This blogger is not very good...this was posted 2 weeks ago, but due to technical difficulties we only found out today it hadn't been published :(
It has been another busy two weeks since we last blogged.
The weekend of the 12th we made our way back to Southwest Bay with
two wheelchairs, a pressure mattress, and a toilet frame. As we mentioned, we
were going to carry two wheelchairs down there. Our police friend, Anson,
organised the police truck to pick all of us up and happened to be going down
to Southwest Bay too. So we took a ride in the police truck. After that we met
the boat back at Lambumbu on the western side of Malekula and went down to
Southwest Bay. There were two people that we needed to see. One was a 19 year
old boy who we measured up last time we went to SWB and another an older woman.
We rested for a short time and that afternoon we discovered that the one
wheelchair’s tyres needed to be pumped up. So we decided to carry the pressure
mattress and the toilet frame that afternoon and sort out pumping up the tyres
the next day since we asked around that afternoon for a bicycle pump but no one
had one. The next day, we sought out for another bicycle pump and then our host
family told us that a New Zealand man who has a nice built-up house with a farm
had a compressor. This place was over a small estuary to a lagoon. So we took
the one wheelchair on a boat to this house and filled it up with a compressor. On
the way back we took the luxury of an outrigger canoe. Eventually we set up the
wheelchair for the woman which took about 2 hours. We also learned that this
woman had been bed bound for 4 years and had only been outside to wash. A small
crowd had gathered when we were fitting her into the wheelchair and some
children were around. They were probably about 4 years old. The woman was
asking “Who do these children belong to?” She had never seen them before
because she had never left her house. It was a real blessing to give her some
mobility back. After, we had lunch we set to work on fitting the other chair to
the 19 year old (including taking the wheels off in order to reach some other
adjustments). After a hot 3.5 hours - let’s just say we enjoyed the swim in the
calm waters afterwards! We had to make a few adjustments and check with each
family if they were comfortable over the next few days. After this, we came
back on the boat on the Monday having spent some time relaxing as well.
Last Friday, there was another fundraising for the uniforms
for their youth group. Some of the mums in the village had cooked some cake and
bread that they were selling, and there was entertainment called Fancy hour.
This form of entertainment is similar to busking where people get up and
perform a dance or a song. People put money into a bucket and may choose to put
something on the person performing as a way of making fun with them. You can
also pay money in the bucket to get someone from the audience to dance with the
people on the stage by pulling them up. Alicja, however, did not get pulled up
but willingly volunteered to dance with the youth.
Last Saturday,we went with Pastor Collen, our host family,
and some of our friends went to Tisman - the area where Pastor Collen grew up.
It was a very long truck ride, taking 2 hours to travel 30 kms with 5 river
crossings. The roads south of Lakatoro (where it is built up), are not in a
very good condition and in some places, equivalent to 4wd’ing. We saw a child
there with a disability in a neighbouring village who needed a pram and baby
chair. So we set him up with the help of some of our travel companions. After
we had fitted this pram, we went to Collen’s home village. We met his parents
and ate lunch there. After lunch, we climbed back into the 4wd and swam in the
river closest to his house. It was a very good temperature. It was a very good
day, and when we came back that night, we were presented with a dinner on
behalf of the young adults of the church. We were also presented with some
gifts...they are starting to pile up nicely, so we have paid another bag on
Virgin that we can put it all in and give to customs back in Australia to have
a look at.
In the past two weeks, Alicja has run two workshops: one for
parents and another for teachers of Kindergarten, class one and class 2. This
was just explaining some methods in which parents and teachers can help
students to learn their alphabet, numbers, and colours. We think that these
workshops were very helpful as there was lots of positive feedback at the end.
Gareth has run two sessions (one each for class 5 and 6) of how to research
using a library. It was pretty much a treasure hunt with 4 groups making a
rotation on dictionaries, encyclopaedias, the computer, and the non-fiction
shelf. The students particularly love using the computer to look up things on ‘Encarta
kids’. We had a group of about 8 boys looking up videos on bobsledding,
skateboarding, and a frilled neck lizard. It was a blessing to hear their
laughter and amazement at things that they have never heard of before.
On Monday we went to Lakatoro where some of the kids in the
school were attending a march for Lakatoro Sports opening day funded by ‘Save
the Children’, an organisation promoting children’s rights. There was a group
from the Seventh Day Adventist church called “Pathfinders” (which is similar to
scouts but with a Christian focus) who led the march. It was a whole day
program with games such as tug of war, quizzes, and a big lunch.
On Thursday we went to Kid’s Prayer Warriors where we were
presented with a couple of gifts. This is a great ministry of the church where
it encourages children to pray for various things around the world and closer
to their home. At the beginning, we made a couple of suggestions to help the
kids pay attention and maintain the kids’ interest. We only went there two or
three times at the most but they were still very appreciative.
It is coming close up to the presidential election here and
there is plenty of political talk going on at the moment. They don’t have TV to
advertise or radio that has coverage to broadcast, so the islander method of
broadcasting ‘The Good News’ of their party is by truck where they have a
megaphone on the back and yell out. Quite a few times, we have heard them drive
past on the road yelling out with cheering, chanting and singing hymns.
Today was our last official day at school, and so we have
got a photo below of that. One thing that everyone likes over here are photos.
We know that you all back home like photos too, so here they are.
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Louis in SW Bay |
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The still waters of SW bay provide ample opportunity for canoeing and swimming |
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Elonie |
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Mother's Workshop |
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Pastor Collen with his parents |
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Swimming in the one river crossing |
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The travel crew minus Ansen, Ps Collen and Judy. |
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Youth dinner with gifts |
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Tautu Primary School participating in the march |
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School transport: Who did the risk assessment? Answer: "What is a risk assessment?" |
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The whole school with teachers and two white people. |