Villagers help to load a mother with childbirth complication at a remote village in Nawaeb District, Morobe
(now one of six PNG National Schools of Excellence that introduced STEM education in 2021) so Dad, who was a university physics lecturer, would drive up from Lae (about 70km away) just to go through physics lessons with me.” The extra study paid off, with Deborah accepted into UniTech in Lae, but her mind was still set on becoming a pilot, so her parents did their best to send
her to the Fijian flight school, Advance Aviation Training, where she started training for a commercial aeroplane licence in 2015. Sadly, the school fees proved a massive struggle, and then her father’s death in 2021 put an end to her completing her course, so she applied to Manolos Aviation in Lae for a job. “I wanted to save to go back
no negative thoughts. My father just said, ‘yes, go for it!’. “In Grade 11 I didn’t have a physics teacher, I was boarding at Wawin National High School
to flying school,” she said. Hired as a grounds crew
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