Week 71 in Tarawa

 

 

This past week was filled with preparations for teaching and preparations for being taught.  The Pacific Area director of TVET (Technical and Vocational Education and Training), Ameet, along with the Fiji National University Director of TVET, Satendra, visited our school to train our TVET teachers and to do a presentation for the whole faculty.  We were invited to a very nice dinner Wednesday evening with the administrators and TVET teachers at the George Restaurant in Betio.

 

On Thursday, we were delighted to receive a 40 pound box of books from our daughter, Janet, who solicited books from her publisher and author friends for the Moroni High School library.  She also started a GoFundMe to raise funds for shipping the books.  This one box cost $166 to ship here.

We think the students here will be delighted to read these great books.  It's hard to see, but the set of books on the front left of the couch is the complete Harry Potter series.  We hope the other boxes come soon since school starts on February 1st.

Thursday evening a Kiribati Cultural Night was held for our visiting Seventy, Elder Tukuafu.  He will preside over the Stake Conference Saturday and Sunday, when the Tarawa East Stake will be split to create the North Tarawa District.

These men are seated around a large wooden platform used as a drum. It makes a deep, resonating boom that can be heard all over campus.  As I listened to the practices from our apartment, the boom of the drum was a very compelling call to come.  I can imagine the natives calling villagers all over the island with a drum like this.

Sister Baldwin is standing next to the ceremonial roasted pig. President Banemoni told me that it is not a celebration without a pig.  Actually, the meat tends to be a bit undercooked and tough.  When they call it the fatted pig, there is a reason.  There is a large layer of fat all around the meat.

These young girls are putting on their costumes and practicing their poses outside the administration building before the event.

You can see that the flower garlands have already been presented as these girls dance in two different styles of grass skirts.  I spoke with a sister about the grass skirts once.  She told me of the work and care that goes into each skirt.  It takes about a month to complete all of the steps involved in the making of it, and then hours of care to carefully store and take it out of storage. We always think they put these programs on so effortlessly, but in reality many hours of work go into each one.  They gather the flowers from all over the Island and carefully weave them into the garlands.  The practicing for the dance and singing started about 7:00 on Tuesday and lasted until 11:00.  Then some had a 40 minute ride home.  All the time the children were there playing and running throughout the campus.

This was taken at our two day faculty training. There were six sessions held on different areas of the school goals. We taught the next to the last class so everyone was getting pretty tired.  We tried to keep it fast paced and interactive as we taught our exciting topic of writing quality lesson plans.

Friday night after we returned home from eating out with the other seniors, this group of zone leaders stopped by.  We shared our hoarded ice cream bars with them.  We enjoy getting to know the young missionaries better.

Saturday was taken up with conference meetings.  The priesthood session was from 10:00 to 12:00 and the adult session started at 1:00.  We invited the missionaries over for  PB&J sandwiches in between sessions or they would have had nothing to eat.

As you can see, working and sitting space was limited.

We have a great group of missionaries.  Elder Kitchen told us that he was showing his love for us by drinking out of a red cup.  I said, "Don't do that for us, we're BYU fans." He kept the cup anyway.









As we mentioned earlier, our stake conference was presided over by Elder Tukuafu of the Seventy.  His purpose was to divide the East Stake and organize a new District.  We were thrilled when the District President was called and was Peter who was the school maintenance person who recently left to start his own business.  He still does all of the building maintenance and repair for our campus, but now, as a contractor, he can manage his own hours and take on other jobs as he chooses.  He will be a great District President.  He has the challenging job of growing the District into a Stake.  This area is growing and so are hopes to one day be the site of a new temple.