This past week went by fast. We had the Area Manager for TVET, Ameet Kumar, and the Area Curriculum & Instruction Specialist, Jonothan Warwick, come visit Moroni and review activities at the school. They gave some good suggestions and counsel to the teachers and staff. We visited classes and held training meetings. Jonothan is a Maori from New Zealand. He loves the outdoors, fishing, hunting, and just spending time with his son who is 15 and his daughter who is 17. When he saw pictures of some of the knives that I make he got excited.  You can tell he is a great father and husband. Always talking about his son and daughter and his wife. He also told some great stories about his childhood and growing up in New Zealand.

On Tuesday night one of the boys at the dorm looked across the basketball court to the cultural hall and saw some sparking and then a fire. He quickly ran over and grabbed a fire extinguisher but could not open the locked door so he broke a window next to the fire and put it out. There was just superficial damage because of this boy's quick actions. It turned out to be a fan controller that had failed and caught on fire.

On Wednesday night the school staff put on a feast and performance. They wanted to welcome the Dentists, The Area visitors, and give Susan and I a "proper" welcome. It was amazing. The singing and dances were great and the food was even better. Susan even tried the octopus. It was fabulous.

     

Thursday we were back to normal attending classes and working with the teachers. I rode with the Principal to take Ameet and Jonothan to the airport.

On Friday afternoon each of the inter-house teams worked on their marching and chants they will be doing at the Inter-House competitions on March 29th and 30th when they march on to the field. After the sun went down the rain clouds opened up and we had a good hard rainstorm for about an hour. The dorm students were out in the rain playing volleyball and belly sliding on the basketball court. They were also taking photos and doing a lot of yelling and laughing. Everything and everyone settled down around 10pm. We had rain off and on all night long.

Saturday Susan had a Stake Relief Society birthday celebration. There was a lot of singing and dancing going on. I was making bread at the apartment and running back and forth taking pictures and videos. The celebration started at 10am and ended at 3:30pm, 5.5 hrs. Relief Society events don't last that long in the States. But the Islanders know how to put on a celebration and enjoy every minute of it. After the celebration we borrowed a mission truck and went for a ride towards Betio to find some items I needed to repair a washing machine for some missionaries. Found everything I needed. We also picked up a couple of food items we needed and then went back home. We stopped at a store that has a popcorn machine to buy a bag to munch on but they were out of popcorn kernels. No popcorn on the island right now. Susan was sad. I did notice that there is gasoline available now. Two weeks ago they did not get a shipment so gas was being rationed out. They always seem to have diesel. The school vehicles and most of the mission vehicles are all diesel. Most of them are the small Toyota Hilux trucks. They look like a Tacoma. They are all 4x4 trucks. Go figure.

Today is Sunday and we are truely resting after the busy week we had. The Mission President and his wife flew in this morning from the Marshal Islands. They will be here for 10 days. The mission home and office are about 3 weeks away from being completed here on Tarawa. This will be the only Mission in the church with 2 mission homes and 2 mission offices. But it is necessary with the great distances between islands. The Marshal islands are a US protectorate so they have a lot of US services. Thus the mission headquaters was setup there years ago when the Mission was formed. But Kiribati and Tarawa specifically has been the fastest growing area in the mission. There are 2 Stakes and 1 District on Tarawa alone. By the end of next year their goal is to have 5 Stakes and 3 Districts in Kiribati which includes the outer islands, 3 Stakes and 2 districts on Tarawa. So the Mission President spends a lot of time here on Tarawa. Because of that it was decided to have a mission home and office here also. Plus he has 2 assistants in the Marshals and 2 assistants on Tarawa. Also one of the Mission Presidency Counselors lives on Kiritimati Island (pronounced Christmas) which is 2000 miles out on the eastern end of the mission. Kiritimati is another fast growing area for the Church.

Words and things

It was Douglas's birthday this week so HAPPY BIRTHDAY Douglas! We hope you had a wonderful birthday.

We thought we would share some of the basic greetings in Kiribati (Keer ee bas)

Mauri          (Mah u ree)                 Hello

Tiabo          (see ah boh)               Goodbye

Ko rabwa    (Koh rah bah)             Thank you

Ko uara? (koh u ah rah)                How are you?

I marring (Yee mah ruh ruh ng)    I am fine

Tekeraoi  (Teh keh rah oo yee)  Am bong (ah m boh ng)   Have a great day

We'll share more as the weeks and months go by. 

We had a busy week this week. Bill worked with the wood shop teacher to get the wood shop more organized and uncluttered. Rather than doing it himself or even helping do it, he left the teacher to do it with the help of the kids. They all saw the improvement and realized the benefit from it. Here are a couple of pictures.

BEFORE

                                  

                                  

AFTER

Now with the shop clean and organized Tereke (the teacher) says he will keep it this way and insure the students help in keeping the shop clean and organized. The students are also in the process of making new work benches. 

He now is going to organize both storage rooms, one for tools and one for small projects. Then he is going to assign a student each week in each class to be the tool room manager to issue out tools and insure all the tools are returned before class is over. I am really glad to see Tereke take ownership of the wood shop building. It shows in how the area is getting much better for teaching and doing work.

Bill also worked with the Agriculture teacher this week. Bill made some suggestions on making improvements to the school chicken coop. After talking with the teacher it was decided that a whole new coop would be built that included a chicken run so that the chickens could get on the ground and scratch and do their thing. Below is a picture of the present coop. There are 30 chickens total. They each have a pen to themselves but no way to move around much. The floor is a solid wood floor which doesn't allow for droppings to fall to the ground. As you can see in the picture they are using plastic chairs to hold up the floor because the floor is collasping. Eggs are difficult to collect and the feed system is poor.  The agriculture group has learned from this but they still did not see many of the problems they had. After Bill met with them and explained the issues they had then they saw the need to rebuild it to a better design that allows for more freedom for the birds and an easier means to feed, water, and collect the eggs. The eggs are used on campus at the dormitory kitchen and in the Baking class. During school off times the eggs are sold to school staff. When the chickens are at their prime they lay enough eggs to provide for the school and the staff all the time. The Agriculture group will keep the number at 30 chickens even with the new coop design. Bill has started putting together a book of ideas on how to build the next chicken coop.

 

Susan worked with the Baking class this week. They made chocolate mereigne pies. On Tuesday We were asked to start opening the computer lad for the older students to use so that they can work on their reports and other school work. The lab is open from 7 - 9 pm. 

On Wednesday we had an Inhouse meeting to determine which students will be competing in what competitions for the interschool track meet. All students are asked to join in the competitions. The whole school is broke up into 6 different teams that have the same number of students from each age class. Once each team determines who will be competing in which event then they begin training for the inhouse competition on the 23rd and 24th of March. The best students from these competitions will then represent Moroni at the National InterSchool competitions in July. Moroni has won most of the events at the Nationals the last 2 years and wants to win all of the events this year. Here are some pictures from Wednesday's meeting.

These are 3 of the student body leaders who were helping to conduct the meeting.

We went with Elder and Sister Olson this week to perform missionary apartment checks. I was surprised at the conditions that some of the Elders have to live under. Rats, ants (large red ones in the thousands), limited privacy, limited water, no fans or air in this high humidity climate, and many other conditions. Yet we found each companionship in good spirits and happily engaged in their work. We did find one Elder who was sick and running a slight fever. We gave him some Advil and found out they had no water. We got them 5 gallons of water and told the sick Elder to drink plenty of water. The Olson's said they would check on him each day until he was feeling good. Elder Olson also said he would get their water pump working this week.  

Sick missionary behind the mosquito netting. 

At one of the missionary apartments we found this guard dog right on the path to the apartment. He stayed there the whole time and was still there when we left. The missionaries said that he will go lay down some where while they are gone doing work but when they come home he goes out and sits in the path as if he is guarding their house. As you can see he is just a pup but he has attached himself to the missionaries for some reason.

Out in front of the house the sisters are renting there is a small shop that sells food and other things. On that day they had a fresh supply of dried sea worms for sale. Some tell me they are tasty. I'm not ready to try yet.

This house is 3 stories and was next to another one of the missionaries apartments.

This home had their own personal cemetary in front of their house. Most of the time the dead are buried in the same plot with other family members. There is no embalming and no caskets. The bodies decay to bones rather quickly, within a year or 2.

On Thursday a group of LDS Dentists showed up to be on campus for the next 3 weeks taking care of all the dental needs of the missionaries and the students. They set up their equipment in apartment #8 which is large enough for 4 dentist chairs to be set up. This group has been coming here for the last 13 years. It has been a real blessing for both missionaries and students. So Elder Belshe decided to be their first patient thinking he was just going to get his teeth cleaned. Nope, he had 2 cavities that the good dentist took care of.

Friday night all of the senior couples went out to eat. Bill was feeling like eating again after his dental work the day before. He had blackened tuna which was very good.

Then on Saturday after being cooped up in the apartment all morning Bill decided to go out and do something. The boys from the dormitory were playing basketball so he joined them. After playing for about a half hour the soles of his feet started hurting. He had been playing barefoot on the hot cement. His feet are not conditioned like the locals. So he ended up with some blood blisters on his feet.

I am sure that from now on he will be wearing shoes when he plays basketball.

Well it was a great week that went by fast. We hope all of you are doing well. We miss all of our friends and family. If you have a moment please comment on this blog, even if it is to give Bill a hard time. We don't hear much from anyone so a short comment would be nice.

Birthdays and Projects

We looked for birthday cards here on the Island for 2 weeks and could not find any in the stores or shops. We had not figured out yet what we wanted to do for birthdays so we were getting behind in some of our birthday wishes to family. We decided we would make a sign for each person with their name on it in big letters and then in small letters we wrote some of their characteristics we saw in them. Then one day we went around the Island and took some pictures of us holding a sign with a particular person's name on it. First we had some of the boys here at the school hold up a large "Happy Birthday" sign. Then we went to different spots and held up the other individual signs. When we finally took a good look at the pictures we realized that the smaller words could not be seen or read very easily so we took a picture of each sign and sent that to the birthday person so they could read it better. So for some insight on Kiribati culture, people's birthdays are ONLY celebrated on their 1st, 21st, and 50th birthdays.

We are glad each and everyone of you are YOU and a part of our family.

Here are the pictures-

 

 

 

The week was a good one. Bill worked with the Shop teacher to get all of the larger equipment cleaned up and the rust removed.

Also met with the FM group about some of the projects going on around the campus. There is a new roof going on a couple of the classroom buildings.

And then there are some smaller projects like the support pillars for the Maneaba are being repaired and repainted.

They are converting an old storage room into a temporary art class room.

Bill worked with the purchasing group to finally get the new storage refrigertor bought and delivered. Just in time for the pie baking and meringue making lessons.

Susan was in Fashion Design part of the week because there was a seamstress from one of the businesses in town that came to teach the students how to make their own patterns for making their own clothes. Susan said it was quite an involved process.

During our time off we also went around to just see some of the local shops and markets. One place we stopped was the fish market where some of the fishermen sell their daily catch. Then across the street there were several fish smokers smoking fish fillets. Love the local cultures and businesses.

This is an actual local bus business. It is a truck which stops and people jump in the back. Doesn't cost much, between 20 and 50 cents. There are other buses which are 12 passenger vans with air conditioning and loud music.

Bill has a friend named Suri who brings him breadfruit and coconuts. Bill asked him to bring him some brown coconuts so that he and Susan could scrape out the coconut meat. The locals prefer the young green coconuts because they drink the water inside which is good for you. But the older brown coconuts they don't like. But the older brown coconuts is where the best coconut meat is found and is where coconut oil is extracted from. So he brought us about 6 brown coconuts and we scraped them and then froze the meat for baking uses later.

We also had a bunch of bananas and some papaya brought to us. The bananas were green when we got them but they ripened up in about 4 days. So Susan made some banana bread.

Well we hope you enjoyed this week's blog. Next week we'll add some Kiribati vocabulary and greetings.
We would also love to hear from all of you. So please leave a comment for us to read.

Korabwa
Elder & Sister Belshe