Students started responding when I wandered around in the evenings, and gradually become less reticent about asking questions.  It took a long while though before they became more responsive in class, and generally it was the girls who responded first, and the boys then followed their example.  One problem is language.  For most people in PNG, English is at best the third language - possibly even the fifth.  The first langauage is the local "Tok Ples" (meaning "Talk-Place"), the village language, which in this immediate region is Oro Keiva.  There are over 800 such local languages in PNG, mostly not inter-communicable.  Many people, including girls who marry into a different region, will know two or more Tok Ples languages.  Then comes "Tok Pisin" (which Australians would call Pidgin English, though it is in fact just one of several different Pidgin English languages).  Almost everyone can speak this, but it is much further removed from English than I  expected.  After six weeks, I was just about able to understand some of it, if it was spoken slowly and clearly.  Then there is a native PNG language, Motu, that became widely used in some regions as a Lingua Franca, and is one of the official PNG langauges, though its use seems to be on the decline.  Finally there is English.  This is I suppose the main written language - the newspapers are in English (apart from "Wantok", a Tok Pisin newspaper), most TV is in English (many channels are partly or fully beamed in from Australia), and secondary schooling and examinations are in English.  Many students though struggle with English, and this is a major handicap.  Again, the girls are decidedly stronger than the boys in general, possibly as they tend to speak English among themselves much more.