Immersive learning experience on a South Pacific island stretches Australian ninth graders physically and spiritually.
By Bobby Ross Jr. | The Christian Chronicle
PORT VILA, Vanuatu — The journey begins 1,200 miles — and a world — away.
Ninth graders at an affluent Christian school in Australia leave their smartphones at home and fly to this developing island nation in the South Pacific.
Students cram in the back of Kia K2700 trucks and gaze at houses with thatched roofs as they head to Narpow Point Education Centre, about 12 miles southeast of Port Vila’s airport.
A dirt road filled with twists and bumps leads to the international satellite campus of Redlands College, a K-12 school. The remote acreage overlooks Teouma Bay — known to locals as Shark Bay — and brims with banana, coconut and papaya trees.
“Really, what hit me is to be grateful because I am so privileged for everything I have,” said Daniel Berry, one of about 150 Redlands students who completed the mandatory, two-week program this past year.
“Even people in the lower class of Australia have it so much better than the people of Vanuatu,” the 14-year-old added, “yet they are 10 times happier than anyone in Australia.”
Indeed, Vanuatu — an archipelago of 83 islands that served as a base of operations for U.S. forces during World War II — consistently ranks among the top five countries internationally in the Happy Planet Index.
“It’s crazy,” Berry said. “The way that they look at life is completely different. And it’s definitely a great opportunity to see this with my own eyes and really understand what else is happening in the world.”
The Aussie teens sleep in bunk beds in dormitories, swim in the ocean and prepare meals such as laplap — a national dish of Vanuatu made with grated root vegetables, bananas and coconut milk.
Students chop elephant grass with machetes and help teach native children who speak Bislama. The English-based Creole tongue is one of Vanuatu’s three official languages, along with English and French.
This story appears in the February edition of The Christian Chronicle.
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Photo by Audrey Jackson
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