books and other resources. The box would also contain a tent-like roof with drinking water collection facilities and solar panels to provide power.
I was so taken with the idea that The Readings Foundation gave some support to SEAM and a few weeks ago I travelled to PNG with Drusilla and Stephen to present the concept to the communities. Stephen brought with him a scale model of the newly named Schoolmate, or Wanskul in Pidgin, to show to the local communities. Over the week we travelled to different villages and attended meetings as Stephen presented and listened to comments; ‘This is how we think it will work; what do you think? What resources do you think you’ll need in it? How do you think it can best be used? Can you build the platforms to base it on? Will it be useful?’. At one meeting a man focused on the portability, thinking that the Schoolmate would not stay in the community. ‘I’m heartbroken,’ he said. Stephen was able to reassure him: ‘No, no, it’s portable so that you can carry it into your community; once you build the platform and set it up, it will stay in the village.’
In the village of Tainabuna we spent the day in the local school helping the kids to make books – chaotic and fun – and enlisting members of the community to become ambassadors for the project. It wasn’t hard – Lucy, a dynamic and articulate woman with three children in the school, volunteered to help form a committee to lay the groundwork for the project. ‘It is a very good thing, a very good thing, that Drusilla and Stephen do for us.’
The challenge now is to raise the money to build some prototypes – if you’d like to find out more or support the project, click here.
