Rabaul Part 2 – Master Chef Rabaul Delayed Due to Volcanic Eruption

Lights out the night before was at 10 p.m.  This is hours before I normally crawl into bed, but 40 kids, a flight, and the first day of exploring Rabaul definitely equated to exhaustion.  I woke up Wednesday morning with one thought – coffee!   I showered off as much of the sleepiness as I could and drug myself to breakfast.

“Miss Kaizar, what are we doing today?”

“My roommate got locked in the bathroom last night Miss Kaizar!”

“Miss Kaizar, did you see the volcano is smoking?  Look!”

“I like your shoes Miss Kaizar!”

“Miss Kaizar, check out my new shorts!” 

The moment I walked into the dining room, peace, quiet, and calm went screaming down the hall and dove right into the sea.  How is it possible for sixth grade girls to go from zero to sixty in two seconds flat?  [I apologize to my mother now, publicly, for all my sixth-gradeness back in Belgium.  Yes I feel sixth-gradeness should be officially added to the dictionary as it is the only all-encompassing way of describing girls of this age.]  Two plungers of coffee and only a few minor raises of my voice to impress the importance of being fed, dressed, and ready to board the bus at 8:30 later, we were on the road headed toward the market for our first activity of the day – The Market Challenge.

6K in front of the volcanoes at Simpson Harbour

Master  Chef Rabaul:

The Market Challenge: create the best lunch possible with only food purchased at the market

Judging Criteria: visual presentation and appeal, variety of foods served (number of food groups represented), number of courses prepared, and general tastiness

We pulled up to the Kokopo Market and filed out as orderly as ten, eleven, and twelve year olds are capable of.  The kids split into groups, were handed twenty kina (approximately $8 US), then were sent on their way.  This was very uncomfortable for many of my students.  In Moresby it is not safe for them to wander the markets without adult supervision.  They would surely be pickpocketed or hassled, possibly worse depending on the day and the location.  It was interesting to watch as they slowly trickled away in their groups from the meeting point.  Over the shoulder looks of tentativeness were thrown my way.  Some groups regularly searched me out just for visual contact.  Others kept their shopping to a safe distance from me or one of the other teachers with our group, before getting comfortable and just taking off. 

Andrew and I wandered the market tasting fluoro-red fruits (fluoro = fluorescent in Australian speak) that crunch like a capsicum when you bite into them, but are as sweet as candy, cracking soft green nuts with our fingers that are naturally salted to perfection, peeling back the skin and sucking the juice of the tastiest mandarins I have ever devoured.   

Students were returning to the bus with five and six plastic bags full of various foods – cooked fish and chicken wrapped and displayed in banana leaves, coconuts they’d asked locals to husk for them, bags brimming with fruits and vegetables, boiled eggs from bird nests located at the foot of the volcano Tavurvur.  Twenty Kina was about twelve kina too much for groups of three and four!  The markets in Moresby are nowhere near this inexpensive.  While loading the bags on the bus, I eagerly anticipated tasting many new fruits and vegetables – my kids know me well already: two things Miss Kaizar loves more than anything are 1) trying new things and 2) food!   They were definitely trying to earn Master Chef points while searching for items that fit both criteria at the market.

Next stop: the base of the volcano, Tavurvur, to see first-hand what we had been learning in class about natural disasters and the impact they have on both people and the environment.  We had no idea how much we would actually witness as we lugged our bags of food back on to the bus and left the market.

Before the eruptions in 1994, the Rabaul Airport was located at the base of the Tavurvur Volcano.  Airplanes circled Tavurvur as they came in for landing.  The airport, along with the rest of the town, was covered in meter upon meter of ash and was completely destroyed in 1994 when three of the volcanos in the Rabaul Cauldron erupted.  The airport was rebuilt on the outskirts of town and the rest of the town rebuilt a bit further from the volcanos, but honestly, not too much further away. 

The bus drove us toward Matupit Island and pulled to a stop at the foot of Tavurvur – right on top of the old airstrip.  We hopped out and played in the mounds of ash covering what used to be an airport, homes, and businesses.  We were being carefree and silly, running and posing in front of the volcano, but right beneath our feet are the remains of the broken lives of those people living in Rabaul in 1994 at the time of the last major eruption.  We were literally standing over the roofs of vehicles and homes.

After a review of volcanoes – types, sizes, formation, effects, etc. – we piled back into our bus, covered in ash, and headed toward the beach of Matupit Island.  As we drive closer to our destination we passed through local villages, discussed the impact the 1994 eruption had there, and marveled at the shear sight of the volcano. 

With no warning the sky filled with billowing grey smoke.  The bus goes silent for a brief (very brief) moment and then there is a roar of questions and various versions of “The volcano is erupting!”  A massive ash plume repeatedly belched out of the top of Tavurvur.  We drove on to the edge of the island, disembarked the bus and assembled on the edge of a hill top in absolute awe of what we were witnessing.  We climbed down the hill at the suggestion of some locals who had shown up to greet us. (This was an experience as well.  Back home we would be asking any unknown people to leave the area where we were having our field trip.  I remember being very concerned as a few adults walked through the park across from the St. Augustine Lighthouse during a picnic lunch with my grade level.  Here we welcomed the locals to join us, to talk to the children, to walk with us to the beach.  Is there really a better way to get a feel for life in a place so different from our own?)

                                                                                

  

The volcanoes in Rabaul had been completely inactive since the 2009 eruption – not even a bit of smoke or ash billowing out.  As we flew into Rabaul and glancing out the windows we looked down over dolphins playing in the pristine blue waters, we had an aerial view of the Rapopo Plantation Resort we are staying at, and we flew in sight of the smoking Tavurvur Volcano.   The morning we arrived was the first activity Rabaul had seen from a volcano since 2009.  This was the year TEMIS had postpone their Rabaul Excursion because of eruptions.

Words cannot even begin to describe the wonder of standing on a sandy beach with my sixth grade class looking across the water at a volcano erupting with one cloud of ash after another.  Teachable moment is an understatement – to be able to see a volcano in action first hand.  Speechless does not begin to describe my search for words to explain this natural phenomenon to my students. 

We took advantage of the opportunity to apply the journalistic writing and broadcasting skills we had been honing in Literacy to work in groups to prepare and film “Breaking News” segments.  Little did I know that this was just the beginning of the eruptions and this seemingly tailored-to-TEMIS learning experience.

(I have been trying to post the broadcast videos with no avail!  I'll try again when I'm in Japan later this week!!!!)