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.