 |
Marlene Schutter is
head of the music department and teaches
instrumental music at Ukarrmpa Internationsl School. |
We were blessed by the ministry of the music department at Ukarumpa International School, not only by the wonderful concerts but by the teachers who taught our kids in band. Thank you, Marlene!
Marlene writes:
I get to teach
instrumental music at the “ends of the earth”.
Well, that’s what one visitor said to me when he got off a little Cessna
206 after flying for two hours over heavy jungle terrain.
In reality though,
even though I am in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, I have much of
the same things you do. Running water
(until the drought we are having causes problems in that area!) and an indoor
toilet. My home is made of plywood and
on stilts for the sake of earthquakes, but hey, it’s home to me. We are 5000 feet above sea level, so even
though it is the tropics, it has gotten down to 54 degrees in my bedroom at
night. That’s right, there is no
insulation and I have louvered windows that add a little breeze through their ‘not
tight’ openings. When I have come back
to the States on furlough, people have been very generous in giving me things
to help decorate my home. I love
it…obviously, since I’ve been here for 35+ years!
We have one little
store on center that provides food and staples for us to buy. There are other stores in the larger towns
around PNG, but it takes traveling by vehicles (which I don’t own) and in some
cases, can be cause for concern for fear of holdups. We also have a fresh market produce on
Monday/Wednesday/Friday from 6-8am.
People come in from the villages for miles around to sell their
produce. Because of the drought, we are
seeing fewer people come because their gardens are drying up. This is a concern around the entire country
right now.
Ok, now that you have
an idea that I’m not really living in an uncivilized situation, I’ll tell you
about my school, UIS—(Ukarumpa International School). It has about 250 children in K-12. There have
been times when I have had thirteen different nationalities represented in my
band!
Our students consist of MK’s
(Missionary Kid’s), Papua New Guinea nationals, and commercial students whose
parents work in the area. Teachers come
from around the world to teach here. Not
for the money though. Each family or
single raises their own support through an organization called Wycliffe Bible
Translators (WBT-USA). I have four supporting
churches and many individual supporters that are faithful every month to send
money into WBT-USA for me. I sometimes
get surprises from people I don’t even know personally who have sent in money
for me to help meet some need that I might have. It’s called living on faith.
Several years ago
(2002), our music building was a classroom that had the lowest ceiling of all
the classes on campus. You know what that
can do to a director’s hearing! Not only
that, it had been built in the late 70’s and the beams were now rotted out,
there were cracks in the cement floor bringing with it dust and dirt, and black
mildew had overridden the place. (Remember:
tropics-rainy season-humidity. It
can do huge damage.) Because of working
in this environment, my asthma turned into pneumonia which turned into a life
threatening situation. I ended up in a
hospital in Cairns, Australia and had to spend two months recovering enough to
travel back to Grand Rapids, MI, my USA stomping grounds.
When I returned, the school
administration had people in the community come and try to clean the music
building up as much as possible for me, but determined that a new building is
what we needed. A new building wasn’t in
the school budget, so I set about raising $135,000 for it. It took a few years, but finally we were able
to move into a building that has over double the height of our last building
and big enough to set up the band on one side and the choir on the other! It’s been wonderful to work in an environment
that is now clean and I even have an air conditioner in my private lesson room. This helps keep things clean when people in
the valley are burning off the sides of the mountains to make their gardens. The smoke can be overwhelming.
We order music and
instruments from the States and a lot of it is shipped by boat that can take
months to get here. Let’s put it this
way: We have to plan ahead! The blessing we have is that we do have
internet…expensive, but I can listen to pieces and decide if that is really
what I want to do with my students. We
do have a large library as we have collected many pieced over the years. Some have only been used for sight-reading
because back before the computers, we ordered sight unseen or by word of
mouth. If we didn’t like it, we at least
used it for sight-reading!
Over the years, there
have been times when I was the only instrumental band person here. I would start beginners in 5th
grade, then middle school grades 6-8, and high school grades 9-12. I also started a Jazz band. I could say that those were the “good ole
days”, but to be really honest, if I hadn’t been young at that time, I’m not
sure I could have done it. I had to make
all my meals from scratch…homemade bread, etc. I didn’t have an automatic
washer that I could walk away from and come back later when it had run its
cycle. Don’t get me wrong, life was fun,
even with all the extra work that needed to be done at the time. Back in the early 80’s, we had one television
with video on center and two videos! (Roots and Against the Wind) We singles played a lot of games on weekends
or took motorbike rides down to the river to go swimming. Kids learned to play games using their
imagination…no electronics back then! It
really was a whole different world. The
world was moving on with electronics, and we were standing in place doing snail
mail. It took 4-6 weeks to get a letter,
then another 4-6 weeks before they would receive a reply. Phone calls were not existent for me unless
it was an emergency. It was way too
expensive to call out.
Ok, I’ve gotten off
the beaten path again! Sorry about that.
My professional
development over the years has included getting instrument repair help from a
gentleman who started the instrument repair school in Redwing, Minnesota. He was kind enough to spend two weeks with me
teaching the basics of instrument repairs so I would be able to do them when I
got back to PNG. No music shop to bring
broken springs, or bad pads to…just me at the time.
Over the years, more
people started coming to work in PNG and I have had three different guys and
one gal who have proven their worth in more ways than one in helping teach our
kids here in the UIS Music Department.
I’ve taught them what I know in instrument repair, but we also have
internet now and a lot of those things are on line, so that’s a big help.
Getting to go to the
Midwest Clinic has been so beneficial to me when I have been in the States
on furlough. It not only gives me new
ideas, it reinforces those things which I have been doing. Sometimes when you are alone in the middle of
nowhere, it’s easy to wonder if you are doing the right thing with your
students, or maybe there might be a better way and you haven’t heard about
it. Since we are the only school in the
country that has a band just like ours, we have no competition. When I go to a conference, I love hearing other
bands performing a piece that I’ve done with my group. I can’t help but think through what I’m
hearing and compare what my group has done.
My mind is saying… “yes, I like that” or, “I like the way my group was
able to do that…”
Over the years we have
had students performing
with well-known symphonies or orchestras not only in
the USA, but also in Europe. I’ve had a
student come back to visit who is now a band director in Texas. I say this because I have heard the comment,
“What good can come out of Ukarumpa, Papua New Guinea?” We have great kids, and it is a great place
to teach. Great things can come out of
Ukarumpa!
This past year I have
been going down to the capital city, Port Moresby, one weekend a month to train
teachers and help teach young Papua New Guinean children who have never seen a
“Western” instrumental band! This is a
new challenge for me. I am very grateful
for the people who donated instruments and music books for this group.
I’m looking at coming
back to the USA in 2020 to finally put roots down in my “home” country. Papua New Guinea will have been my home for
40 years by that time! I hope to settle
in the Grand Rapids, MI area and would love to give some lessons, maybe visit
some local bands. I can’t imagine my
life without music and kids!
If you'd like to learn more about Ukarumpa International School, click here.
